The Danger of the "News Finds Me" Mentality

Leah Dajches: We've all been there. We're sitting in the waiting room of the dentist office or at the bus stop we're relying in bed scrolling on our phones when we should be sleeping, and our smartphone shows us something. We're consuming news, or at least we think we are. For many of us, social media has become almost synonymous with fake news and misinformation. We understand that much of the content we see has been selected by an algorithm to appeal to us, and yet we can't look away. Constant bombardment and easy access to headlines, video clips, and sound bites help create the feeling that we are well informed about the goings on of our world. But are we? As I'm sure you've guessed, we're going to investigate that answer in today's discussion by exploring what's become known as the news finds me mentality. We'll explore what this phenomenon is, how it impacts civic engagement, and why it might be leaving us less informed than we realize.

Matt Jordan: To help us break this concept down, we're going to talk with Homero Gil de Zúñiga. Homero is a professor of journalism and media studies at Penn State's Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. He's also a distinguished research professor in political science at the University of Salamanca, where he directs the Democracy Research Unit, and a senior research fellow at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. Homero's work focuses on how social media, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and other technologies affect society. He's published several books in more than 170 articles, and has presented on those topics for different professional organizations and universities around the globe. Homero has been identified as one of the most prolific scholars in political communications on social media. And these days, he's working on what the news finds me mentality means for society and democracy. Homero, welcome to News Over Noise.

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Thank you.

Matt Jordan: So, it's great to have you here talking with us about this. This is something we've been interested in, given the dominance of smartphones as a way that people interact with the news. So just briefly, what is the news finds me mentality?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: So, the news finds me perception, or the news finds me belief or mentality appears when we have the influence of our social media environment and that perception that we are surrounded constantly by news and information, that they live with us as we use technology, particularly social media, all the time. We start developing this perception that we are being well informed by not actively engaging with the news anymore. Since news are with us and around us all the time, we start perceiving that we are well informed and that we're receiving the important news about public affairs and current events in a daily basis, practically constantly. So, that develops this idea of a news finds me perception, is the belief that we are receiving the news that we need to receive to be well informed and part of the uninformed public opinion. And it emerges from this perception that the news are with us all the time, but we are not actively engaging with the news as we used to, and therefore we develop the perception that the news finds me.

Matt Jordan: So, meaning that just if people are on Facebook or even on various apps that their phone, it might be feeding them things, right? It's feeding them things. That is what you mean by active and searching or perception, that you're just... Stuff is coming at you, and because it's coming at you, you must be informed.

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Exactly. So, if you compare to the more traditional days or the old days where we were subscribed to a newspaper and the newspaper will get delivered to our house, or we were in the evening relaxing and watching the news at dinner or something like that, we were more active in the way we were consuming news. All a sudden, first with the internet, and more specifically with social media, we rely more on these algorithms, either socially driven algorithms or individually curated algorithms, to generate information for us. And we start believing or feeling that we were well-informed, just as the old days when we were consuming news more actively. And that's the problem because we are not doing that, but we feel we are doing that. And if you start developing the perception, you will start feeling that you're well informed as you used to be, but the reality is well different.

Matt Jordan: So, explain to me a little bit how algorithms work in this sense. When you said a socially curated versus an individually curated algorithm, what is an algorithm? We use that word a lot. What does it mean?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: So basically, just to break it down, when we are using social media, the information, and not only information, any content that gets presented to us is based on mathematical solutions that an algorithm will present information to us. So, there are two clear ways or paths to generating information or content in social media. One is, let's say that I use Twitter and I personally curate the information I want to or the content that I want to get exposed to. If I'm into news and I start just following on Twitter journalist and mainstream media, professional, factual, mainstream media, I will get information most of the times, but that's not the case. We start following friends, we start following my team. So ultimately, our personally curation, that's the individually driven algorithm, the personal curation may not be geared towards hardcore news. So, that will be problematic because the algorithm is going to learn from our preferences and is going to present information to us that aligns with our preferences.

