User:Yufei Z/Media bias

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Media bias

Media bias is the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of many events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed.

Practical limitations to media neutrality include the inability of journalists to report all available stories and facts, and the requirement that selected facts be linked into a coherent narrative. Government influence, including overt and covert censorship, biases the media in some countries, for example China, North Korea and Myanmar. Politics and media bias may interact with each other, the media has the ability to influence political rights and democracy, such as changing the distribution of power in society. (Note: The original article shows that states or governments can cause bias in their media, but media bias can also operate at the political level.) Market forces that result in a biased presentation include the ownership of the news source, concentration of media ownership, the subjective selection of staff, or the preferences of an intended audience.

There are a number of national and international watchdog groups that report on bias of the media.

Types

The most commonly discussed types of bias occur when the (allegedly partisan) media support or attack a particular political party, candidate, or ideology.

The meaning of media bias in a broad sense seems to fall into three categories: distortion bias is a misrepresentation of reality, content bias is an attitude with a clear bias, and the author's purpose and motivation generate decision bias. (Note: The original article classified these three categories with other forms of media bias, but according to the literature, the three categories are broad rather than detailed, and other forms of media bias can be seen as expanded elements of the three categories.)

In addition, demographic is also a common form of media bias, caused by factors such as gender, race, and social and economic status.

Social Media Bias

'''Media bias in social media is also reflected in hostile media effect. Social media has a place in disseminating news in modern society, where viewers are exposed to other people's comments while reading news articles. In their 2020 study, Gearhart and her team showed that viewers' perceptions of bias increased and perceptions of credibility decreased after seeing comments with which they held different opinions.'''

'''Media bias is also reflected in search systems in social media. Kulshrestha and her team found through research in 2018 that the top-ranked results returned by these search engines can influence users' perceptions when they conduct searches for events or people, which is particularly reflected in political bias and polarizing topics'''.

'''（Note for this section: The original article mentioned the echo chamber effect with media bias on Facebook and Twitter regarding political issues. Still, many more common bias issues could be added to this section.)'''

Time Biased Media and Space Biased media
Time Biased Media

Another type of bias in media is time biased media. The theory of Time Biased media comes from Harold Innis. Time biased media are hard to move and durable. Examples of time biased are stone, parchment, and clay. Due to the manner of being difficult to move time biased media don't encourage territorial expansion. Time biased media encourage and facilitate the development of heiarchy. They are kept for more traditional, sacred, and civilized societies. Time can be described as en entity where only the information in the environment is seen as important. Harold Innis believed that our societies today moved away from this media bias in order to allow for more democratic practices as opposed to monarch practices.

Space Biased Media

Space biased media is another type of bias that comes from Harold Innis. In contrast to time biased media, social biased media is light and portable (easy to move). An example of space biased media is paper. Space biased media allows for the expansion of empires over space, can be quickly transported, administrative, has a relatively short lifespan and allows for limitless opportunity. Harold Innis argues that space biased media has allowed society to create a more accessible world in everyday life.

Both time and space media biases demonstrate the way in which society communicate through sending information to one another. Space biased media is prevalent in today's society. These biases are crucial to understanding all the different intricacies of media bias.