The Immensely Inflated News Audience: Assessing Bias in Self-Reported News Exposure
The Immensely Inflated News Audience: Assessing Bias in Self-Reported News Exposure
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DOI：
10.1093/poq/nfp002
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发表时间：
2009-03-01
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Prior, Markus
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Prior, Markus
许多关于媒体效应的研究将自我报道的新闻曝光作为其关键自变量，但没有建立其有效性。基于人们对自己媒体使用的报道可能与独立评估有很大不同的轶事证据，本研究系统地检验了基于调查的新闻曝光自我报道的准确性。我将调查预估与尼尔森预估进行比较，尼尔森预估不依赖于自我报告。结果显示，对新闻曝光的报道严重过度。对网络新闻曝光率的调查估计相对较好地遵循了尼尔森评级的趋势，但将曝光率平均夸大了3倍，对于某些人口统计数据，夸大了8倍。由此得出的结论是，媒体的明显影响可能不是因为曝光的差异，而是因为报道曝光的准确性存在未知的差异。
Many studies of media effects use self-reported news exposure as their key independent variable without establishing its validity. Motivated by anecdotal evidence that people's reports of their own media use can differ considerably from independent assessments, this study examines systematically the accuracy of survey-based self-reports of news exposure. I compare survey estimates to Nielsen estimates, which do not rely on self-reports. Results show severe overreporting of news exposure. Survey estimates of network news exposure follow trends in Nielsen ratings relatively well, but exaggerate exposure by a factor of 3 on average and as much as eightfold for some demographics. It follows that apparent media effects may arise not because of differences in exposure, but because of unknown differences in the accuracy of reporting exposure.