Perception of Bias: The Impact of User Characteristics, Website Design and Technical Features

Abstract

Bias, whether real or perceived by the user, is inherent in news media. In this paper, we demonstrate that user characteristics, the design and common technical features of news websites impact users' perception of bias. A complex bias evaluation process was conducted using crowdsourced participants on webpages from nine popular news websites. Each webpage was subject to one of eight distortions which removed individual features of the design. Along with the control, a 9x9 experiment was conducted with participants asked to rate their perception of positive or negative bias in the design of the webpages. This tested the impact that removing each feature had on the user's perception of bias. Significant differences were found between how participants rated some distorted webpages and their respective controls. The category of news website was also found to influence the perception of bias. Furthermore, certain groups of users were found to have a predilection for rating certain categories of websites as more or less biased and were influenced by particular features of the design.