The long-term cultivation of sociotropic beliefs: How selective media use shape citizens' deeply held worldviews

Project team: Associate professor Adam Shehata (project leader, JMG/CARe), professor Monika Djerf-Pierre (JMG/CARe), professor Bengt Johansson (JMG).

Supported by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), 2017-2021.
 

Dramatic changes in the media environment have fundamentally altered how citizens can learn about society, current affairs and politics. With an explosion of media available, people can increasingly base their media use on personal interests and motivations. Some have forcefully argued that this creates a new media environment of “echo chambers”, “gated communities” or “filter bubbles”, where citizens’ selective media use reinforces their already held beliefs and worldviews rather than challenging them. In the most extreme case, people are said to live in parallel media worlds where they cultivate radically different perceptions of society. While such a development would signify a substantial shift in public opinion formation, we know surprisingly little about this phenomenon. Therefore, the purpose of the research project is to analyze whether citizens who get their news from different media sources adopt and cultivate different beliefs about society (sociotropic beliefs). By combining a four-year panel survey with a longitudinal media content analysis, the project studies the long-term effects of news media use on citizens’ beliefs concerning four societal issues: antibiotic resistance, climate change, integration of immigrants and unemployment. By its unique focus on long-term media effects, this study will not only comprehensively analyze the echo chamber phenomenon - but also revitalize research on one of the classic theories of media effects: cultivation theory.