Theme 3: Research and theory

I read the paper “Undermining the Corrective Effects of Media-Based Political Fact Checking? The Role of Contextual Cues and Naïve Theory” It is written by R. Kelly Garrett, Erik C. Nisbet, & Emily K. Lynch.

The authors address the problem that political misperceptions are common and they are also resilient. It does not take a lot for misperceptions to occur, and even beliefs that are weakly grounded tend to persevere. Not only is the written fact important, contextual information such as photos or biographical profiles are of importance when conveying a message. The image processing is fast and unreflective and can have a strong influence on impressions.

Another aspect when receiving information is the opinion that the recipient had from before. ”The more objectionable the recipient finds the ideas activated by the contextual content, the stronger his or her resistance to the correction.”

Since people usually do not have time to thoroughly watch the news and search for facts they constantly monitoring the information environment for patterns, and developing their own ”naive theories”. Naive theories are generally form by top-of-the-head considerations.

This paper ” […] extends research on debiasing and the continued influence of misinformation into the domain of political fact checking, examining how the content of a fact-checking message can influence recipients’ willingness to accept the correction”. The authors decide to examen the debate about building of a mosque near the site of the 9/11 attack. More precisely, they chose an Imam, Abdul Rauf, who was known for a widespread believes that he refused to condemn terrorism. He actually had express that the terrorist attack, though unjustifiable, had been partly motivated by the harmful U.S. policies in the Middle East. The participants in the study were presented with different facts about the Imam, both true and false. Different pictures were also presented to the participants, showing the Imam dressed in a suit and also showing the Imam dressed in traditional Muslim clothes. The participants answered questions about their perception about the Imam based the information given to them.

I do find this paper very interesting and it also addresses some important problems. One thing that I would like to question is the subject that the authors choose to use in their study. They choose to use a subject that the majority, not to say everybody, in the State has an opinion about, namely the site of 9/11, the mosque and Muslims. Reading the text I do wonder how this might affect the result of the study. It could be a benefit choosing a subject that are widely know, but it might cause a drawback as well. The drawback being that people already are familiar with the subject and have a strong opinion about it. Not anywhere in the paper I could find the authors discussing this or how this might have affected the study that they conducted.

Briefly explain to a first year student what theory is, and what theory is not.

With theory, we try to construct an explanation to what happens around us. It is a mental tool that we use to try to connect experiences and predictions. It is based on the questions how and why and with theory we also try to answer this questions. Theory may be used in more complex contexts, like science, but also in an everyday environment.

What theory is not might be an easier question to answer. It is not a collection of data, references, variables, diagrams and hypotheses. But these five variables can be used as a support for a theory.

Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?

 The major theory that the authors present is that people are influenced by the way that information is presented to them. They also have a theory that once you have a perception about a subject, it might be difficult to change this, even thou different kind of facts are presented to you. The paper had well formulated theories how were tested. The authors carefully examined their assumptions and sought support in earlier studies. Therefore I would say that they theory type is Explanation and prediction (EP).

Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

The benefit of the theory type that is used is that it provides a solid foundation. Not only do they discuss the different theories but they also make predictions and they test it to prove if they are right or wrong. A limitation is that when you have an idea or theory how things work it might be hard to change the perception that you already have. This is one of the problems the authors are addressed it the text.