Katie Kromer Kromer 1

Professor McGriff

ENC 1102

12 April 2021

Annotated Bibliography

Ditto, Peter. “Bias Is Blind: Partisan Prejudice Across the Political Spectrum.” Association for
Psychological Science - APS, 25 June 2018,
www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/bias-is-blind-partisan-
prejudice-across-the-political-spectrum.html. Accessed 17 March 2021.

Some psychologists believe one political party is affected greater than another, but
evidence has shown that bias can fall on any spot of the spectrum. The authors conducted a
study to see how both parties were influenced by bias, especially through their decision
making. A clear result was reached: that party association doesn’t matter. Another
interesting point was also brought up about how bias affects multiple steps within the
decision-making process. These decisions can be anything. From the way we treat other
human beings, to the way we vote on new policies or a president, bias comes to play.

This information is extremely helpful because it prevents me from thinking one group is
affected more by bias. This is a great reminder for me while I further my research, that bias
can occur at any time, to anyone. It is similar to my other sources because it is non-biased
and targets the faults of both parties. Instead of pointing out only the errors of one, this
source gets the point across that bias happens on a spectrum. This is a reliable source.

This source is helpful for my section on how bias affects our actions. It emphasizes
decision making as a political action, similar to a few other sources I have analyzed. It will
help me make it clear in my research that bias is not just something that happens on one
end of the spectrum. This information will be good to start out with, to eliminate anyone’s
previous perceptions. Each party tends to think the other one is the only biased one and this
evidence will be useful for that.

Doak, Melissa J. "Hate crimes by bias motivation, 2010." Minorities: Race and Ethnicity in

America, 2012 ed., Gale, 2013. Information Plus Reference Series. Gale In Context:
Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ2220013649/OVIC? Kromer 2
u=lincclin_sjrcc&sid=OVIC&xid=3bbfb523. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.

This source is a chart that displays the numbers of hate crimes motivated by bias. Bias is
any one-sided, or false information that is shared through media about controversial topics.
These topics are usually about human rights, focused on minority groups. The numbers on
this chart are so high for the amount of attacks on specific religions, ethnicity, or genders.
We know these violent acts are motivated by bias because the chart title reads, “Hate
 Crimes by Bias Motivation, 2010”. The bias we see in the news can make us change the
way we view these minority groups, based on the way the news portrays these people.
They often paint an incorrect picture of these groups to trick us. Bias negatively impacts
American actions because it motivates people to commit hate crimes.
This is a highly useful source for my topic because it directly relates the hate crimes that
we have been seeing, and still seeing in action today, to the bias in the media. Bias can
influence our thoughts and actions in many ways, but I think the aspect of hate crimes is
different because it is most relevant to today’s times. The data collected in the chart is
accurate because it came from an online database. There is also no bias here.
Crimes against minority groups are extremely common and one everyone is tuned into.
The way this chart relates hate crimes back to the media should really help my viewers
understand the severity. It even helped me grasp the issue because I was able to see the real
numbers in front of me.

Gorvett, Zaria. How the News Changes the Way We Think and Behave. 12 May 2020,
www.bbc.com/future/article/20200512-how-the-news-changes-the-way-we-think-and-
behave.

The main point of this article was to prove how negatively the media changes the way we
think. It starts out with the author, Zaria Gorvett, telling the story of a bombing and the
news coverage following the event. She explained how people spent hours looking at news
articles and videos, glued to the screens, but not showing any actual sympathy for the
victims of the bombing incident. She shares some other examples, like the recent Corona
Virus coverage and the statistics about people following the news during the time. Gorvett
repeatedly mentioned that “the news is accidentally warping our perception of reality”
(How the news changes the way we think and behave). The argument behind that was that
the media changes our expectations for the future subconsciously. Studies were mentioned
about news cites spreading false information about brain cancer, terrorist attacks, etc.
People’s beliefs about important topics like these surely shape their political views, and the
media is to blame.

This source was a great one to choose for my first annotation because it does not get too
deep into controversy. Unlike the other sources I expect to read, this one does not focus
primarily on the bias of media. It is more about how the media affects everyone’s brains in
general. This is the kind of information everyone can agree on, that our brains are slowly
being destroyed by our addiction to the news, whether it be biased or not. The facts here
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seem reliable, showing that they are from doctors and scientists. The authors goal was to
give some reasons and examples of how the media has done such a thing.

