The hostile media effect and imagination of audience

Recent work by Gunther and Schmitt (2004) on the hostile media effect offers a partial clarification of our findings. These authors conducted an experiment in which a purposefully crafted neutral text was presented to experts involved in the ongoing controversy over genetically modified organisms. For one randomized group of experts, this text was presented as a news item; for the other, the identical text was presented as a research paper from a senior undergraduate student. In comparing participants’ evaluations of bias in the text, Gunther and Schmitt found striking differences. Whereas the presentation of the text as a news item yielded extreme and contradictory assessments of bias, the identical text presented as an undergraduate research paper was generally judged to be balanced. The authors argue that this reflects the importance of experts’ “imagination of audience” as a critical factor in their understanding of texts and communications. In this sense, experts are reacting against the media based on their understanding of the competency and vulnerability of the general public: “Partisans may believe that information in a mass medium will reach a large audience of neutral, and perhaps more vulnerable, readers – readers who could be convinced by unbalanced or misleading information to support the ‘wrong’ side.” In short, Gunther and Schmitt’s research suggests that negative views of the media related more directly to experts’ views of the general public than to the behaviours of media institutions themselves.

Young, Nathan and Ralph Matthews. The Aquaculture Controversy in Canada: Activism, Policy, and Contested Science. 2010. p. 149 (paperback)