
Abstract
The perception of political messages may not only be shaped by textual information, but also by its visual appearance. An online experiment investigated how newspaper articles’ layout style and text slant affect the perception of a newspapers’ political orientation on the left-right axis. The layout versions were based on a prior analysis of correlations between design and political direction of quality newspapers. Results suggest the existence of political layout effects: a conservative layout style led to the source of a left-wing slanted text being estimated more right-wing, especially for left-wing-oriented participants. However, it had no effect when it was combined congruently with a right-wing slanted text. A progressive layout style had only an effect for participants with more knowledge on quality newspapers, leading them to locate the source more left-wing.
Item Type: | Journal article |
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Keywords: | Graphic design: newspaper: political layout effects; political perception; visual framing |
Faculties: | Social Sciences > Communication |
Subjects: | 000 Computer science, information and general works > 070 News media, journalism and publishing 300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology 300 Social sciences > 320 Political science |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-42866-9 |
ISSN: | 0267-3231 ; 1460-3705 |
Alliance/National Licence: | This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively. |
Language: | English |
Item ID: | 42866 |
Date Deposited: | 31. Mar 2018, 21:19 |
Last Modified: | 04. Nov 2020, 13:18 |