So, it might move us away from more informational content. The socially driven algorithm, on the other hand, may present you with information that is based on what your social networks tend to like or tend to watch or tend to click or tend to share or comment. But once again, we know that not everybody is very active in commenting on certain news all the time. We receive all other kinds of information and content entertainment. So once again, it might be the case that social media is presenting us with a very diverse [inaudible 00:06:25] of content. Some information might be there. And that's precisely the problem, that we feel that whatever tiny bits of information that we're receiving are fair enough game for me to inform in my daily basis. And then this turns out to be not the case. So, people who develop the perception that the news finds them, ultimately over time, they will be less knowledgeable about politics. Because if you don't develop that perception, you will tend to seek information more actively, and so on and so forth, and ultimately, you will continue to be politically sophisticated in terms of knowledge.

Leah Dajches: So, something that we've talked about in previous episodes is this idea of news avoidance. And so I'm thinking about, for myself personally, as our listeners know, I've confessed that I'm someone who I avoid certain topics of news. And so I'm wondering if we fall into this news finds me mentality, is it inherently a bad thing? It sounds like it can lead to some negative outcomes for us as consumers.

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: So, the short answer is yes, absolutely. So far, most of the studies, practically every single study that we've made analyzing and exploring the effects NFM turn to be negative or deleterious effects in the news ecosystem and the public informed society. So, one of the strengths of these effects is, as you suggested, news avoidance, because precisely what happens is that I'm so reliant or I become so reliant on my social media to inform me that the high NFM people, in time, they start engaging less with the news. The first studies that we conducted, we showed how NFM people started to consume less news in TV or in radio or in print media and they will only consume more news in the social media environment. Now, this will... In other studies, we also check the idea that for those who develop the perception, whether or not they will become more news avoiders, in a sense that since they don't feel the need to be active seekers. So, that would predict, in time maybe, that they start actively avoiding news.

Why would I consume news if I think that the news are going to get me anyway when things break? And if they're important, they will reach me through my peers and networks. So, all of a sudden, I can avoid news and be content and be happy about my decision. So, it is not only that NFM may have negative effects. Ultimately, it's even worse because these people may start thinking that there's nothing wrong going on with them. It's kind of like if I'm sick and I got diabetes and I know it, maybe I take action and I try to correct my diet. But if I got diabetes by eating whatever it is that I like to eat and I believe that I'm doing the right thing to my body, it's even worse. So, this is exactly precisely what happens with NFM. I start consuming less news, I become less knowledgeable, and I start more actively avoiding contact to news or becoming news avoidance kind of person, because I don't need them anymore. The news will get me.

Matt Jordan: So, if you're thinking that the news is going to get you, what kind of... Work us through what that belief system would, because it sounds like what we're talking about is that people trust their social networks to curate. They trust the... So, how does that work that they... Are they trusting the machine, are they trusting their people, or is it a combination of both?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: So, this is a very interesting question to ask because we are precisely at that point in terms of research. So, to... And perhaps we can break this down for the audience if I become to scientisty with this one. So, to measure this phenomenon, there are three dimensions, right? The first dimension is the not active or not becoming an active seeker of news. I don't need to be active seeking news as when news break. And if they're important, they will reach me in social media. The second dimension it's the reliance on peers, which is what you describe. I rely on either my curated network or my friends or my social media contacts to provide me with important information as news break. That's the measurement of this. And the third dimension, and to me, the most important, is the perception that believe that I can be well informed about public affairs by doing this.

So, those are the three original dimensions of the construct. But as we learn more and more about all these effects and how the news finds me perception works, we are thinking theoretically, and we propose that in a very recent paper that we published, that there should be a fourth dimension. And similarly to the dimension that captures the over reliance on peers to get me news and to push news my way in social media when things happen and if they're important, we also believe that news finds me perception people, NFM people will also overly on algorithms to inform them. So, a similar way of measuring this, our proposition, which we haven't empirically tested yet, it's only theoretical paper, is to say, algorithms will present me with important information as things break. That's the role of algorithms, and they will do a good job doing this. So, once again, similarly to my reliance on peers, I rely on algorithms on social media to inform me about things when they break and when they're important.

