The impact of multiple media on public opinion towards the European Union
Leonardo Baccini, London School of Economics and Political Science
Laura Sudulich,UniversitéLibre de Bruxelles
Today’s media environment not only is all-pervasive, but also extremely varied. Citizens gather politically relevant information from a multiplicity of sources and through different media.This paper address whether consuming online information about the European Union is responsible for variation in public opinion towards it and whether the medium effect bypasses or encompasses political knowledge. We assess the effects of online news consumption on European matters by addressing the medium effect as well as the effects of different types of online platforms. Using data from from Eurobarometer 76.3,we find that consuming information online has an effect on opinions, mediated by an increase in political knowledge The effect is positive, suggesting that online information consumption fosters more support for the EU by enhancing political knowledge. When we set apart those who trust the EU from those whom do not we find asymmetrical reinforcement effects. While for the former group we observe reinforcement effects, for the latter there is no increase in negativity, rather in increment in positive attitudes. When we explore differences among websites, we find that institutions official website as well as the online version of traditional media positively affect opinions by enhancing political awareness. Websites that by default are mixture of fact-checked and non fact-check information prove to be unable to do so.
Introduction
The normative claim that an informed citizenry is fundamental to the well-being of democracy is rather uncontested. The information environment is vital to citizens’ capacity to learn about politics, their ability to link political preferences to parties and policies and assess the performances of institution and political actors. In most instances, people gather politically relevant information via the mass media rather than though direct interactions with political elites. The role of the mass media is therefore key to the correct functioning of society (Castells 2000; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). There is no shortage of evidence showing that the mass media exert a crucial influence on public opinion formation [from Van Klingeren, Boomgaarden, and De Vreese (2013); to Zaller (1992); for a review of major contribution see Bennett and Iyengar (2008)].
The mass media are particularly important when considered in relation to the formation of opinion, the gathering of political awareness and, voting behaviour in the context of the European Union, since citizens typically do not experience direct contacts with European institutions. Additionally, the widespread ignorance of the European Union (hereafter EU) politics and policies among members of the European public is notorious and persistent. Over one third of Europeans are still unable to name any EU institution; the percentage of citizens claiming to know a little or nothing at all about ‘the people who run the various EU institutions and the leaders of the EU’ is a striking 73%. A similarly high number of subjects (74%) reports to know a little or nothing at all about ‘The allocation of roles played by the various institutions (who does what?)’ (Eurobarometer 77.4). This ignorance about EU institutions and mechanisms goes hand in hand with the lack of direct interactions between citizens and EU institutions. Thus, citizens forcefully rely on mass media when (in)forming their opinions about the EU.
While the impact of radio, television and newspapers - the so-called traditional media - has been extensively debated in relation to electoral behaviour and attitudes formation towards the EU (De Vreese 2003; De Vreese and Boomgaarden 2006; Schuck and De Vreese 2006), the influence of the Internet_ is currently under-explored.[1] This is in spite of a real word trend indicating that the Internet is rapidly becoming a fundamental source of information about European matters. Between November 2011 and December 2012, the percentage of citizens reporting that they had gathered information on the European Parliament on the World Wide Web went up by 10%, from 33% to 43% (Eurobarometer 78.2). The Internet provides a potentially unlimited amount of information. It also offers an array of heterogeneous sources, from credible news producers to users generated content, whose quality tends to be lower(Patterson 2013). These structural differences with respect to traditional media are likely to affect the opinions and behaviours of those who have integrated online news consumption into their media usage habits. The nature of online-based informationmay also affect the process through which individuals translate information into political knowledge. Lupia and McCubbins(1999, 25) point at a key element of the relationship between information and knowledge: ‘although you cannot have knowledge without having information, you can have information without having knowledge’. Information that does not provide knowledge is either redundant or it’s actually noise. While absorbing redundant information is a possibility when gathering information via any media, we argue that the internetmaximises potential for amplification of noise by creating an environment where noise and signal are often indistinguishable.
This paper takes the first step to addressing whether consuming online information about the EU is responsible for variation in public opinion towards it and whether the medium effect bypasses or encompasses political knowledge. Further to this, we explore whether - within the range of informational opportunities offered by the World Wide Web- different online loci of information affect public opinion and if the process is mediated by political knowledge.
We use of data from Eurobarometer 76.3 (November 2011) posing a large battery of questions on media use for political information consumption based on a Europe wide representative sample of individuals. Importantly, this survey contains a unique array of items on online habits of political news consumption.
