MEDIA LITERACY AGAINST IDEOLOGICAL BIAS – UNEXPECTED FINDINGS OF AN EXPERIMENT

Abstract

 Ideally, the media should inform the public through diverse sources. However, issues arise from the tendencies observed in how citizens are informed. For example, people regularly act as motivated reasoners, seeking information that confirms their own beliefs – that is, they are often ideologically biased. One approach to address this issue is through media literacy programs, which aim to strengthen citizens’ skills in analyzing media content, thereby increasing awareness of their own biases. However, little is known about whether these programs truly have an impact. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the effect of watching a media literacy video on ideological bias in the evaluation of a media text. To this end, an experiment was conducted in which participants were divided into groups based on whether they were exposed to media literacy content or not, and whether they read a media text about foreign workers in Croatia that was either positive or negative in tone. Based on these variables, as well as participants’ initial attitudes toward foreign workers in Croatia, we predicted the level of ideological bias in their assessment of the bias and objectivity of the media text. The study involved 216 participants, and the results unexpectedly showed that exposure to the media literacy video either had no effect on ideological bias or actually increased it.