Matt Jordan: It's interesting. And one of the things that we talked about when we talked about news avoidance is a kind of distrust of media, right? The traditional curators of what is important for us to know as a democracy, people have come to distrust them for a variety of reasons. We think they're cynical, we think they're biased, et cetera. But what you're describing is that seems like they have more trust in a machine than they do in human beings. How do you understand that? What part of the mentality would explain that?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: So, there are theories that have been published before in the past decade that would indicate this might actually happen. One of the theories that is important is a theory published by Professor Sundar, also at Penn State University, in which he talks about machine heuristics. And it's this idea that individuals, we make these quick recognition that the machines will do a better job than humans. So, I trust the machine to provide with more balanced information, or the machine will not ingrain or embed any type of biases as a human do. So, the machine heuristics is this idea that ultimately machines will do a better job than humans are doing any given task. So based on that theory, I will tend to propose that NFM will tend to happen similarly, and it is clear to me that NFM and missing heuristics to some extent are going to be correlated or associated. And going back to your initial question, it also... Not by me, but other group of researchers, Samuel Lee and Barbara [inaudible 00:13:27] in the study published last year, they also saw how NFM, by means of lower political interests makes people more vulnerable and exposed to fake news information.

And part of our initial research indicated that over time just as NFM people will learn less about politics, they will also lower their political interest, and that makes sense too, if you think about it theoretically, "Why would I be interested in politics and keep my guard up when news are going to get me either way, so I don't have to be defensive in that way? I don't have to be up to speed with being interested in politics, because it's not part of my duty anymore, the news will find me eventually." So they tested this effect as I indicated, through the decrease of political interest, people were more vulnerable and exposed to fake news.

Matt Jordan: If it's important, the machine's going to give it to me.

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Probably part of that, yes, that's part of this mental mechanic and cognitive process, yes, of course. One part will be, "My friends are going to send me this. Information, when it's important, it's going to reach me anyway. The machine does a great job and it's going to give me that stuff when I need it." So that's why we are proposing a new dimension of the reliance on algorithms, because the algorithms know what they're doing, and they know when information is important, and they will feed me that information as it happens.

Matt Jordan: I'm thinking of, every year after Thanksgiving, after I eat too much turkey and whatnot, that there are a bunch of ads that come up on television that show me if I get a machine that uses electrical stimuli and shocks my stomach, that I'll lose weight. I'm lazy, so these appeal to me. I mean, is it something like that, that we're kind of lazy, so we think that the machine is... "Hey, it's doing the work for me, there's no reason I need to do that work." Is that kind of what it is?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: I actually think that that might be a very good analogy, because we know that perhaps being active in life, and exercising, and perhaps also using those electro, I don't know, stimulating mechanisms might also contribute. So I'm sure that when some cure practice are using them, it means that there might be some science... It is not my field of expertise, but those things might help you. If you're active and you use those things, it might contribute to be healthier, but if you just use the electro socks or whatever those things are, that's not going to get rid of your problem of being lazy and staying in the sofa.

So similarly, when we talk about social media, social media is not inherently bad, as I said, if you actively curate your algorithms and use social media very purposely and efficient to receive information, you'll very likely do a good job, and social media will be an important tool to provide you good information. The problem is that we don't tend to do that. I think when people finish Thanksgiving dinner, there will be a very few percentage of people who will go running afterwards, the tendencies that we sit in the sofa, similarly with social media, the tendencies is that I'm not curating social media to do a great job with news, it's just doing the other things.

Leah Dajches: And for our listeners out there, when we hear the term NFM, we're referring to the News Finds Me mentality, that's kind of our shorthand here. But Homero, when you're talking about social media, and algorithms, my mind is immediately kind of going to a younger audience, is News Finds Me... Is this mentality something we see most commonly among a certain demographic, a younger demographic? Or can anybody fall into this mentality?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: So the first studies that we conducted revolving NFM, we found an association in which younger people will tend to more rapidly, and to a larger proportion to develop NFM as opposed to older counterparts. We saw this also in follow up studies across different societies. So we observed this happening, not only in The U.S., but also in over 10 societies across the world. But the most recent studies, the most recent data collections, we're seeing that this gap is closing, and explanation, you might think, "Oh, this is good, because finally there might not be a distance between younger generations and older people, like we're always find with [inaudible 00:17:56]. So finally, we are closing that gap, this might be good news."

But observing the data, in reality, this might actually be something bad, because what is happening is that practically everybody's developing the NFM perception. So the first time that we measured this, one third of the population in The U.S. we're developing NFM, these days it's almost double. And in some countries, in Spain for instance, we found over 80% of the population to some extent has developed the NFM perception. So yes, if practically everybody's developing the NFM perception, there are no gaps between young people and old people, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this is good news, it's just that practically everybody's developing the perception.

