Abstract
Many studies of media effects use self-reported news expo- sure as their key independent variable without establishing its validity. Motivated by anecdotal evidence that people's reports of their own me- dia 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 ex- posure, but because of unknown differences in the accuracy of reporting exposure.
Keywords
PsychologyNews mediaSocial psychologyPolitical scienceAdvertisingBusiness
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Publication Info
- Year
- 2009
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 73
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 130-143
- Citations
- 542
- Access
- Closed
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Cite This
Markus Prior
(2009).
The Immensely Inflated News Audience: Assessing Bias in Self-Reported News Exposure.
Public Opinion Quarterly
, 73
(1)
, 130-143.
https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfp002
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1093/poq/nfp002