[2] The phenomenon was first proposed and experimentally studied in the 1980s by Robert Vallone, Lee Ross and Mark Lepper.
Second, each group reported more negative references to their side than positive ones, and each predicted that the coverage would sway nonpartisans in a hostile direction.
Within both partisan groups, furthermore, greater knowledge of the crisis was associated with stronger perceptions of media bias.
Subsequent studies have found hostile media effects related to other political conflicts, such as strife in Bosnia,[4] immigration in the U.S.[5] and in U.S. presidential elections,[6] as well as in other areas, such as media coverage of the South Korean National Security Act,[7] the 1997 United Parcel Service Teamsters strike,[8] genetically modified food,[9][10] and sports.
An oft-cited forerunner to Vallone et al.'s study was conducted by Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril in 1954.
... For the 'thing' simply is not the same for different people whether the 'thing' is a football game, a presidential candidate, Communism, or spinach.
"[14] Three cognitive mechanisms for explaining the hostile media effect have been suggested:[15] Partisans who have consistently processed facts and arguments in light of their preconceptions and prejudices [...] are bound to believe that the preponderance of reliable, pertinent evidence favors their viewpoint.
In most cases, these partisan differences were as big as—if not bigger than—the differences seen in response to non-opinionated news, indicating that even blatant deviations from journalistic norms do not quell partisan selectivity in news perceptions, at least when it comes to perceived bias in the host of opinionated programs.
[20] Gunther et al.[21] said, "the relative hostile media effect occurs when individuals with different attitudes toward the issue exhibit significantly different evaluations of the same media content.” In fact, as Glass et al. noted in a 2000 study,[22] "partisans tend to see objectively biased articles as 'even-handed' if the bias impugns the opposition group."
[29] When exposed to controversial media coverage that contains unfavorable depictions of the ingroup, group members, concerned about the perceived inaccuracy of the portrayals and convinced that the portrayals undermine the group's legitimacy in the larger society, cope by derogating media coverage, viewing it as hostilely biased.
Perloff[1] identified four factors as the reasons those individuals with strong attitudes towards a particular issue, as well as high involvement, might perceive hostile media bias: selective recall, which causes partisans to focus more on contradictory information; selective categorization, in which partisans categorize more content as unfair to their position than fair; different standards, in which partisans classify more of the content that reflects positively on their position as accurate, and information that reflects negatively as inaccurate; and prior beliefs about media bias, in which partisans judge media content unfairly based on a generalized negative set of beliefs about the media in general.
Therefore, those partisans who begin with the belief in a hostile media will conclude that public opinion is opposed to their particular cause.
This research has suggested that these individuals effectively feel disenfranchised, and may react by "defying the dominant public opinion climate, even engaging in undemocratic actions, and other times adopting a more passive approach, withdrawing from functional political or social activities.
"[1] Tsang[34] has revealed that the hostile media perception can be applied to a fake news context.
Partisans from opposing sides were found to perceive the exact same news message to be fake to significantly varying degrees.