Leah Dajches: What do you think is contributing to this increase in this mentality?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: I think the main factor here is the pervasiveness of social media use. The more people are getting familiarized with social media platforms and social media apps, the more they're going to develop the perception. Now that you know about the perception, you might try to combat it, you might try to understand how you actively engage in social media, but we know for a fact that the more you use social media, social media use, particularly for news, it's a very robust predictor of NFM, and that happens to everybody, because we control... In our model studies, we took into account the possible or potential effect of being educated, or having higher income, or things like that. This happens to everybody.

Once you isolate the effect of other variables, such as these demographic variables that I just mentioned, what tends to happen is that if you use social media, the more you use social media and for news, the more you're going to develop NFM, the more you're going to develop the perception. So my take is, why is this becoming more pervasive across societies in the world? Because we are integrating social media into our daily habits, and the more we do so, the more people will develop the perception.

Matt Jordan: Just a reminder, this is News Over Noise. I'm Matt Jordan.

Leah Dajches: And I'm Leah Dajches.

Matt Jordan: We're talking with Homero Gil de Zúñiga, a professor of journalism and media studies at Penn State's Donald Bellisario College of Communications about the News Finds Me mentality, and what it means for democracy.

So one of the concepts that I think is interesting with this is the background nature of news then, there's an assumption that we're on social media, there's news going on all around us, if it's really important, it's going to bubble up through the rest of my feed. It's kind of like wallpaper, or ambient noise that is there. So this concept of ambient journalism that you I've read in relation to News Finds Me, can you explain what that is?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Yeah, actually I didn't coin that one, that was coined in the early 2000s by a colleague of us, Alfred [inaudible 00:20:56], who is a professor in Canada, and him talking his work is the first time I came across this idea of ambience journalism. And it's this notion that the news are out there surrounding us all the time, whereas before internet era, or social media era, the news were a niche in our daily lives when we actively consume newspaper or radio when we were driving to our work, or on TV when we were watching the news. All a sudden he described this as ambience journalism, not necessarily of something wrong. In his work, if you read it, is the idea that that journalism has become more liquid, and that it is everywhere at this time. And actually in his work, he didn't have a negative aspect of the ambience journalism.

And we took that idea of being involved in this cloud of news environment and social media to specifically trail the paths or connect the dots between why being in social media would generate a perception that the News Finds Me, and clearly it's because we think based partly on this journalist ambiance that news are with us all the time. If you think about it, in the old days, or more traditionally, we devote a certain amount of time to news, and probably what is happening is that because of my amount of time that I devote in social media, I have the perception that the news are there with me, I fulfill my time slot, my duty of news is done here. And that we know you ultimately pay the price, because you don't end up learning as much as you should about current events.

Matt Jordan: So if it's going on, we assume that it's going on in my social media feed, so if I'm checking in on social media, I'm effectively checking in on news, is that kind of what...

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Or at least you perceive that is what is happening. You go online, and you get everything at once. Let's say that you're having your breakfast, and you opened your cell phone, and your social media platform of choice, and there will be some news in there, but coupled with other things, a picture of a cat, your good friend, pictures of the last game last night. It's a mixed cloud of information and entertainment, but the thing is, although you'll be presented with news, you might not devote the time, effort to click on them and read them as when you were being active. But on the other hand, you do have the perception that you did your job with the news., And that's where the problem starts mounting up, because, "I did my job, the news, when they're important get me." And ultimately we know that you're not doing your job, and that you're not fulfilling your needs, your orientation needs of being informed about public affairs.

Matt Jordan: So it's that the news is kind of chopped up too, so you're only reading headlines, or somebody said, "Oh, can you believe this happened?" But you're not really getting the context of things, you're not really getting what you would need as a citizen to be informed?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: I think that's part of the problem, I'll talk about something which is not tangential to this, but it's a different phenomenon, which is incidental exposure to information. So we also measure this idea that people are doing something else, you're in social media and you're doing something else, and all of a sudden you get exposed to a piece of news, and you read it, or you click it and you watch it, so that is being coined as incidental, or inadvertent exposure to information, incidental news exposure. So in the literature, we found confounding effects with incidental exposure. Some people learn about politics, some other people didn't learn anything, some people we couldn't experimentally demonstrate any effects whatsoever, so null effects, neither positive or negative. So in the latest study that we published last year, we saw that the direct path of incidental exposure to knowledge in our dataset as we tested it was negative, meaning people who were inadvertently exposed to news, they would learn less about politics.

