Selective Exposure and Confirmation Bias

Shaw and McComb’s discuss the idea of media having an agenda, whether that be intentional or not. Just as we, as individuals and as an audience, have confirmation bias and selective perception, so does the media. Although selective exposure is more of a passive process, it shapes how journalists interpret the information they write about. It may be safer to say that journalists experience and unintentionally utilize their selective perception, while their audience uses their confirmation bias to actively search for information within the written articles. Regardless of how unbiased journalists attempt to be, it is difficult to rid oneself of bias altogether. Shaw and McComb’s found a correlation between the media’s agenda and voters’ agenda, but they couldn’t determine causation. Regardless, their findings suggest that the media and the audience are closely linked to some degree and that both have the ability to influence the other. Although the research by McCombs and Shaw is focused on political issues, it confirms that bias in media can result in bias among readers.

Timberg’s piece only confirms what McComb’s and Shaw suggested. Implementing bias into search results or more generally in media allows an audience to be much more likely to be manipulated. This is the same concept behind the 2016 election and how it is believed to have been influenced by propaganda. The idea of “fake news” is an attack on media bias, which in and of itself is a right-wing media bias. Conservatives yell “Fake news!” at leftist media. By doing so, the conservative right is displaying media bias by calling out media bias, sometimes when media bias isn’t necessarily significant. Despite the convoluted nature of the previous sentences, reinforcement theory is exemplified in current politics and more generally in all media today.