Exemplification and the HME, 1
Exemplification of Public Opinion and Hostile Media Judgments: The Effect of
Supportive and Unsupportive Quotes on Perceptions of New Story Bias and Influence
Abstract
Studies of the hostile media effect have found that those who are highly involved
with controversial issues or groups in the news tend to perceive news stories about those
issue or groups as biased, even though other uninvolved individuals would label such
stories as balanced or neutral. The current study used an experimental design to test
exemplification of public opinion as a theoretical explanation for the hostile media effect.
Exemplification of public opinion (as manipulated by the ratio of supportive to
unsupportive quotes in the article) was found to affect article bias perceptions among all
participants, but especially among members of a partisan group. Perceptions of media
bias mediated the relationship between exemplification of public opinion and perceptions
of how influential the story would be in changing others’ opinions about the partisan
group.