We find that consuming information online has an effect on opinions, mediated by an increase in political knowledge. The effect is positive, indicating that online information consumptionfosters more support for the EU by enhancing political knowledge. When we set apart those who trust the EU from those whom do not we find asymmetrical reinforcement effects. While for the former group we observe reinforcement effects, for the latter there is no increase in negativity, rather in increment in positive attitudes. When we explore differences among websites, we find that institutions official website as well as the online version of traditional media positively affect opinions by enhancing political awareness. Websites that by default are mixture of fact-checked and non fact-check information prove to be unable to do so.
The article proceeds as follows: in the next section we outline the relationship between mediated information political knowledge and public opinion on which we base our working hypotheses. We then discuss our empirical strategy and describe the data. In the following section we present and discuss the results of our analysis. We then run a further test to account for the endogeneity intrinsically related to the relationship between media usage and public opinion. We conclude by examining the implications of our findings.
Information, knowledge and public opinion
Information is the data that allows individuals to acquire (politically) relevant knowledge and to form or redefine their beliefs. It can be gathered by direct experience –attending a candidate debate, correspondence with an MP – or by being exposed to reports. These reports can be based on the experience of people in one’s social network – e.g. a friend telling his/her experience in dealing with local government – or, can be provided by mass media. Acquiring information through direct experience of EU institutions and policies is substantially ruled out. The same applies for information obtained via personal networks as ‘very few citizens have first- or even second-hand contact with Community affairs in Brussels’ (Dalton and Duval 1986, 186). Political knowledge is the state of awareness of facts that matter to orient people’s opinions and choices. The acquisition of knowledge depends upon the availability of information, so does the redefinition of what Bartels(1993) calls ‘fund of knowledge’. Newly acquired information allows individuals to update their preexisting knowledge - for those who had some - and provides knowledge to those who had none before. The mass media are therefore key to educating the public by making the information available and accessible(Holtz-Bacha and Norris 2001). Information acquired via the mass media can then translate into in-depth knowledge, superficial acquaintanceor evenresult into no knowledge as a function of being, unclear, noisy or redundant.
Medium effects?
A substantial corpus of studies has unveiled differences among the mass media in their capacity of translating information into knowledge that subsequently affects political evaluations [for a review see Norris and Sanders 2003]. While several studies support the idea of print superiority (Robinson and Davis 1990; Robinson et al. 1986)others cast some doubts on it (Graber 2001; Mondak 1995), whit no ultimate consensus on what medium carries the highest learning potential for the public. Studies of traditional media share the implicit assumption that the information provided is both relevant and factual. Media publishers and regulatory authorities act as gatekeepers on what can be broadcast and printed,therefore making this assumption relatively safe when applied to traditional media. On the other hand,the Internet remains largely unregulated. The amount and type of information available online differ substantially from what is available via other media, firstly in terms of heterogeneity of content, secondly with regard to types of sources, and thirdly in relation to the amount of noise associated with online-based information.
Given the radically different nature of the Internet and online-based news consumption, there are good reasons to explore whether the medium per se makes a difference. The structure of web pages – characterized by hyperlinks, menu bars, and audio-visual content – affectslearning (Tewksbury and Rittenberg 2012). While many scholars consider differences in the effect of mass media as due to content more than to medium’s characteristics as such (Newton 1999; Norris and Sanders 2003)experimental studies have proved some forms of medium effects (Norris and Sanders 2003; Robinson and Davis 1990; Robinson et al. 1986). In particular, Kaid and Postelnicu in a study of public perception of candidates based on TV and Internet supplied stimuli (2005: 273) found that ‘the channel of communication has a strong impact on how the audience interprets the message an builds its perception of political candidates’. Therefore we first test whether using the Internetper se has an independent effect on attitudesand whether this explained through an increase in levels of political knowledgein our first working hypothesis:
H1: Those who use the Internet as main sourceof political newsgathering display significantly different opinions on the EU to those who donot, and this process is mediated by political knowledge.
This will shed some light on whether the channel though which information is accessed affects political attitudes and if that happens via an increase of political knowledge. Further to this, we address whether the pull-in nature of the medium conditions the process by reinforcing pre-existing preferences. The internet isparticularly well suited for preference reinforcement (Iyengar and Hahn 2009; Nie et al. 2010) facilitatingselective exposure to information already in line with one’s preferences. While selectivity is clearly also happening with regard to traditional media, it has been argued that online based news consumption holds the potential to maximize selectivity by creating ‘filter bubbles’Therefore, we explore whether predisposition towards the EU condition the process (in)forming attitudes via the web. Simply put, we explore whether reinforcement effects occur.