However, in the instances that that incidental exposure led to two things, one is what we call thorough information engagement, which is exactly and precisely what you were describing, the idea that I click, not only the headlines, I read the whole thing, or I watch the entire video, or I listen to the entire clip. When people are doing that, people who are inadvertently exposed to news through thorough engagement, they will learn about politics. Similarly, when people get incidentally exposed to news and they reflect on those news at a later time, which in the literature is called cognitive elaboration, basically the idea that I would individually reflect on those news that I've been exposed to, what they mean to me, to my environment, to my family, to my life. So when people do that, and they put in perspective all that information that they were incidentally exposed to, they also learn more about politics. In the paper, we call this the paradox of incidental exposure to news, direct effects, negative, but when people are engaging with the news and when people are reflecting about the news, they encounter positive effects on knowledge.

Leah Dajches: Something that we've kind of touched on a little bit, we've heard you mention active news consumption, and I'm wondering how active versus passive consumption impacts how we process information. When I'm thinking of myself, it feels like if I sit down with the intention of really focusing on a book or an article, my mindset is different. It feels different. My engagement will be stronger than if I'm picking up my phone and I'm just randomly scrolling through TikTok.

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: That's absolutely right. That's exactly what happens. That's precisely why we advocating for an active consumption of information, because when you click, when you purposely choose to engage with news and you read them, all these things are going to happen. You're going to think more about it, you're going to reflect more about it, you're going to engage with the news more in depth versus when you're just surrounded by news and the news can be...

Once again, remember, you get the perception, but the news might not even get in at you. So for instance, yesterday the Prime Minister of United Kingdom resigned. I haven't seen that in my social media this morning. I read about it in the New York Times when I woke up, but it's because I know that I can't just solidly rely on social media. Yes, I saw a lot of comparisons between the prime minister and the lettuce and who was going to last longer, but the real nitty gritty information, I had to read the New York Times article for me to be informed about it and what were the importance surrounding this. Why this prime minister will resign? Why he did it? So once again, once you're active, definitely beneficial effects. If you're just relying or expecting that the news will get you, that's not going to take you far.

Leah Dajches: In your best advice, Homaro, how can we make people aware of this mentality, or help to signal to people that they've fallen into this "news finds me" mentality?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Yeah, that's the million dollar question, right? So we are now embarking in that area. Recently, we are running two different experiments and also we are in the midst of collecting national survey research as well, to test potential ways to combat this NFM perception effects, right? Because so far, we were interested in establishing the effects and learning about the phenomenon. Now we have... And not only my team, I think several researchers across the US and abroad, also in Europe, they have investigated lots of pernicious effects revolving NFM. So for instance, in UK, researchers, excuse me, researchers from Oxford and Loughborough University, Andrew Chatugan and Christine Bukari, they saw how the NFM related also with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. So it's something that I didn't think theoretically makes total sense and they empirically tested with data in United Kingdom. So as I said, there are many groups of people across the world now talking and researching upon the effects of NFM.

In my mind, I think it's been, in so far, quite well established that the NFM has negative effects on society for the most part. But what we don't know is what kind of things we can do to combat this. One of them, clearly as it happens with many of these is revolving social media. For instance, misinformation or fake news. One big deal will be news literacy. The idea that people learn about how to deal with information, particularly in this dynamic social media context.

The other one is in one of the experimental conditions that we are running as we speak, the experiment is taking place, is to introduce in like they do in the literature of health communication, implement certain inoculations or interventions. So for instance, first we will gather subjects who are high NFM, and then we'll create two different groups. One group of high NFM who will be exposed to let's say a piece of information and we will register how many things were they able to recall. And we equate the recalling with knowledge. Are they learning? Are they grasping concepts and facts from the news they get exposed to?

