Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don’t Watch Any News: Study
November 29, 2011 3 Comments
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Okay, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (who, as an ivory-tower egghead, would most likely be liberal because he’s educated) to figure this out. But it’s nice to see some science – oh that’s right, science is bad too – on the subject of willful ignorance. Via HuffPo:
Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don’t watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
The poll surveyed New Jersey residents about the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East, and where they get their news sources. The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that “people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government” and “6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government” compared to those who watch no news.
Overall, 53% of all respondents knew that Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak and 48% knew that Syrians have yet to overthrow their government.
Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson, explained in a statement, “Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News. Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all.”
This isn’t the first study that has found that Fox News viewers more misinformed in comparison to others. Last year, a study from the University of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe false information about politics.
via Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don’t Watch Any News: Study.
Related articles
- Study: Fox News Has The Most Ignorant Viewers (truelogic.wordpress.com)
- Poll: Fox News Viewers Less Informed Than Those Who Read No News [Fox News] (gawker.com)
- Fox News makes you DUMB: Evil conspiracy or giving thick people what they want? (dangerousminds.net)
About Jack Jamison
All this may be true but, as I mentioned in my own blog post today, I question what is accomplished by flogging regular Fox viewers with this kind of data.http://wp.me/p1MQsU-8V
Point taken (although I notice from reading your post you don’t have any solutions either.)
My gleanings from the study, and I guess I didn’t point this out, are that Fox News is doing it’s job incredibly well: Fox keeps their followers ignorant and yet afraid and angry about whatever perceived threat will activate them to do Fox’s bidding. Meanwhile all CNN can do is keep the people in the know about the Kardashians.
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