Fluent Essays

Selective Exposure to Cable News and Immigration in the U.S.: The Relationship Between FOX News, CNN, and Attitudes Toward Mexican Immigrants Homero Gil de Zúñiga, Teresa Correa, and Sebastian Valenzuela In the past 2 decades, cable television and the Internet have greatly in- creased the availability of media content. The phenomenon has reinvigorated a longstanding debate about the effects of this media landscape, as people selectively get exposed to specific content. Based on U.S. national survey data, this article advances research in this area by analyzing the interplay between individuals’ ideological predispositions, their selective exposure to cable news, and the relationship between selective exposure and their attitudes toward an issue with key policy-making implications: Mexican immigration. Results indicate conservative Republicans are more likely to watch FOX News, which is associated with negative perceptions of Mexican immigrants and higher sup- port for restrictive immigration policies. Findings also suggest that liberals who get exposed to FOX News also show less support for Mexican immigration. In the past 2 decades, cable television and the Internet have exponentially increased the choice of media content available in U.S. households. For instance, as of 2006, there were more than 560 national cable programming networks (NCTA, 2010). By 2009, nearly 55% of Americans were using the Internet every day and spending, on average, 60 hours a month online, according to data from Nielsen and the Pew Internet and American Life Project (Smith, 2010). Homero Gil de Zúñiga (Ph.D., Universidad Europea de Madrid; Ph.D. University of Wisconsin–Madison) is an assistant professor at University of Texas–Austin where he heads the Community, Journalism and Communication Research (CJCR) unit within the School of Journalism. His research focuses on all forms of new technologies and digital media and their effects on society. In particular, he investigates the influence of Internet use in people’s daily lives, as well as the effect of such use on the overall democratic process. Teresa Correa (Doctoral candidate, University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. Her research interests include new digital inclusion and media sociology. Sebastian Valenzuela (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor in the School of Communications at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research interests include political communication, public opinion, social media, and communication technologies. © 2012 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56(4), 2012, pp. 597–615 DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2012.732138 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online 597 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 598 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2012 This growing choice of content has led to a fragmentation of audiences. As a result, scholars are paying attention to media selective exposure and its potential effects on public opinion formation. Existing research has examined the impact of greater media choice on gaps in political knowledge, polarization of elections, reinforcement of extreme attitudes toward political figures, and the resurgence of a partisan, oppositional press—just to name a few areas of inquiry (Bachmann, Kaufhold, Lewis, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2010; Garrett et al., 2012; Iyengar & Hahn, 2009a; Johnson, Bichard, & Zhang, 2009; Stroud, 2007, 2008; Valentino, Banks, Hutchings, & Davis, 2009; Valenzuela, Kim, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2012). The literature, however, falls short in exploring the consequences of media choice and audience selectivity for public opinion formation on issues of great importance. For instance, how does the current media environment influence perceptions about particular social groups and people’s attitudes toward controversial issues? When citizens choose to watch a particular news channel based on ideological grounds, does it have an effect on policy preferences? If so, what kind of effects? Study of the attitudinal consequences of selective exposure is an area that lags behind other aspects of the theory. Furthermore, there is an ongoing debate on whether selective exposure can be understood as a media effect (cf., Holbert, Garrett, & Gleason, 2010; Bennett & Iyengar, 2008; Stroud, 2008). On the one hand, scholars suggest that the occurrence of selective exposure is leading to an era of ‘‘minimal effects’’ because the media would have limited power to change beliefs when people get exposed to messages that match their predispositions (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008). On the other hand, research suggests that selective exposure to certain media has polarizing and reinforcing effects (Holbert et al., 2010; Stroud, 2008). This article advances the literature by analyzing the interplay between individuals’ ideological predispositions and their selective exposure to cable news channels. Furthermore, this article advances how these predispositions and selective me- dia exposure relate to people’s attitudes toward certain social groups (Mexican immigrants). This topic may be of great value in today’s U.S. context as it has implications for immigration policy. Thus, the ultimate purpose of the study is to examine how selective exposure and ideological reinforcement are associated with the public’s attitudes toward social groups and the public’s policy choices toward these same groups. For that purpose, we conducted a survey of a national sample of