The hostile media effect, originally deemed the hostile media phenomenon and sometimes called hostile media perception, is a perceptual theory of mass communication that refers to the tendency for individuals with a strong preexisting attitude on an issue to perceive media coverage as biased against their side and in favor of their antagonists' point of view.[1] Partisans from opposite sides of an issue will tend to find the same coverage to be biased against them.[2] The phenomenon was first proposed and studied experimentally by Robert Vallone, Lee Ross and Mark Lepper.[2][3]
^Perloff, Richard M. (2015). "A Three-Decade Retrospective on the Hostile Media Effect". Mass Communication and Society. 18 (6): 701–729. doi:10.1080/15205436.2015.1051234. S2CID142089379.
^Vallone, R.E., Lepper, M.R., & Ross, L. (1981). Perceptions of media bias in the 1980 presidential election. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University. As cited in Vallone et al. 1985