I believe this source will be helpful to my research because it helped me understand some
broad effects of the media such as health issues and even how it impacts our dreams. After
learning about all of this, I understand the potential the news has on us. In better terms, if
the media can bring dangerous health problems upon us and show up in our dreams
overnight, of course it can change a person’s political views. I feel the same way about my
 topic after reading this, that the media has the power to negatively sway the foundation of
our political opinions. If anything, I feel more strongly about the media’s potential after
reading this. I will use this article near the beginning of my research project as an
introduction to the more general effects of the news.

Manata, Brian. Evidence Suggests That Political Bias Also Affects the Way We Make Group
Decisions. 25 Mar. 2019, blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2019/03/21/evidence-suggests-that-
political-bias-also-affects-the-way-we-make-group-decisions/.

Brian Manata starts by making an obvious claim, that liberals tend to read liberal media
and conservatives do the same for right-winged media. While this is an obvious statement,
he goes on to cover how this affects group settings and group decisions. He thinks that
people only seek information that proves us right, which makes decision making in a group
difficult if everyone is looking towards different sources to find what is “right”. Brian
explained a study where a group of three were asked to give their opinions on a political
topic after each had been given different media coverages of the issue. Of course, they
were unable to come to a logical conclusion that they all supported. Manata uses all of this
to prove that hate exists today because we cannot seem to agree about issues when we all
receive different directions of bias from the media.

This source is pretty similar to my last one, touching on how opposing media coverages
changes how we view people around us based on our opinions. The source was beneficial
because of the specific research examples and the use of graphs to show specific statistics.
I trust this source to be objective because the author is a professor at a university who
specializes in group dynamics, the topic of this source. He wants the readers to understand
how bias on each end of the political spectrum makes it harder for society to come together
as a whole.

My research question looks at two aspects: our views and our actions. All the sources I
have started with so far are about our views. This source fits in very well on the topic of
how people work together based on their involvement in political media. It has helped me
realize that both sides are receiving bias, not just the side I had perceived. I have obtained
more knowledge about how people view each other and the different political parties as a
direct result of the media.

Pazzanese, Christina. Study Finds Political Bias Skews Perceptions of Verifiable Fact. 15 June
Kromer 4
2020, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/06/study-finds-political-bias-skews-
perceptions-of-verifiable-fact/.

The focus of this source was primarily about the two major political parties and how they
are both swayed by the media in different ways. Each side is gathering different
information and have different perceptions about what is correct, what is trustworthy, and
 what is insane. An interesting graph was shown here that is titled, “What do Democrats
and Republicans Have in Common: They’re Both Wrong”. The graph tells us how the two
parties responded to simple questions regarding income, unemployment, and race. The
graph sums up the whole point of the article, saying that both parties are equally affected
by bias that makes them have such opposing ideas. If the political information being fed to
society wasn’t biased and was only based on facts, our viewpoints wouldn’t be so
drastically different. “They don’t realize that they’re wrong” was a quote by Christina
Pazzanese that stood out as a defining claim of the source (Par. 10). Each party builds their
views on such differently staged outlets. It goes to show how easily biased media can reach
the minds of the people and come across as trustworthy.
Similar to the previous source I annotated, this one claims that the media is altering our
perception of reality. This article touches a lot deeper into the aspect of bias and shows
how bias on either side of the political spectrum is destructive. The source isn’t biased
because it comes from a reliable paper, The Harvard Gazette. While talking about political
parties, the author shows no sign of leaning towards one more than the other. This a more
neutral article about the bad habits of both sides equally. The author did a fantastic job
getting the point across that the media destroys our perception of what is “reliable” and
what isn’t.
This fits into my research perfectly, because I am covering the ways the biased media
negatively changes our way of thought. This article goes right along with what I’m
researching because its main point was that fake news gives political parties false
information that damages the way they view each other. I am planning on shaping my
argument around a few negative impacts of biased news, one being how people view
others, and the evidence given here will really help me when I’m talking about political
parties.

