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. 2022 Aug 9;119(32):e2202197119.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2202197119. Epub 2022 Aug 1.

Measuring dynamic media bias

Affiliations

Measuring dynamic media bias

Eunji Kim et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Ideological media bias is increasingly central to the study of politics. Yet, past literature often assumes that the ideological bias of any outlet, at least in the short term, is static and exogenous to the political process. We challenge this assumption. We use longitudinal data from the Stanford Cable News Analyzer (2010 to 2021), which reports the screen time of various political actors on cable news, and quantify the partisan leaning of those actors using their past campaign donation behavior. Using one instantiation of media bias-the mean ideology of political actors on a channel, i.e., visibility bias-we examine weekly, within-day, and program-level estimates of media bias. We find that media bias is highly dynamic even in the short term and that the heightened polarization between TV channels over time was mostly driven by the prime-time shows.

Keywords: media bias; news; political communication.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Program-level media bias. Shown is the distribution of ideology score for the top five most popular programs from CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC (2010 to 2021).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
(A) Distance between channels. (B) Within-day cable TV media bias by channel.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Over-time variations in cable TV media bias by program.

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MeSH terms

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