U.S. residents. The survey was designed specifically to measure ideological orientations and exposure to particular media channels, as well as respondents’ views on Mexican immigrants and policy preferences toward Mexican immigration. We focused on Mexican immigration to the US for several reasons. The issue has been at the forefront of public debate in the last decade. For instance, the 2006 rallies for comprehensive immigration reform attracted millions of protesters across 102 cities (Balz & Fears, 2006; Dunaway, Branton, & Abrajano, 2010). Also, Arizona’s 2010 legislation against undocumented immigrants has captured the attention of the media, the public, and policymakers (Riccardi, 2010). In addition, immigrants of Mexican origin constitute an important share of the U.S. population. D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 Gil de Zúñiga, Correa, and Valenzuela/SELECTIVE EXPOSURE AND IMMIGRATION 599 According to the Pew Hispanic Research Center (2009), the number of Mexican immigrants living in the US has increased by 17 times since 1970, reaching a record 12.7 million in 2008, by far the largest immigrant minority in the country. Lastly, existing research on the effects of media choice and selectivity on public opinion formation has focused almost exclusively on elections, candidates, and political parties. In this context, Mexican immigration represents fertile new ground for research. Because the evidence suggests that audience selectivity is particularly evident in the cable news networks, FOX News and CNN—with conservative Republicans preferring FOX News while liberal Democrats lean toward CNN (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009; Stroud, 2007)—we investigate partisan selective exposure and its association with attitudes toward Mexican immigration by gauging exposure to these cable networks in particular. Partisan Selective Exposure on Cable Television Selective exposure is the process by which people deliberately select information channels that match their predispositions and beliefs (Stroud, 2007, 2008). Although this concept is not new and has been subject of scholarly scrutiny for decades, it has garnered renewed attention as the media environment fragments and people have more opportunities to choose their media. Developed from cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957), early research in the 1960s posited that selective exposure helped people to reduce cognitive dissonance by looking for information that agreed with their opinions and avoided messages that challenged them (e.g., Klapper, 1960). Subsequent studies, however, challenged those assumptions by arguing that human evolution could not have happened by seeking out redundant information only (McGuire, 1968). Although in the current media landscape the occurrence of selective exposure remains a contested area of research (Kinder, 2003; Zaller, 1992), scholars have argued that rather than avoiding dissonance, selective exposure is a strategy to process information in a more effective way (Smith, Fabrigar, & Norris, 2008; Stroud, 2008). The development of cable television and online platforms has led to a fragmentation of the media that compete for the creation of niche audiences and give people more media choices (Prior, 2007). Because people have a limited capacity to process mediated information (Lang, 2000), and processing attitude-consistent information requires less cognitive effort than counter-attitudinal messages (Edwards & Smith, 1996), it is more efficient to select information that matches one’s beliefs and predispositions, as convergent pieces of information also facilitate a smoother cognitive assimilation and information processing (Cho, Gil de Zúñiga, Shah, & McLeod, 2006). Selective exposure can occur in many areas, including information on child development (Adams, 1961) and general news exposure (Knobloch, Dillman Car- pentier, & Zillmann, 2003). Research has found, however, that in politics selective D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 600 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2012 exposure is more likely to occur because individuals tend to have stable political predispositions. Thus, political ideology or partisanship is an accessible shortcut to choose an information channel (Chaffee, Saphir, Grap, Sandvig, & Hahn, 2001; Iyengar & Hahn, 2009; Johnson et al., 2009; Knobloch-Westerwick & Meng, 2009; Stroud, 2007, 2008). For this reason, this study integrates socio-political ideology with selective exposure. It has been found that selective exposure is particularly salient with cable news networks and certain online sites (Jamieson & Cappella, 2009) which provide in- creasingly polarized content to match their audiences’ ideological preferences. Up to the 1980s, the news consistently offered a ‘‘point-counterpoint’’ approach to news related to notions of fairness, balance, and objectivity (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009). How- ever, as cable news and Internet sites erupted, this balanced approach faded away (Prior, 2007). The increasing competition led news organizations to create niche au- diences by catering to audiences’ predispositions (Mullainathan & Schleifer, 2005). In the cable industry, FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC describe themselves as news outlets reporting with a sense of equilibrium and fairness in their views, representing both sides of the political spectrum when covering any given story. However, studies suggest that they are not so balanced, particularly FOX News. For instance, a comparison between FOX News, Associated Press, and UPI revealed