The Affective Underpinnings of Hostile Media Perceptions

Abstract

The hostile media effect (HME) refers to a process by which highly involved audiences tend to perceive media coverage as biased against their own views. In this process, issue involvement is usually treated as a cognitive construct, that is, as the extent to which the attitudinal issue under consideration is of personal importance. Although Vallone, Ross, and Lepper raised the issue of affective involvement in their seminal study, hardly any research has tried to disentangle the effects of cognitive and affective involvement. Thus, the aim of this article is to clarify whether the HME is triggered by cognitive and/or affective involvement. Data from three survey studies demonstrate that affective involvement—measured as emotional arousal or as the experience of concrete emotions—can explain the HME over and beyond cognitive involvement. Implications of these findings for future HME research are discussed.