The Difference in the Impact of News Frames and Media Signatures on Explicit and Implicit Stereotypes: An Experimental Research

This study examined the impact of media signature and news frames on regional stereotypes. We conducted a 2 (media signature: political media and commercial media) * 2 (news frame: responsibility attribution frame and human-interest news frame) online experiment (N=236). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions and were asked to read a news article. We then measured the impact of news frames and news signatures on the audiences explicit stereotypes and internal differences in the impact of implicit stereotypes. The results show that news frame and news signature have no interactive effect on the audience's explicit stereotype and implicit stereotype; news frame, news credibility perception, reality perception, and news contact exposure can significantly affect the formation of the audience's explicit stereotype. Implicit stereotypes were only affected by credibility perceptions and education level. This study demonstrates that news resources cannot directly affect audience stereotypes. News framing can significantly alter the audience's explicit stereotypes, while the audience's implicit stereotypes cannot be directly changed by media signature and news framing due to their stability. This study expands the theoretical connotation of stereotypes and provides recommendations for news work: journalists should reduce negative, biased, and accountability narratives to reduce the audience's regional stereotypes of specific groups. The formation mechanism of stereotypes produced by news media enriches the theoretical connotation of stereotypes.