Visual Indicators to Increase the Detection of Linguistic Media Bias

Smi Hinterreiter, Anna Chelsea Bahß, Ann-Christin Gah, Timo Spinde, Isao Echizen, Marc Erich Latoschik

The influence of linguistic bias in online news articles is a growing concern, particularly in the context of shaping public opinion and rising political polarization. While there is a growing body of literature on indicators for misinformation, none have been sufficiently tested to counteract the influence of media bias. Hence, we design six indicators (Bias Bar, Bias Gauge, Bias Highlights, Political Scale, Sentiment Scale, and Trust Score) and test their impact on linguistic bias detection and perception in a two-phased experiment (n = 214). First, we expose participants to short, social-media-like statements along with one indicator and query bias perception. Second, we evaluate bias detection by removing the indicator and asking participants to mark biased words. In addition, we examine how trust, sharing discernment, and sentiment relate to bias perception and detection. Our results show that highlighting biased phrases and showing total bias with contextual information in a gauge significantly improve bias detection skills. However, the strongest predictor for reduced bias detection was political congruency between the statement and the participant. We conclude with design recommendations for linguistic media bias indicators in online news environments.