ABSTRACT

This study examines traditional and social media news use in relation to political knowledge from the perspective of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Data from a two-wave panel survey show that social media use for news is positively related to knowledge miscalibration, or a mismatch between subjective and factual political knowledge. That is, respondents who use social media for news often tend to overestimate their levels of knowledge. In contrast, traditional news use is negatively associated with knowledge miscalibration. These results seem attributable to the role of social media news use in fostering subjective political knowledge and traditional news use in facilitating factual learning. Implications are discussed for the role of news consumption in the political process.

摘要

本研究从邓宁-克鲁格效应的角度考察了与政治知识相关的传统和社交媒体新闻使用。来自两波小组调查的数据显示，社交媒体对新闻的使用与知识错误校准或主观政治知识与事实政治知识之间的不匹配呈正相关。也就是说，使用社交媒体获取新闻的受访者往往倾向于高估他们的知识水平。相比之下，传统新闻使用与知识错误校准呈负相关。这些结果似乎归因于社交媒体新闻使用在促进主观政治知识方面的作用和传统新闻使用在促进事实学习方面的作用。讨论了新闻消费在政治进程中的作用。