What have I done to deserve this? The role of deservingness in effects of ordinary citizens as cases in the news

Previous studies have shown that cases in news reporting have substantial attitudinal effects on the audience. The direction of results has been mixed, however. Some studies reported that news audience change opinion in favour of the position of the case, while other studies reported the opposite. I...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean journal of communication (London) Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 333 - 347
Main Authors Hopmann, David Nicolas, Skovsgaard, Morten, Elmelund-Præstekær, Christian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.08.2017
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Audiences
Deservingness
News
News media
Politics
Public opinion
Welfare state
public opinion
news quality
journalism practice
Cases
media effects
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Summary:Previous studies have shown that cases in news reporting have substantial attitudinal effects on the audience. The direction of results has been mixed, however. Some studies reported that news audience change opinion in favour of the position of the case, while other studies reported the opposite. In this article, we emphasize the deservingness of cases as a potential factor explaining the differences in previous results. In two population-based survey experiments, we empirically investigate how exposure to cases in the news affects the audience’s opinion about the political issue covered. Drawing on insights from welfare state studies, we argue that the deservingness of cases drives the effect of cases on public opinion. Our results confirm this assumption. In a concluding section, we discuss the implications of our results.
ISSN:0267-3231
1460-3705
DOI:10.1177/0267323117710900