Steve Dempsey

YOU’RE NOT PARANOID. You’re just politically engaged.

Spend 10 minutes scrolling through online comments or social media and you will find people convinced that RTÉ is a mouthpiece for the government, that newspapers are captured by vested interests, and that journalists are part of some ideological cabal that hides the truth from the masses. 

This is nothing new. There’s a well-known phenomenon called the hostile media effect.

It’s a psychological bias where people tend to think the news media is hostile to their views, and the more politically committed they are to an ideology or point of view, the more likely they are to think that the media is undermining that outlook. 

Sometimes, of course, those concerns are justified. Public service broadcasters require proper funding and governance – which, as we’ve seen recently, hasn’t always been the case in Ireland. And millionaires with agendas – from William Randolph Hearst to Jeff Bezos – have always owned media outlets.

But what does the hostile media effect mean in a modern media ecosystem where news comes from a variety of sources, not all of which have legal teams and fear defamation; many of which can be easily weaponised by bad actors to spread misinformation?

Recent research published in the journal Political Communication from academics at the University of Amsterdam gives us a clue.

The question the researchers asked was whether citizens believe that people who shared their political beliefs were being targeted more by misinformation than those who didn’t.

They surveyed about 4,000 people in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, before and after the 2024 European parliamentary election.

The subjects were asked to identify which parties they would vote for, and which they would “absolutely not vote for”.

Later, the subjects were asked to think about their impressions of online misinformation during the election, and asked to grade whether they felt misinformation targeted their political preferences, or the parties that gave them the ick.

What they found wasn’t that surprising.

Just like the hostile media effect, they found clear support for a hostile misinformation effect: citizens believe their own political party was targeted more than its political opponents.

The research also indicated that political interest and the strength of a party’s identity make people more susceptible to the phenomenon. Similarly, the research found that this hostile misinformation effect will be stronger for more right-wing voters and voters of parties that have lost the elections than for voters supporting election winners.

What does it all mean?

The researchers are saying that voters with an affiliation to a party or cause don’t just mistrust the media, they also see their cause as more likely to be victims of misinformation from other sources.

In effect, they think: ‘everyone’s out to get us’. Perceptions of bias, therefore, extend beyond traditional mainstream media. This is a particularly challenging notion for democratic societies who struggle to create a shared truth. If we can’t trust old media, or new media, where does that leave us?

Isolated, that’s where.

News is a social good which needs to be protected. But without trust in traditional media and a perception that the new media ecosystem is weaponised against certain viewpoints, there is a real risk that people become more isolated. Electorates become more polarised.

And let’s face it social media has been weaponised.

Mark Zuckerberg openly admitted that Meta was unprepared for coordinated, state-sponsored Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

Covid saw a tsunami of conspiracy theories spread online that offered dangerous explanations on where the virus came from and who was to blame.

Scammers are always trying to turn a quick buck online.

And legal cases like Depp v. Heard, and Baldoni v. Lively, are rife with allegations of misinformation campaigns and character assassination designed to sway hearts and minds in the court of public opinion. 

The common solution to this that’s trotted out is increased media literacy training.

Yes, this is needed. But younger audiences don’t consume traditional media and, if my kids are anything to go by, are hardwired to mistrust all online information.

Another solution is obviously proper funding and remit for public service broadcasting. 

Related Reads

The Late Late Show should learn from SNL - or become a podcast

In this new AI-generated world, everything is kind of plagiarism and nothing is

GAA, RTÉ and dodgy boxers: Who were the winners and losers in the GAAGo deal?

Yes, RTÉ continuously gets a bad rap for being up in front of Oireachtas committees, but this will continue until the political system provides a mandate designed for the modern media age, and provides it with secure recurring funding.

Another solution is legislation.

Over here, we have things like the EU Digital Services Act, but the daddy of online legislation is section 230 of the US’ Communications Decency Act 1996. This is the law that protects online platforms from civil liability for defamatory, dangerous or illegal content posted by users. And it ain’t gonna change any time soon. 

Ultimately, modern digital age has supercharged distrust and allowed for the unmediated distribution of narratives that make people feel better about their grievances. 

Many of the root causes aren’t the media and misinformation, rather the sense that we live in an unequal society where there are have-nots and have-yachts. 

There’s certainly no quick fix for that conundrum.

But there is an easy way to avoid media hostility bias and misinformation hostility bias – one stolen from John Higgs’ 2019 book The Future Starts Here.

The book takes a look at how our notions of future progress have become distinctly less utopian in recent years.

To prove that the modern information ecosystem is rubbish, Higgs intentionally limited his research interviews to people he knew and trusted living close to him rather than elites or industry titans.

He used this approach to show how trusted local networks are well able to help us navigate an increasingly complex world. It seems we do just fine without algorithms; we can get by with a little help from our friends.

Steve Dempsey is a media and technology expert and commentator. He is also director of advocacy and communications with the Irish Cancer Society.