How Awareness of Media Slant Affects Reaction to News: Field and Experimental Evidence from Microblog Users

It has been shown that media bias contributes to belief polarization from the supply side. This paper provides a novel perspective from the demand side by testing whether news consumers are strategic enough to detect media bias. We propose a theoretical framework which shows that the tendency of reposting news with political inclination inconsistent with the media outlet’s general ideology is an indicator of strategic thinking. Combining both field data from Chinese Microblog users and an online experiment that exogenously varies whether news sources are revealed, we show both observational and causal evidence that Microblog users are more likely to repost inconsistent news, an indication of general strategic reaction. We also show that simply reminding people of media bias can make their decisions more strategic.