Conspiracy Theory Endorsement by Media Viewership
Sixth report in the Paranormal & Conspiratorial Ideation Study (PCIS)
Sixth report in the Paranormal & Conspiratorial Ideation Study (PCIS)
Cable news media in the United States has been playing to partisan audiences since at least the 1990s (Hollander, 2008). If conspiratorial thinking is sometimes partisan — as it seems to be given our prior reports on this topic — it is worth investigating whether cable news media viewership is itself associated with conspiracy belief. To do so, we divided our sample into those who reported watching CNN only (a politically left-skewed cable news channel) and those who reported watching Fox News only (a politically right-skewed cable news channel) and then asked the question: “Does cable news viewership impact conspiracy belief?”
Comment