Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public during the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike

2002/10/01 by Cindy T. Christen, Prathana Kannaovakun, Albert C. L. G. Günther · 7 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Social Media and Politics #Media Studies and Communication #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Public opinion #Perception #Political science #Social psychology #Public service #Media coverage #Media bias #Control (management) #Service (business) #Psychology #News media #Public relations #Sociology #Politics #Law #Media studies #Business #Economics #Marketing

paper · doi:10.1080/10584600290109988

openalex publication_date 2002/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

This study investigated partisan perceptions of hostile bias in news coverage of the 1997 Teamsters Union strike against United Parcel Service (UPS), and the processes by which Teamster and UPS partisans formed impressions of public opinion regarding the strike. As predicted, both partisan groups perceived neutral news coverage as biased against their respective sides. However, perceptions of hostile media bias did not produce corresponding perceptions of hostile public opinion; instead, partisans appeared to rely on their personal opinions when estimating the opinions of others. Nonpartisan control-group subjects, however, did infer public opinion in part from their subjective assessments of news content. Findings suggest that level of involvement is crucial in predicting the effect that perceived media coverage of social issues will have on perceptions of public opinion regarding those issues.

Citations

• The Causes of Hostile Media Judgments
• Ten years of research on the false-consensus effect: An empirical and theoretical review.
• Public Beliefs About the Beliefs of the Public
• The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes
• The Third-Person Effect in Communication
• The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre.

Cited by

• Hostile News: Partisan Use and Perceptions of Cable News Programming
• Mapping Boundaries of the Hostile Media Effect
• A Three-Decade Retrospective on the Hostile Media Effect
• Assimilation and Contrast in a Test of the Hostile Media Effect
• Is the Media Biased Against Me? A Meta-Analysis of the Hostile Media Effect Research
• Elaboration of the Hostile Media Phenomenon
• Hostile media effect [wikipedia]