What Are You Really Seeking When You Click On News? University of Delaware's Prof Dannagal Young

In Reality

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media with Eric Schurenberg, a longtime journalist, now executive director of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

Have you ever thought about what you are really doing when you scroll for news, or click on a headline that pops up in your feed? The quick answer is, “I want to know what’s happening in the world.” Or, more pompously, I’m seeking the truth.

Sure. But when you’re honest you have to admit that you’re mostly sucked in, like the rest of us, by unthinking instinct -- by news that lights up your emotions, that confirms your prior beliefs, or especially news that warns you of a threat. Today’s guest has spent her research career trying to divine how our media affects our view on the world and vice versa. She’s Dannagal Goldwaithe Young, Professor of Communication and Political Science at the University of Delaware, and author of Wrong: How Media, Politics and Identity Drive our Appetite for Misinformation.

She argues that much of modern media - sometimes deliberately more often unconsciously - reinforces political division and intensifies what she calls people’s mega identities, the set of beliefs that define our political allegiance and our sense of who we are. There’s a lot to unpack here about the perverse incentives in news media, about the differences in how conservatives and liberals consume news, and about the need for us news audience members to consume news consciously, deliberately, not instinctively. The conversation was recorded live in my class at the University of Chicago.

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