That’s News to Me

In a world of competing perspectives and unprecedented access to information, how can we know that we’re getting the full story?

By: Sean Ericson

Last summer, in the relatively early days of the COVID pandemic, I was on a video call, talking with my cousin and her husband. My cousin asked me where I got my news about politics, and I realized it was mostly from Twitter. This concerned me: I thought of myself as a savvy consumer of news. What was I doing getting my information from social media? After all, we all know people who have been taken in by false information on the Internet. I had thought I was more media-literate than those people, but what if I wasn’t?

Our choice of news media can have a profound effect on our beliefs. A recent working paper from researchers at Princeton found that Twitter usage across Texas counties may have decreased the Republican vote share in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The authors note that previous research has found even larger changes in vote share associated with “The Washington Post” and Fox News.

Partisanship isn’t the only form of media bias. One study found that exposure to network TV news increased agreement with racial stereotypes. Another found that women are overrepresented in news stories about lifestyle and healthcare, while men are overrepresented in stories about business and politics. And a third paper found that news reports on the economy closely track the fortunes of the richest Americans, while the financial fate of the poorest households hardly factors in at all.

All of these biases and bubbles can make the task of getting a complete view of the world seem impossible. It probably is, but I think we can at least try to make things better. I recommend seeking out news sources that come from a different point of view than your own, whether that be political persuasion or social background. I don’t claim to be perfect about this, of course—in many ways, I think I’m still stuck in my bubble.