Mitigating the News Finds Me Perception: Evaluating Educational Warnings on Political Learning

Jang, E., Mengqi (Maggie) Liao, Skurka, C., & Gil de Zúñiga. H. “Mitigating the News Finds Me Perception: Evaluating Educational Warnings on Political Learning,” paper to be presented at the 75th annual conference of the International Communication Association, Denver, June.

Abstract: Social media fosters a News-Finds-Me perception, where individuals believe important news will “find them” without actively seeking it. Although the negative consequences of NFM, such as increased political cynicism, are well-documented, strategies to mitigate NFM and enhance political learning in controlled environments remain unexplored. We test the effectiveness of general educational warnings (forewarning individuals about NFM and its detrimental outcomes) and personalized warnings (targeting specific NFM groups: low vs. high) in enhancing political learning from news and reducing NFM reliance. A preregistered, two- wave experiment (N = 405) revealed that low-NFM participants exhibited greater political learning from news stories and greater intention to reduce NFM than high-NFM participants. Neither warning reduced these gaps. Personalized warnings (vs. general) elicited stronger defensive reactions among high-NFM participants, which in turn negatively predicted political learning and intention to reduce NFM. These findings reflect the challenges of countering NFM’s negative effect on political learning and underscore the need to identify effective intervention strategies in future work.