A cognitive mechanism for democratic norms: testing a hypothesized model of news literacy, cross-cutting discussion, and elaboration

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the cognitive process by which individuals who critically and mindfully evaluate news stories and who elaborate more on cross-cutting views will be more likely to have enhanced democratic norms. This study employs a national survey collected by the media institute of the Korean Broadcasting System in 2021. The findings of structural equation modeling (SEM) shed light on how individuals engage in cognitive mechanisms for democratic norms, indicating that those who often use news and evaluate it in a critical and mindful manner are more likely to endorse democratic norms as they often talk with cross-cutting networks and elaborate different thoughts of other discussants.

KEYWORDS:

• News literacy
• cross-cutting discussion
• elaboration on cross-cutting perspectives
• democratic norms
• political participation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Note that the response rate to the online opt-in survey of this study is so low as to be accurately incomputable because far more online users who are registered in the pool of the media institute of KBS were invited to join the online opt-in survey than actually participated. Panel members voluntarily take one-off online surveys. The Pew Research Center also highlights the feature of the response rate in the case of online opt-in survey (Keeter et al., 2017).

2 One item was dropped based on the factor analysis: ‘I often think about its political consequences while I am consuming news’.

3 The mean of evaluating news objectivity is higher (M = 4.11) than that of evaluating news bias (M = 3.64) and of evaluating effectiveness (M = 3.97).

Additional information

Funding

Data materials used in this study were supported by the 2021 Research Support Project of the Korean Society for Journalism & Communication Studies and the Korea Broadcasting System.

Notes on contributors

Bumsoo Kim

Bumsoo Kim (Ph.D., The University of Alabama) is an assistant professor in the Department of Media & Communication at Pusan National University, South Korea. His research specializes in social media analytics, online incivility, and network heterogeneity.