And the other group of high NFM, what we will do, we will expose them to the exact same piece of news. But before, we will apply an intervention, just like they do in health communication scholarship. We will explain what the NFM is and we will say, "You previously, in the questionnaire that you fulfilled last week, you were identified as a high NFM person. These are the effects that high NFM people have been observed to have based on literature, based on scientific research." And then expose them to the news in the hopes to see whether or not this type of inoculation treatment or intervention would have an effect. We're hoping yes, because if it happens, we will have some empirical evidence to indicate that this thing can be combat to some extent. But as I said, we are in the means of running the experiment. We don't know yet about the potential findings, what we're going to get.

Matt Jordan: So we're talking about habits of mind here when we're talking about dispositions or mentalities. And in a way, what you're saying too is that people kind of get into these habits of mind and that the algorithms reinforce these through feedback loops. So basically your algorithm's going to reproduce what you like to do. If I don't like the news very much, then the algorithm's going to not give me very much news. If I like the news a little bit more... So I mean the upside of that is that if you start to read more news, the algorithm will feed you more news. But that feedback loop also kind of makes me want to talk a little bit about filter bubbles and being in information bubbles, which we know has been a high predictor of polarization and people feeling like they're part of a tribe. How does news-find-me also relate to these kind of filter bubbles or news bubbles that people are in?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: So one of the well established findings that we know about social media counterintuitively or what a person might think, social media tends to present us with diverse information. So at large, social media will, for the most part, present individuals with diverse information. Now, this doesn't mean that echo chambers or filter bubbles are not created, particularly when individuals pre positively create the personally driven algorithm to do that. So let's say that I'm very stream on my political or ideological views and I train, with my consumption, I train the algorithm to present me with that kind of information. And this has been well established in YouTube or social media. If I click circulate, follow, and block, I block the kind of things that I don't like and I do follow, click, read, command on information that aligns with my political ideology, I'm going to start possibly generating this filter bubble.

So in a recent study that we just published last month in Journal of Communication, we tested the idea that to what extent news-finds-me may be connected to a purposeful homophilic bubble that is creating context in social media by which individuals are purposefully presented with information that aligns with their political views and with discussions that align with their views. They don't want to discuss with anybody who disagrees. They don't want to consume any information that deviates from their political ideology. So we created this variable, which we call the homophilic filter bubble. And we saw that, unfortunately, news-finds-me is a strong predictor of homophilic behavior. So what happens, once again, once I start relying on my networks or my own creation of things, since we are not active and we are not being on our toes trying to diversify and make sure that I'm reading all the news, I'm doing my dutiful job of being informed from a diverse basket of information, ultimately what's going to happen is my perception is going to contribute to generate this homophilic filter bubbles.

And we do know that although filter bubbles is not the most common thing to happen in social media, it happens. And for those who have it, it is very meaningful because it's a strong precursor of polarization, [inaudible 00:34:56], stubbornness, obstinate partisanship, things that we do know are very pernicious and deleterious for a healthy democracy.

So in that finding from the last Journal of Communication article, we were able to show empirically that over time, because it was panel data, people who develop the news-finds-me perception will develop this homophilic networks. And social media news consumption will not directly lead you to that. So however, social media news will lead you to generate the news-finds-me perception. So that's why it's important for us to individuals to do not overly rely on this idea that the news will find me eventually.

Matt Jordan: So if I'm in an echo chamber, only talking to people who think like me is, does the social group then reinforce that? So say people are talking about current events, which they often do, and that becomes my way of understanding what's going on in the world is how people who think like me do it. Does that kind of steer this as well? So you don't even get out to different types of content providers or news providers? It mostly stays in the kind of reinforcing somebody, my friend Joe says, "Yeah, that sounds right." And "Oh, this doesn't sound right." And so is that what keeps people in those bubbles?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Yeah, well exactly. What really keeps people in these kind of bubbles is, once again, and you mentioned this is the idea of we are lazy by nature. And when it comes to information, there's another theory which is called cognitive dissonance. So we are programmed, if you may, to seek information that is not going to be dissonant, that is going to create any cognitive unpleasant feeling. And when you're exposed to information that disagrees with your views, it touches this dissonance, you need to make an active effort to say, "Well, maybe there's something for me to learn here. Maybe when I'm thinking that my political party was doing great with unemployment rates, they're going to give me hardcore facts that unemployment rates are not going that well. And I had a misperception, but this news is unpleasant to me." So individuals, we have a tendency to seek for information that is [inaudible 00:37:24]. We dislike cognitive dissonance.

