In 2011, researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University conducted a survey of 612 New Jersey residents to study whether the outlets from which people get their news affects how well-informed they are about current events. The results proved interesting and so the university repeated the study on a larger, nationwide scale and were able to confirm their initial findings.

Both times, the results went viral, published under headlines such as the following:

“Study Finds Fox News Viewers Least Informed of All Viewers”

“New Public Study: Watching Fox News Makes You Dumber”

What the study actually found, according to its lead author, is that all news that is filtered through a political ideology can have a negative effect on people’s knowledge about current events. This includes not only Fox News, which is well-known for its conservative leanings, but also MSNBC, which has a more liberal leaning and whose viewers were also ranked as being less well-informed than those with no news exposure at all. (The most well-informed people, the study found, were those who listened to NPR, though even they only managed to give the correct answer about 50% of the time.)

Why would certain news outlets concentrate only on the results that made one particular news organization look bad? Why would other news outlets, including many about whom participants were surveyed, neglect to report on the results altogether?

It’s all about the message.

Every piece of information comes with a message. Messages can be stated directly or they can be implied in elements such as tone and word choice.

The way news is presented to us is especially interesting because the news is intended to be a report of facts that keep the viewer informed. But news outlets send messages to their viewers by covering a story a certain way or sometimes by not covering it at all.

By trumpeting the findings that were most damning to their conservative competitor, the more liberal news outlets sent the message that their readers and viewers are smarter and better-informed than those who choose more conservative fare, minimizing whatever chance there might have been for them to switch channels.

News outlets who didn’t cover the story at all sent the message that the results of the study were not important enough to be of consideration among all the other newsworthy events going on at the time. News outlets covered in the study may have also been worried about the message the results would send to their own viewers and readers. Would those viewers and readers leave for another channel or site if they found out theirs wasn’t doing an adequate job of keeping them informed?

Of course, news doesn’t just happen in the United States—it happens all over the world.

What topics are most likely to draw the interest of audiences in different areas of the world? How are those topics different from what is covered in the United States? How are they covered differently? What happens in countries where the press is controlled by the government, leading to censorship of messages that do not support the values of that government?

The following activity asks you to investigate a variety of news sites from both the United States and around the world to help you explore some of these questions.

Choose one website from Column A (“Neutral” News Sites) one website from Column B (Non-Neutral News Sites), and one from Column C (International News Sites). Then pick Option 1 OR Option 2 to complete this quest.

OPTION 1:

Take note of the top story on the site in Column A. Copy and paste the article associated with that story into WordClouds. Save the WordCloud as an image.

Now, try to find an article on the same topic on a site from Column B. (If there is no article on the same topic, use the top story from that site instead.) Copy and paste the content of that article into WordClouds. Save the WordCloud as an image.

Last, see if you can find a third article on the same topic on a site from Column C. If you can’t, use the top story on that page. Copy and paste the content of this article into WordClouds. Save the WordCloud as an image.

Compare the three word clouds you have produced with WordClouds. Keeping in mind that the biggest words in the word cloud are the ones used most often in the article, what does the WordCloud tell you about the message the article is sending? If the articles are on the same story, how might a person who has only read Article A understand the story differently from the person who has only read Article B or Article C?

OPTION 2:

Take note of the top story on the site in Column A. Pick out 3-5 key phrases from the article that you feel best captures the message the site is sending about that story.

Now, try to find an article on the same topic on a site from Column B. (If there is no article on the same topic, use the top story from that site instead.) Identify 3-5 key phrases from the article that closely capture the message the site is sending about the story.

Last, see if you can find a third article on the same topic on a site from Column C. If you can't, use the top story on that page instead. Identify 3-5 key phrases from this article capturing the message of this story.

Compare the three lists of key phrases. What does each list tell you about the message the article is sending? If the articles are on the same story, how might a person who has only ready Article A understand the story differently from the person who has only read Article B or Article C?