Mitigating the News-Finds-Me Perception: Evaluating the intended (and unintended) effects of educational warnings on political learning

IF 4.3 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

New Media & Society Pub Date : 2026-04-28 DOI:10.1177/14614448261438455

Eunchae Jang, Mengqi Liao, Chris Skurka, Homero Gil de Zúñiga

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Social media foster a News-Finds-Me perception (NFM), whereby individuals believe important news will “find them” without actively seeking it. Although the negative consequences of NFM are well-documented, strategies to mitigate NFM’s effects remain unexplored. In a pre-registered 3 (educational warning: general vs. personalized vs. control) ✕ 2 (NFM level: low vs. high) between-subjects experiment ( N = 405), we test whether general educational warnings (forewarning individuals about NFM and its detrimental outcomes) and personalized warnings (targeting specific NFM groups) affect political news learning and NFM reliance. Low-NFM participants exhibited greater political learning from news stories and greater intention to reduce NFM than high-NFM participants. Neither warning reduced these gaps. However, a personalized warning (vs. general) elicited stronger defensive reactions among high-NFM participants, which in turn negatively predicted political learning and intention to reduce NFM. These findings underscore the need to thoughtfully develop intervention strategies that avoid triggering unintended reactions among high-NFM individuals.

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减轻新闻发现我的感觉：评估教育警告对政治学习的有意（和无意）影响

社交媒体培养了一种“新闻找到我”的观念（NFM），人们认为重要的新闻会“找到他们”，而不需要主动寻找。尽管NFM的负面影响已被充分证明，但减轻NFM影响的策略仍未被探索。在预注册的3（教育警告：一般、个性化、控制）✕2 （NFM水平：低、高）受试者间实验（N = 405）中，我们测试了一般教育警告（就NFM及其有害结果向个人发出预警）和个性化警告（针对特定的NFM群体）是否会影响政治新闻学习和NFM依赖。与高NFM参与者相比，低NFM参与者从新闻故事中表现出更多的政治学习和更大的减少NFM的意愿。这两个警告都没有缩小这些差距。然而，个性化警告（与一般警告相比）在高NFM参与者中引发了更强的防御反应，这反过来负向预测政治学习和减少NFM的意图。这些发现强调需要深思熟虑地制定干预策略，以避免在高nfm个体中引发意想不到的反应。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

New Media & Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

12.70

自引率

8.00%

发文量

274

期刊介绍： New Media & Society engages in critical discussions of the key issues arising from the scale and speed of new media development, drawing on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and on both theoretical and empirical research. The journal includes contributions on: -the individual and the social, the cultural and the political dimensions of new media -the global and local dimensions of the relationship between media and social change -contemporary as well as historical developments -the implications and impacts of, as well as the determinants and obstacles to, media change the relationship between theory, policy and practice.