Michael A. Beam

The Irony of Satire Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colberts political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colberts political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

Automating the News: How Personalized News Recommender System Design Choices Impact News Reception

This study investigates the impact of personalized news recommender system design on selective exposure, elaboration, and knowledge. Scholars have worried that proliferation of personalization technologies will degrade public opinion by isolating people from challenging perspectives. Informed by selective exposure research, this study examines personalized news recommender system designs using a communication mediation model. Recommender system design choices examined include computer-generated personalized recommendations, user-customized recommendations, and full or limited news information environments based on recommendations. Results from an online mock election experiment with Ohio adult Internet users indicate increased selective exposure when using personalized news systems. However, portals recommending news based on explicit user customization result in significantly higher counterattitudinal news exposure. Expected positive effects on elaboration and indirect effects on knowledge through elaboration are found only in personalized news recommender systems that display only recommended headlines. Lastly, personalized news recommender system use has a negative direct effect on knowledge.

Filtering 2008 US presidential election news on YouTube by elites and nonelites: An examination of the democratizing potential of the internet

The goals of this study are to explore several claims about the democratizing potential of the internet and to extend gatekeeping theory into user-generated content (UGC) domain. A quantitative content analysis of the most popular YouTube political news videos during the 2008 US presidential election was conducted to investigate the degree to which nonelites were able to partake in mainstream public discourse. We found that elites dominated first and second filters (news sourcing and news production) in the flow of online news, while nonelites dominated the third filter (news distribution). These results suggest that an update to the traditional gatekeeping model is needed to reflect the realities of today’s user-driven communication environment.

Personalized News Portals Filtering Systems and Increased News Exposure

In this study, we investigated the impact of personalized news web portals on selective exposure. Results from analyses of secondary survey data from national random samples of U.S. adults show a positive relationship between personalized news and increased exposure to offline news. Users of personalized news report viewing more sources and categories of news online compared with nonusers. Partisan users of personalized news do not report increased partisan news exposure. No difference in preferences for perspective sharing or challenging news sources is found between personalized news users and nonusers. The implications for future research on personalized information systems and selective exposure are discussed.

Clicking vs. sharing

Online news and social media are transforming the process of news production and reading. While research has shown that news media play an important role in providing information to the public in democratic societies, research investigating the impact of sharing news online on the process of public opinion formation is in a nascent stage. This study examines the impact of viewing and sharing online news on two dimensions of political knowledge: factual knowledge and structural knowledge. Results from survey data collected over 3-waves during the 2012 US Presidential Election from an online panel of 403 US adult Internet users show that reading online news is positively related to factual political knowledge. Sharing online news, in contrast, is related to structural knowledge. We discuss these findings and their implications for future research investigating the role of online news. We examined the relationship between online news behaviors and political knowledge.We collected three-wave survey data from 403 adults during the 2012 US election.People who share news online are also reading news online.Online news reading was positively related to factual political knowledge.Online news sharing was positively related to political knowledge structure density.

Rush, Rachel, and Rx: Modeling Partisan Media's Influence on Structural Knowledge of Healthcare Policy

Examining the impact of various media sources on knowledge has a long tradition in political communication. Although much of the extant research focuses on the impact of traditional media on factual knowledge, research is expanding to include a variety of media sources and multiple dimensions of knowledge, in addition to understanding processes that better explain these relationships. Using a nationwide, opt-in online survey (n = 993), we examine the relationship between partisan media and structural knowledge, which assess how interconnected people see political concepts. Utilizing understanding of the Affordable Care Act as the content area of interest, we examine whether exposure to partisan media has differential effects on attitudinal ambivalence—holding both positive and negative attitudes toward an object—based on the political ideology of the respondent, and whether this impact of ambivalence influenced structural knowledge. Our results show that exposure to attitude-consistent media decreased attitudinal ambivalence. This exposure to attitude-consistent media results in a positive indirect effect on structural knowledge through this decrease in ambivalence. We find the reverse effect for use of attitude-inconsistent media.

A Spiral of Skepticism? The Relationship Between Citizens’ Involvement With Campaign Information to Their Skepticism and Political Knowledge:

Scholars have emphasized the importance of an informed citizenry for a healthy democracy. As a result, research has examined whether campaign information fosters positive or negative democratic outcomes. This article examines the relationship between information seeking and skepticism. We also examine whether skepticism leads to democratically beneficial outcomes. We examine these relationships using survey data collected during the course of the 2012 Presidential Election. We found an over-time relationship between campaign information seeking and skepticism. We also found that skepticism leads to increased knowledge at the end of the election through information seeking.

Context collapse and privacy management: Diversity in Facebook friends increases online news reading and sharing:

Social media users are able to read, share, and discuss news online with other people coming from diverse contexts in their lives, including family members, co-workers, and friends. Past research has indicated that “context collapse” occurs when people must imagine and negotiate interacting with a large and diverse online audience. Using survey data from 771 US Internet users, we find that more context collapse in people’s Facebook friends is positively related to both sharing and reading news. Furthermore, reading news on Facebook mediates the relationship between context collapse and news sharing. Finally, privacy management moderates the relationship between reading and sharing news on Facebook, where people who are more open in their privacy management practices share more news.

Extending the Spiral of Silence: Partisan Media, Perceived Support, and Sharing Opinions Online

ABSTRACT In this paper, we apply the spiral of silence theory to the study of partisan media and political participation. Our results show consuming supportive partisan news outlets is associated with perceiving that other people share one’s opinions. In addition, levels of perceived support are associated with the likelihood of sharing opinions in online contexts. Moreover, our result shows that the relationship between perceived support and sharing opinions varies by the individual difference variable of conflict avoidance. To test our model, we use data collected right before the 2014 midterm election in the United States.

Facebook news and (de)polarization: reinforcing spirals in the 2016 US election

ABSTRACT The rise of social media, and specifically Facebook, as a dominant force in the flow of news in the United States has led to concern that people incur greater isolation from diverse perspectives through filter bubbles (from algorithmic filtering) and echo chambers (from an information environment populated by social recommendations coming from overwhelmingly like-minded others). This evolution in news diffusion comes at a time when Americans report increased affective partisan polarization. In particular, evidence shows increasingly negative attitudes about out-party members. Based on selective exposure and reinforcing spirals model perspectives, we examined the reciprocal relationship between Facebook news use and polarization using national 3-wave panel data collected during the 2016 US Presidential Election. Over the course of the campaign, we found media use and attitudes remained relatively stable. Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to a modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave. Our results indicated that counter-attitudinal news exposure increased over time, which resulted in depolarization. We found no evidence of a parallel model, where pro-attitudinal exposure stemming from Facebook news use resulted in greater affective polarization.