Exploring Relationships of Political Affiliation and Interest in the News
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Mentor Information
Sandra Schneider-Wright
Description
What gets people to read the news? We explored whether political affiliation predicts the kind of news headlines that captures people’s interest. We showed participants multiple different headlines about current topics. These headlines were designed to be neutral in tone. For each headline, we measured their interest in and likelihood to read the article. We also measured how realistic they thought that the headline was, and whether they thought the article would be fact-based. At the end of the study, we also asked for their political outlook and how often they read news articles. A correlation analysis examined whether political outlook or tendency to read the news can predict the topics deemed interesting. Many headlines tended to be more popular among liberals, with almost no headlines being more popular among conservatives. Few relationships were observed between headlines and tendency to watch the news. We summarize the patterns we observed.
Exploring Relationships of Political Affiliation and Interest in the News
What gets people to read the news? We explored whether political affiliation predicts the kind of news headlines that captures people’s interest. We showed participants multiple different headlines about current topics. These headlines were designed to be neutral in tone. For each headline, we measured their interest in and likelihood to read the article. We also measured how realistic they thought that the headline was, and whether they thought the article would be fact-based. At the end of the study, we also asked for their political outlook and how often they read news articles. A correlation analysis examined whether political outlook or tendency to read the news can predict the topics deemed interesting. Many headlines tended to be more popular among liberals, with almost no headlines being more popular among conservatives. Few relationships were observed between headlines and tendency to watch the news. We summarize the patterns we observed.
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