that FOX News leaned significantly toward conservative and Republican beliefs compared to the other two news organizations (Groeling & Baum, 2007). Similarly, content analyses have found that FOX News showed a pro-conservative slant compared to the other cable outlets in coverage of the Iraq War (Aday, Livingston, & Herbert, 2005) and the 2004 presidential campaign (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2004). Finally, Groseclose and Milyo’s (2005) study revealed that CNN’s program News Night leaned toward the left compared to FOX News’ Special Report. Not surprisingly, the ideological sorting of the cable networks has transferred to their audiences. Using survey data, Iyengar and Hahn (2009) found that while ‘‘conservatives and Republicans preferred to read news attributed to FOX News and to avoid news from CNN and NPR, democrats and liberals exhibited exactly the opposite syndrome’’ (p. 19). Using cross-sectional and panel survey data to generalize to the population and demonstrate causal links, Stroud (2007) found that during the 2004 presidential election conservative Republicans were more likely to read newspapers endorsing Bush, listen to conservative talk radio, and watch FOX News. On the other hand, liberal Democrats were more likely to read newspapers endorsing Kerry, listen to liberal radio, and watch CNN and MSNBC. Based on the above literature, the first hypothesis that will be tested in the study states: H1: Individuals will select cable news channels that support their political ideology. Specifically, conservative Republicans will use FOX News more often than CNN, while liberal Democrats will use CNN more often than FOX News. D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 Gil de Zúñiga, Correa, and Valenzuela/SELECTIVE EXPOSURE AND IMMIGRATION 601 Limited or Strong Media Effects? Whether growing levels of partisan selective exposure reflect a media effect has been the subject of debate among communication scholars. Recently, Bennett and Iyengar (2008) warned that ‘‘the increasing level of selective exposure based on partisan preference : : : presages a new era of minimal consequences, at least insofar as persuasive effects is concerned’’ (p. 725). In other words, people who are exposed to messages that match their own beliefs are less likely to change those beliefs and, as a consequence, the media will have limited power to change attitudes and persuade users. Holbert and colleagues (2010), however, have suggested that selective consumption of media leads to attitude strengthening and reinforcement, which are strong media effects. This line of reasoning has been supported by both cross-sectional and time-series analyses conducted by Stroud (2007, 2008, 2010), who has found that people’s political attitudes become more polarized over time after repeated exposure to politically and ideologically consistent media messages. From a normative perspective, the polarizing and reinforcing impact of selective exposure is not innocuous for the democratic process. Exposure to messages that only reinforce preexisting beliefs leads to an echo-chamber effect, in which media use triggers attitude extremity and polarization (Mutz & Martin, 2001; Stroud, 2008). Thus, this study not only seeks to examine to what extent citizens selectively get exposed to a particular cable news media outlet but also the potential effects the exposure may have on positions toward relevant policy issues, such as people’s perception on Mexican immigration. More specifically, this study attempts to build on this line of research by examining the attitudinal effects toward Mexican im- migration among both CNN and FOX News viewers, as well as the polarizing or reinforcing effects of watching these news outlets. Immigration in the U.S. Press Immigration, particularly from Latin American countries, has been one of the most salient issues in the U.S. national agenda over the past 2 decades and has become the focus of heated debate among policymakers. For example, California’s Propo- sition 187, approved by voters in 1994 but rejected by the federal courts, planned to cut off social services for undocumented immigrants and triggered an intense public discussion over the issue of immigration. According to Pew Research Center polls, in 2007 nearly 55% of Americans said that illegal immigration should be a top priority for government (Keeter, 2009). Furthermore, during the 2008 primary elections, some Republican caucuses argued immigration was more important than any other issue (Brader, Valentino, & Suhay, 2008). The issue of immigration in the US is not ethnically neutral. The largest immi- grant population comes from Latin America, and the majority of Latin American immigrants are Mexican (Pew Research Center, 2009). Of those who identify as D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 602 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2012 Mexican or Mexican-American, four out of ten were born abroad and arrived in the US in 1990 or later (Pew Research Center, 2009). Public attitudes toward immigrants are not ethnically neutral either. Experimental studies have shown that individuals’ attitudes toward immigration are more negative when the news features Latino immigrants, rather than European immigrants (Brader et al., 2008). Several factors predict people’s views on immigration. Individuals with lower education, those who are older, and females tend to have more negative attitudes toward tolerant immigration policies (Espenshade & Calhoun, 1993; Simon, 1987). A stronger and more consistent predictor is political ideology. In the US, conservative Republicans tend