So the explanation of filter bubbles, the root comes from that end. The idea that the tendency's easier for us to get exposed to information that aligns with our views and discussions that align with our views. And the problem with that is that we get into this circle of, "Well, I was thinking my political party was doing great, but if I'm exposed to all these things, I'm actually thinking that my political party is doing super great. And the other guys, they don't have a clue." So ultimately these filter bubbles or echo chambers, they're not going to persuade me to change my opinion on something, but they're going to persuade me to become more extreme on my own views. And that's also political persuasion. Probably a much more harmful way of persuasion, but still persuasion.

Leah Dajches: So I'm thinking back, Homaro, our first episode is on news avoidance and in particular how people are choosing to avoid the news because it, in a way, it benefits their mental health. They're avoiding the noise surrounding the news, it's too much. It's making people anxious, depressed, things like that. And when we're talking about this news-finds-me mentality, could having that mentality end up being good for our mental health in the sense of my algorithm is trying to curate content for me that I like, that I enjoy, or it thinks I enjoy reading and kind of keeping me away from things maybe that I don't want to be reading. So could there be a slight silver lining in any way?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Right. No, I think you're totally right. So they are two different things. Something that it might be better for society, or for me, or for democracy, doesn't have to necessarily mean that it's better for my wellbeing, or my mental health. In fact, as I said, being exposed to information that is gonna be unpleasant to me. Nobody wants to do unpleasant things. It's like going to the dentist. I haven't heard anybody saying, "Oh great, today I'm going to the dentist. I was waiting for this two and a half months to happen." So this is very similar.

And there's research that indicates this. You can read theories that would indicate those who are, or have hard tendencies to be nationalists, or highly authoritarian, they tend to report higher levels of wellbeing in time. So yeah, I might feel better, but that doesn't mean that it's better for society.

Matt Jordan: Society is obviously crucial for news. The whole reason we think news is good, it's just because it allows us to work better in society. And when I teach about these things, often I talk about democratic disposition as being one that usually listens to other people better, engages with other types of people that don't listen too. Because the belief is that if we can draw in more perspectives in a democracy, the better off we are solving problems. That we need to draw from all types of experience.

So how do you think that this cultivation of a kind of mindset that gets used to being comfortable gets used to sitting on the couch, relying on the machine to give you what's relevant? How does that impact people once they leave the house? Does it make them less socially engaged? Does it mean that they're not gonna seek out people? I mean, does it start to make democracy not work very well?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Yeah, that's an interesting take. I don't know if we can associate that to NFM per se, but maybe to all the things that happen in social media, the discomfort. Yeah, there's definitely something there to be investigated.

What we do know from the research in the '70s and so on, so forth is, and you touched this. For democracy to work we should be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others who might actually think different to me. And that might not be pleasant. So it was a clear way of understanding politics in the '70s and the '80s and it happened. Individuals were willing to pay that price as politicians were willing to compromise and discuss the classic across the alley that we hear all the time in Congress, in Senate. And nobody seems to be willing anymore to cross the aisle and listen to others and coming to terms and into agreements.

But in the '70s and theories, those theories were quite important in political science. So for instance, one of the most important motivations for people to participate in politics and generate a better democracy were called Ration and Motivations to Participate and precisely touched the notion that you described. The idea that I am willing to compromise. I take an effort to try to understand the other side when we discuss politics. That is really important. So it might be the case that because we are becoming too pleased and too used to the idea of not delving into those efforts of hearing the other side, as Diana Mats put it in her book, it might happen that we lose some sort of literacy of discussion or socialization into politics and it might be problematic, but I don't have data on that.

Matt Jordan: Well, we don't need you to have data on it. So it sounds like people trust the machine more than they trust people. Is that something you could say reliably? Or is it that, again, is it the machine mixes with the people that they trust or is it the people that they trust get them to trust the machine?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: So both things happening. As we discussed earlier with machine heuristics, people try the machine to produce less bias information, for instance, than a human being. That's part of it. But ultimately, we also trust people. And that might be also problematic because some of the information that we receive, if they come from someone who's my close friend, I might take them as more important. I might take them as a factual. So I might also lower my guard. I suppose that if I was just reading those news in a pamphlet newspaper or on a sign when I'm driving, whatever. But if it comes from my... Hey, this comes from my good neighbor, Joe. I know Joe for over 20 years, he's a good guy. So you are going to interise those news as more trustworthy just right off the bat because you trust Joe.