H2: Europhiles who use the Internet as main sourceof political newsgathering display significantly more positive attitudes than their counterparts who do not. Euroscepticswho use the Internet as main sourceofpolitical newsgathering display significantly more negative attitudes than their counterparts who do not. The reinforcement process is mediated by increases in political knowledge.
This initialaggregate analysis, while key to unveil whether medium specific effects exist, is likely to mask certain nuances of the process. The Internet, as much as any other media is not monolithic in nature. When differences between quality newspapers and tabloids are explored, the extent to which the printed press contributes to knowledgeis showed to be differential(Holtz-Bacha and Norris 2001). In a similar vein, studies of the effects of television have proved that public and commercial channels differ in their capacity of transmitting knowledge and affecting political opinions and behaviours(Aarts and Semetko 2003; Norris and Sanders 2003). Equally, to gather a fuller understanding of the mechanism linking online-based information to citizensattitudes towards the EU and to unveil the effects of single platforms we need to undertake an addition analytical step.
Platform effects?
One of McLuhan’s (1964) insights, in formulating the famous the medium is the message theory, was that “the content of any medium is always another medium”. The Internet essentially contains all the other mass media that preceded it: the printed press, TV and radio. All major new outlets have now an online version. Additionally, there are many other online spaces that deliver politically relevant information: institutions official websites, social media sites - including social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as sharing platforms like Wikis and Youtube - and weblogs. In the words of Patterson “the internet is at once a gold mine of solid content and a hellhole of misinformation” (2013: 79)
Online information can therefore take the most diverse shapes, depending on the source and hosting platform: from credible news producers to unverifiable information posted by individuals simply voicing their own opinions. Online spaces vary in the heterogeneity of their content, in the extent to which they host unverified versus verified facts and in the amount of space they give to comments and opinions. For instance, the website of a major newspaper is likely to publishcontent that is verified and has been provided by accredited sources. At the other end of the spectrum, platforms like blogs and forums are, by definition, aggregators of comments and opinions, often seeking to advocatemore thanto report(Scott 2007). Therefore, we expect the effects of information encountered on these websites to be different from the effects of information encountered on ‘more reliable’ platforms. Particularly, platforms that are likely to supply a mixture of noise and news, like Social Networking Sites, video hosting spaces and blogs - are more likely to fail translating information into knowledge. Empirically, we separately analyze the effects of platform that hold strong potential for the amplification of noise from those that are most likely to maximize reliable information, to gather a more fine-grained understanding of how the new media affect individuals’ opinions.
H3: Different online loci exert differential effects on public opinion on the EU. Websites promoting reliable fact-checked information affect users’ opinions by enhancing levels of political knowledge.
Empirical strategy
As a result of our theoretical framework, we implement a causal mediation analysis, which allows us to distinguish the direct effect of online-based newsgathering from its mediated effect through an increase in the knowledge of the EU. In particular, the causal mediation analysis allows exploration of the role of an intermediate variable that lies along the causal paths between the treatment and the dependent variable (Hicks and Tingley 2011; Imai, Keele, and Yamamoto 2010). In our case, knowledge about the EU is the mediator that lies along the causal path between information gathered online and attitudes towards the EU. The path mode is illustrated in Figure 1.[2]
[Figure 1 about here]
To carry out the causal mediation analysis, we rely on the STATA 13 ‘mediation’ package developed by Hicks and Tingley (2011). The model for both the mediator variable and the outcome variableis an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression. We include country fixed effects to account for cross-country heterogeneity and mitigate omitted variable problems. We use robust standard errors and we run 1000 simulations for the quasi-Bayesian approximation of parameter uncertainty.
To balance out differences between those who used the internet for political newsgathering and those who did not, we use entropy balancing (Hainmueller 2012).[3] Specifically, we balance our entire set of covariates with respect to our treatments, which capture those respondents who go online as well as the type of website they visit.[4] Differences in the means between the treated and control group vanish for all the covariates after implementing entropy balancing (pre- and post-matching descriptive statistics for the relevant variables are reported in Tables 1, 2, and 3). We note that balancing covariates with respect to the treatment is similar to controlling for such confounding factors in a standard multivariate regression without imposing parametric functional form or distributional assumptions. Finally, we run all our parametric models using the weights obtained from the entropy balance estimation as well as the entire set of control variables to account for any residual differences between the treated and control groups.[5] An advantage of entropy balancing over a matching technique is that the former technique does not drop unmatched observations (Hainmueller 2012: 2).