Fox News’ coverage of the world is so extreme and so overtly propagandistic that it might seem that its viewers are impervious to information from more mainstream news outlets. But a new working paper suggests that, if they’re actually shown the information, Fox News viewers can be open to absorbing unflattering news about politicians they support and can change their minds about hot-button issues. In the fall of 2020, they paid regular Fox News viewers to watch CNN, instead, for about seven hours a week for a month and then surveyed them about their political attitudes and what they knew about current events. Broockman and Kalla compared the survey results of the experimental group of Fox News viewers who switched to CNN to those of the control group who didn’t, and they found that consuming CNN noticeably shifted the test group’s perception of the world. The Fox News viewers who switched to CNN generally continued to hold perspectives that accord with a right-wing media diet and worldview, and the experiment didn’t change whom they’d vote for.

Source: Fox News April 05, 2022 19:26 UTC