Matt Jordan: So I'm wondering if one of the best responses to news finds me as a mentality is one that you were saying that you do. Which is that you read the news this morning in a newspaper, or not newspaper, but a digital media platform that New York Times. That the idea that you could rely on social media to keep you informed is in fact an illusion, that that's what the data might support as a finding. Would you agree with that?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Unfortunately, yes. My latest book, which has been recently sent to the publisher, Social Media Democracy Mirage at Cambridge University Press. That's precisely what we advocate in the book. That we are generating as society that unfortunately because of social media is become very active, very engaged, very participatory. Because social media, that's one of the things that we also, although, we haven't discussed it today, mobilizes people a great deal. It has precisely for all the things that we've been describing. So people are really participatory, yet they tend to be uninformed when it comes to news because of social media. So that's why we call the book Social Media Democracy Mirage. And unfortunately, I think that's what is happening, that we created a society that is more participatory than ever. Look at the past elections. We polarized. We vote 70%, over 70% people voting. That is astonishing. But it will be not that meaningful if we are not very informed and we're just voting based on our feelings, for instance. Our effective polarization, our guts, things that are not recent and rational.

So definitely social media if we are not active as you are suggesting, may have a negative impact in that sense. On the other hand, if we are very active and we create things that we're supposed to, social media is an incredible tool and we seen this day in day out. People can really gain information from social media. You just have to be particularly active as for how you do it.

Leah Dajches: So to recap, it sounds like unless we kind of intentionally take an active approach to consuming news on social media, if we're not active in our engagement with the news, it's probably best to have a separation of social media and news. That if we're wanting to be a well-informed citizen, it's best to turn away from our social media, to go to specific news outlets. Is that the advice we want people to take away? Or is it just be active, be intentional when you're on social media, if you're looking at news or both, I guess?

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: The answer is yes. I would suggest to become active with the news, whether it can be also online, but active with the news. Going through the newspaper you like, buying a subscription and read the news, watching TV news, listen to your favorite podcasts, radio shows. Information, factual information. And if you use social media for news, just know what you're doing and how you use it. And it can be great complimentary type of information. But above all, continue to do all those active practices of engaging with the news actively.

Matt Jordan: And if you're not doing all those active practices and you feel like you're informed, you're probably not.

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: That is correct. Unfortunately, yes.

Matt Jordan: All right, Homero. Thanks so much for unpacking this concept for us. I think it's a really helpful one for thinking about where we are in news world and how we might get somewhere else.

Homero Gil de Zúñiga: Thank you so very much to both of you for having me, for your invitation. It's been an authentic pleasure to talk to you today.

Matt Jordan: Leah, that was a really fascinating conversation. It's great to know that this research is going on because it's so important for people to know about these things. Well, what's the takeaway for you?

Leah Dajches: Yeah, I think that this episode was really eye opening for me and the sense of, I think I might fall into the news finds me mentality a little bit and being aware that this mentality exists and it is a phenomenon that people fall into. I'm definitely going to be more intentional when I am on my social media, when I'm scrolling Twitter, when I'm on Facebook, even Instagram. I'm going to be thinking a little bit more critically. And I'm not just going to read the headline and then try and use that to base my arguments or my information from. I'm actually going to click further, I'm going to read the article. I'm going to be a little bit more active when I'm engaging with the news I'm finding on my feeds, what the algorithm's showing me. What about you, Matt? Any big takeaways here from today?

Matt Jordan: Well, I'm always afraid of algorithms and machines because I like people more. So I think that kind of getting off social media a little bit more is probably the best thing for me. It does make me a little nuts sometimes, and I find that when I can be more purposeful and kind of go through the news sites that I look at, I don't have those same feelings. So again, purposefulness and engagement is my takeaway.

Leah Dajches: That's it for this episode of News Over Noise. Our guest was Homero Gil de Zúñiga, a professor of journalism in media studies at Penn State's Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. To learn more, visit newsovernoise.org. I'm Leah Dajchas.

Matt Jordan: And I'm Matt Jordan.

Leah Dajches: Until next time, stay well and well informed.

Matt Jordan: News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This podcast has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost at Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative.

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