to have a more negative view toward immigrants and immigration (both of the documented and undocumented types) and are more opposed to open immigration policies compared to liberal Democrats (Bierbrauer & Klinger, 2002; Doherty, 2006; Huddy & Sears, 1995). From a social justice perspective, liberals are more sensitive toward the context of immigrants in need whereas conserva- tives have a higher motivation to punish norm deviance and violations and are more likely to attribute personal responsibility for their plight (Skitka & Tetlock, 1993). In order to confirm these expectations, the following hypothesis will be tested: H2: Individuals’ political ideology will be related to their views on Mexican immigration. Specifically, conservative Republicans will have more negative attitudes toward Mexican immigration than liberal Democrats. People’s views toward immigrants and immigration are fed and shaped by the media. The media consistently under represent and stereotype certain immigrant groups, particularly Muslims and Latinos (Correa, 2010). In the case of Latinos, an exhaustive content analysis conducted by the Pew Research Center found that only 2.9% of the news in the US contained references to Latinos. Studies have also found that they are depicted as a burden for society in issues related to illegality, crime, and affirmative action (Subervi, Torres, & Nontalvo, 2005). Furthermore, scholars have analyzed that the news media rhetorically associate the ‘‘flow’’ of immigrants with negative metaphors such as invaders, destructive floodwaters, and pollutants that contaminate American ‘‘purity’’ (Cisneros, 2008). Regarding Mexican immigration, a study of the U.S. network news coverage between 1971 and 2000 revealed that in the 1970s and part of 1980s immigration and border problems were depicted as a few states’ problems. Over time, Mexican immigration coverage was portrayed as part of the national agenda and became increasingly associated with violence and economic costs for the US. (Johnson, 2003). This negative image of immigration in general and Mexican immigration in par- ticular, has pervaded the news media in general, including FOX News and CNN (Cisneros, 2008). For instance, in line with its ideological inclination, a study of FOX’s Bill O’Reilly, who is considered a journalist by 40% of the American public (Annenberg Public Policy Center, 2005), concluded that he portrayed immigrants as evil ‘‘illegal aliens’’ and ‘‘foreigners’’ (Conway, Grabe, & Grieves, 2007). Therefore, D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 Gil de Zúñiga, Correa, and Valenzuela/SELECTIVE EXPOSURE AND IMMIGRATION 603 it is possible that persistent exposure to polarized channels leads viewers to think about Mexican immigration in a way that is consistent with those outlets. However, because it is not entirely clear whether FOX News portrays Mexican immigration in a more negative light than CNN, we pose the following research question: RQ1: Do individuals who watch FOX News exhibit more negative attitudes to- ward Mexican immigration than individuals who watch CNN, even after controlling for individuals’ political ideology? Furthermore, if partisan selective exposure reinforces individuals’ attitudes, par- ticularly when they hold more extreme political views, it is necessary to examine for possible polarization effects toward Mexican immigration. Hence, RQ2: Is partisan selective exposure associated with more polarized attitudes to- ward Mexican immigration? Methods Data The data used in this study are based on a U.S. national survey collected be- tween December 15, 2008, and January 5, 2009, by a research unit hosted at the University of Texas at Austin.1 To overcome the limitations of Web surveys and assure an accurate representation of the national adult population, the research unit based this particular sample on two U.S. census variables: gender and age. The procedure of matching online samples with census data to provide a more accurate representation of the population has been validated by previous research (Gil de Zúñiga & Valenzuela, 2010, 2011; Iyengar & Hahn, 2009). The survey instrument was administered using Qualtrics, a Web survey software, and was pilot-tested before actual fieldwork. After matching a 10,000 random draw to these demographic characteristics, a total of 1,432 email addresses were invalid. Of the remaining 8,568 participants, 1,159 responded on all items and 323 had missing values for some of the variables of interest in the analysis. Accordingly, based on the American Association of Public Opinion Research’s (AAPOR) RR3 calculation, the response rate was 22.8% (AAPOR, 2008, pp. 34–35).2 This relatively low response rate falls within the acceptable range for panel Web-based surveys (Sax, Gilmartin, & Bryant, 2003). Compared to U.S. Census data, our sample had more females and was slightly better educated. Nevertheless, the demographic breakdown of our sample was similar to that of surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center and other organizations that employ random digit dialing (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2009), which seems to lend support to how well our sample statistics estimate overall U.S. population parameters. D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 604 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2012 Control Variables Demographics. According to extant literature, demographic variables may have an influence on many of our variables of interest. Research shows a stable statistical relationship between people’s demographic characteristics and whether they consume more or less news (Althaus & Tewksbury, 2000; Kaufhold, Valenzuela, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2010; Reagan, 1987). Demographics also have an effect on attitudinal variables such as support for immigration (Davidov, Meuleman, Billiet, & Schmidt, 2008; Hood & Morris, 1997). In this study a set of controls was introduced to eliminate potential confounding relationships in our analyses. In addition to respondents’ gender (67% females), age (M D 45.79, SD D 11.31) and race (84% whites); education and income were also included in the models. Education was measured with a 7-point scale ranging from less than high school to doctoral degree (M D 4.11, Mdn D 2-year college degree, SD D 1.50). For income, each respondent chose 1 of 15 categories of total annual household income (M D 6.05, Mdn D $50,000 to $59,999, SD D 4.03). Socio-political Ideology. Building on previous work in the context of political communication (Allsop & Weisberg, 1988; Keum et al., 2006; Shah, McLeod, & Yoon, 2001), we have combined the notion of political affiliation or party identification with a measure of citizens’ ideological preferences on economic and social issues. The goal was to achieve a comprehensive measure that broadly captured whether respondents have a socio-political ideology. This combined ideological measure was operationalized in three different items. The first item measured their party identification using an 11-point scale ranging from strong Republican (8.7% of respondents) to strong Democrat (13.2% of respondents). The other two items registered respondents’ preferences on social and economic issues using an 11-point scale, ranging from very conservative to very liberal. Therefore this index includes all three items: 1) people’s political affiliation, 2) citizens’ ideological preference on economic issues, and 3) citizens’ ideological preference on social issues. In this way, the validity of the scale is established as it has been previously tested in the literature. It is also exhaustive as it registers different dimensions of what it means to be liberal or conservative, which is central to this study. The scale is reliable as reflected by the Cronbach’s ˛ achieved (Cronbach’s ˛ D .88, M D 18.01, SD D 8.05). News Exposure. One of the main goals in this study was to test the relationship between media exposure, specifically to cable news (FOX News/CNN), and its effects on people’s support for Mexican immigration. Therefore, the media use controls employed here were as exhaustive as possible, and included a broad variety of news uses D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 Gil de Zúñiga, Correa, and Valenzuela/SELECTIVE EXPOSURE AND IMMIGRATION 605 that also included digital media and social media sources, social network sites, citizen journalism sources, and blogs. All of which have been associated with political attitudes and behaviors (Gil de Zúñiga, 2009; Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2011). Respondents were asked to rate on a 7-point scale how often they used the following media to get information about current events and public issues: network TV news, cable TV news, local TV news, radio news, print newspapers, online newspapers, print news magazines, online news magazines, news reports generated by regular people, blogs, and social network sites. The items were reverse-coded, so that a higher number indicated more news consumption, and combined into an additive index (Cronbach’s ˛ D .73, M D 39.92, SD D 9.87). Criterion Variables Cable News Use. Once the overall use of media has been residualized, this study introduces two measurements that registered the level of exposure to FOX News and CNN. Both items were operationalized as dummy variables by asking subjects to report which cable news network they watch most often to get information about current news, issues, and events: FOX News (Yes D 28.2%, M D .36, SD D .43); CNN (Yes D 31.8%, M D .41, SD D .42). Support for Mexican Immigration. This variable attempts to capture respondents’ attitudes toward immigration. Pre- vious research has measured this concept with items that register both the degree to which immigrants may contribute to different values in one’s country (see for instance, O’Rourke & Sinnott, 2006), the implications of immigration as a process, and how the government should react to them (Espenshade & Calhoun, 1993; Fennelly & Federico, 2008). Building on this research, the index included 10 items asking on a 10-point Likert-type scale to what extent the government should promote Mexican immigration, legalize it, and increase raids and deportation sweeps (re- coded). It also tapped respondents’ agreement or disagreement levels to statements about how much Mexican immigration contributes to U.S. values, economy, cul- ture, education, security, and workforce (Cronbach’s ˛ D .92, M D 43.8, SD D 22.3). Statistical Analysis In order to test the proposed hypotheses and research questions, examining the role of watching FOX News and CNN, we employed zero order Pearson’s corre- lations as well as hierarchical regression analyses. In the regressions, the variables were entered causally in separate blocks; with the demographic variables included first (age, gender, etc) and socio-political orientations and media use added as a D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f T ex as a t A us tin ] a t 1 0: 49 1 3 D ec em be r 2 01 2 606 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2012 second block. The third block consisted of cable news use (FOX News and CNN) as the independent variables of interest. All the analyses were conducted using SPSS 17.0. Results The first …