The Effects of Elite Attacks on Copartisan Media: Evidence from Trump and Fox News

IF 2.9 1区社会学 Q1 COMMUNICATION Public Opinion Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-09-17 DOI:10.1093/poq/nfad042

Allison M N Archer

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Abstract

Abstract Individuals seeking news content face a variety of options in the current media landscape, yet scholarly research provides little evidence regarding the conditions under which they might become more or less open to different partisan news outlets. Drawing on the case of Donald Trump’s critiques of Fox News, I argue that elite rhetoric plays an important role in this process for members of both parties. I first conduct an original content analysis of Trump’s tweets from 2017 to 2020 and find that he increasingly attacked Fox News on this platform. Notably, Trump’s increasingly critical rhetoric about Fox correlates significantly with decreases in both Fox’s daytime and prime-time ratings. Two survey experiments shed light on how individuals respond to this intraparty conflict, and I find that Trump’s rhetoric affects both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans view Fox as less conservative and more critical of Trump when exposed to his critiques of the outlet. However, Republicans do not change their viewing habits until Trump promotes an alternative to Fox like OANN. Democrats respond to Trump’s rhetoric by updating their perceptions of Fox’s coverage and ideology as well as increasing their willingness to watch the channel, both in isolation and relative to an alternative like OANN. The results suggest that elite rhetoric is instrumental in shaping views of and demand for partisan outlets among members of both parties and can elevate more ideologically extreme sources among followers. Thus, elite rhetoric serves as a meaningful cue for individuals navigating an increasingly fragmented partisan media landscape.

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精英攻击对合作媒体的影响:来自特朗普和福克斯新闻的证据

在当前的媒体环境中，寻求新闻内容的个人面临着各种各样的选择，然而，学术研究几乎没有证据表明，在何种条件下，他们可能会或多或少地对不同党派的新闻媒体开放。以唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)对福克斯新闻(Fox News)的批评为例，我认为精英言论在这一过程中对两党成员都起着重要作用。我首先对特朗普从2017年到2020年的推文进行了原创内容分析，发现他越来越多地在这个平台上攻击福克斯新闻。值得注意的是，特朗普对福克斯越来越多的批评言论与福克斯日间和黄金时段收视率的下降显著相关。两项调查实验揭示了个人如何应对这种党内冲突，我发现特朗普的言论对共和党人和民主党人都有影响。共和党人认为，当福克斯听到特朗普对该媒体的批评时，他不那么保守，对特朗普的批评更多。但是，共和党人不会改变他们的收视习惯，直到特朗普推出像OANN这样的替代福克斯的节目。民主党人对特朗普言论的回应是更新他们对福克斯报道和意识形态的看法，并增加他们观看该频道的意愿，无论是孤立的还是相对于OANN这样的替代方案。结果表明，精英言论有助于塑造两党成员对党派出口的看法和需求，并可以在追随者中提升更多意识形态极端的来源。因此，精英的言论为个人在日益分裂的党派媒体格局中导航提供了有意义的线索。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Public Opinion Quarterly Multiple-

CiteScore

4.40

自引率

2.90%

发文量

期刊介绍： Published since 1937, Public Opinion Quarterly is among the most frequently cited journals of its kind. Such interdisciplinary leadership benefits academicians and all social science researchers by providing a trusted source for a wide range of high quality research. POQ selectively publishes important theoretical contributions to opinion and communication research, analyses of current public opinion, and investigations of methodological issues involved in survey validity—including questionnaire construction, interviewing and interviewers, sampling strategy, and mode of administration. The theoretical and methodological advances detailed in pages of POQ ensure its importance as a research resource.