International news articles often compare different countries, favoring one country over another. On the basis of this notion, we hypothesized that when people read international news articles favoring their own country over another, they would afterwards evaluate their country (in-group) better than the other country (out-group) – a tendency referred to as positive distinctiveness in social identity theory (SIT). We further hypothesized that when people read international news articles favoring their own country, they would afterwards have better knowledge of the news articles they read. An experiment with two groups (positive vs. negative articles in terms of participants’ own national identity) was conducted in Germany and the US (total N = 364). We found that when participants read positively valenced news articles, they afterwards showed more positive distinctiveness (e.g., U.S. students believed that the US had a better national educational system than Germany). We also found that when German participants read positively valenced news articles, they demonstrated better knowledge of the articles. This effect was not found in the U.S. sample. Overall, we found support for the notion that social identity mechanisms are relevant when it comes to analyzing the effects of news media.

中文翻译：

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好消息！

国际新闻文章经常比较不同的国家，偏爱一个国家而不是另一个国家。基于此概念，我们假设当人们阅读有利于自己国家而不是另一个国家的国际新闻文章时，他们随后会比另一个国家（外部群体）更好地评价自己的国家（组内）–这种趋势被称为社会认同理论（SIT）中的积极独特性。我们进一步假设，当人们阅读有利于自己国家的国际新闻文章时，他们之后将对他们阅读的新闻文章有更好的了解。在德国和美国进行了两组实验（以参与者的本国身份来衡量正面还是负面文章）（总N = 364）。我们发现，当参与者阅读具有正面价值的新闻文章时，之后，他们表现出更多积极的独特性（例如，美国学生认为美国比德国拥有更好的国民教育体系）。我们还发现，当德国参与者阅读具有正面价值的新闻文章时，他们会表现出对文章的更好的了解。在美国样本中未发现这种效应。总体而言，我们发现支持社会认同机制在分析新闻媒体的影响时是相关的。