Fox News Nation
Year: 2011
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The Fox News Network has received a lot of attention from political pundits, scholars and elected officials. At best, Fox News merely preaches to the choir of (already) conservative viewers. At worst, Fox News is polarizing viewers by moving their audience to the extreme right. Past research suggests that Fox News viewers hold more conservative attitudes and beliefs, but only on a limited number of questions. In this paper, I examine the political opinions of Fox News viewers on a wider range of political issues including both foreign and domestic policy. Specifically, I use data from the Pew Research Center to compare Fox News viewers to similar Americans that get news from other sources. The findings suggest that Fox News viewers hold more conservative opinions than the rest of the population, even when controlling for party identification and ideology. In fact, Independents watching Fox News are more likely to hold conservative opinions than Republicans in general. I argue that this disparity stems from selective exposure and distrust of mainstream news organizations. The data largely support this theory, as Fox News viewers tend to 1) hold unfavorable impressions of mainstream news sources and 2) avoid other news outlets such as CNN or broadcast news.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: G. Richard Smith
Institution: University of North Georgia
Language: English
Topic: Media Influence and Politics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2257001681