Assessing Impact of Media

The real information problem—which we at the Hewlett Foundation are actively exploring with potential philanthropic interventions as part of our democracy reform work with the Madison Initiative—is biased news, including misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Research shows that many citizens are psychologically predisposed to want to read biased news that reaffirms their pre-existing beliefs and tribal identities. This creates obvious pernicious incentives for commercial technology platforms that want to keep people on their sites. So, compared with fake news, biased news will be harder to address.

Polarization and hyper-partisanship remain the key concerns at Madison. However, some recent evidence calls into question the correlation between growing ideological polarization and social media, given that the most rapidly polarizing—older—demographics are the least likely users of social media. So while some actors are motivated by ideological partisanship, some are profit motivated, some seek to amplify prejudices via hate speech, and still others appear not particularly ideological, but instead most interested in shifting the balance of power domestically (or in the case of Russia globally, towards a more illiberal democracy).