People influenced by news more than they realize—survey

An online survey the Northern Marianas Humanities Council conducted last year found that most respondents agreed that people are influenced by news more than they realize, and also agreed that two people might see the same news story and get different information from it.

These findings and what they mean were shared by University of Guam associate professor of journalism Dr. Francis Dalisay last Friday as part of the NMHC’s second webinar in a series dubbed the “Minagåhet – Ellet Series.” Dalisay also presented findings related to news media skepticism, perceptions of online privacy, and the susceptibility to misinformation and support for preventing the spread of misinformation.

As shared during last week’s webinar, NMHC received 481 completed surveys, with 93% of respondents living on Saipan and around 6% said that they were from Tinian or Rota. Dalisay also shared last week that the survey underrepresented males and Filipinos, and was subject to other sampling biases.

Most importantly, Dalisay cautioned that the survey’s results are only representative of the survey’s respondents, meaning that the survey results can not be used to predict how the CNMI as a whole consumes or responds to the news.

To gauge the news media literacy of the respondents, Dalisay shared that the survey asked questions with a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being “strongly disagree,” 3 being “neutral,” and “5 being strongly agree.” The five survey items that the respondents agreed with were:

• People are influenced by news more than they realize (average score of 4.19)

• Two people might see the same news story and get different information from it (4.11)

• A news story about conflict is more likely to be featured prominently (4.03)

• News is designed to attract an audience’s attention (3.96)

• News companies choose stories based on what will attract the biggest audience (3.94)

To gauge the respondents’ self-perceived news media literacy, the respondents agreed that they have a good understanding of the concept of news media literacy (4.04), have the skills to interpret news messages (4.05), and are confident in their abilities to judge the quality of news (4.08).

Dalisay said that the results suggested that the respondents had satisfactory levels of news media literacy and perceived themselves as news media-literate. “Recall, some of those items were 4 and above, which is indicative of a [somewhat] high score of media literacy,” said Dalisay.

The survey was conducted in October to November 2020.

The third webinar in the NMHC’s four-part series will take place on July 23, with online registration being available sometime this week.

Through the webinars, NMHC hopes to give the community more insight on how the CNMI consumes its news, how skeptical the community is of the news it consumes, and other topics of interest.

More details about the NMHC’s ongoing and future events can be found on its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/670humanities.