Ratliff, William. "Human Rights Are Often Defined Inconsistently." Human Rights, edited by
Laura K. Egendorf, Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale In Context:
Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010144243/OVIC?
u=lincclin_sjrcc&sid=OVIC&xid=2e58a5a0. Accessed 13 Feb. 2021. Originally published
as "Double Standards Sully Human Rights Activism," San Jose Mercury News, 31 Jan.
1999. Kromer 5

Human rights have, and will always be important to America, as different minority groups
are always in the spotlight of seeking more political acceptance. The author of this source
feels that some groups are gathering the jack pot of attention, while other injustices go
unnoticed. This is a direct result of the media and the way they exaggerate certain events to
distract us from the loads of sometimes worse problems happening around us. It is this kind
of bias that causes people to pour all of their effort politically onto causes that might not be
accurate, instead of towards the more extreme, yet unspoken ones. Some injustices aren’t
 covered by the media at all, leaving those victims with zero opportunity to raise awareness
and receive help from the people. American citizens are unknowingly contributing to the
problem of human rights because of the bias in the world. How we feel about current events
and the ways humans are being treated drastically affects the way we vote, who we donate
too, and where to draw our attention.
I can rely on this source to be accurate because it was found on an online database and was
originally from the Greenhaven Press. I do not find any bias within the source. It would be
ironic if there was, as this is a source primarily about the negative effects of bias. That is
another reason I trust this article: because it is unbiased, and it also mentions historical facts
that cannot be denied. It uses a lot less logos (statistics), compared to my previous sources,
because the author uses more pathos.
I found this source to be meaningful because it opened my eyes to an idea I had never
thought of before. I now realize that bias is literally directing us away from important events
and focusing our attention on one specific thing at a time. Hearing that almost makes me
empathize for the minorities who are struggling and going unnoticed. I will bring up this
issue in my research as a use of ethos, to get my readers to feel sympathy and realize how
strongly the media bias is directing our actions, along with how those actions are affecting
humans.

"US Views of Racial Bias and Safety during Interactions with Police, 2018." Gale Opposing
Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale In Context: Opposing
Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/HAGGQI105147254/OVIC?
u=lincclin_sjrcc&sid=OVIC&xid=5d9a1ca9. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
Like my last one, this is a graph that shows statistics about racial issues. The polling
people asked Americans for their opinions on how they perceive racial tension regarding
the police department. These were questions about whether or not they thought the police
have racist intentions, and If black people are getting pulled over for proper reason that
isn’t their race. There were a variety of different responses over the political spectrum.
Black people were shown to be the most likely to feel unsafe after an encounter with Kromer
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sheriff. The range of answers to the questions prove that we all think and perceive so
differently.
These graphs are useful because they gave me a lot of information to study and proved
how differently all Americans think. This particular source relates back more to my first
couple of annotations, the ones that focused on how bias changes our thinking. I
established already in a previous source that opposing political parties are receiving
opposing biases, and in a more recent annotation that the media portrays minority groups
differently to each side. The evidence in these charts are examples of how people answer
so differently to a simple question because of their parties biased media and how that
media is covering recent issues. This source came from a database that is reliable and
unbiased.
 This kind of evidence will fit perfectly into my section on how biased media changes the
way we think. When asked simple questions about recent racial tensions, people
answered a wide variety of responses about how they view the police and black people.
This example should be clear to my readers because of how relevant it is to the times.
Everyone today has their own opinion on the tensions happening around us.

Weir, Kirsten. “Politics Is Personal.” Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological

Association, 1 Nov. 2019, www.apa.org/monitor/2019/11/cover-politics. Accessed 14
February 2021.

The world of politics is so complex and there is a reason behind almost every thought and
decision we make. There is a great amount of chaos in the world around political
disagreements, and the media is only profiting off that when they create biased content that
stirs more distress. Based on psychology, people tend to “defend and justify” the popular
idea, even if that leads them to abandon their previous thought. This is a possible
explanation as to why Donald Trump won the 2016 election. The media can easily lie
about the “popular idea” through fake statistics, just to get a profit or even change the way
we vote.

The American Psychological Association is a reliable website to find information like this.
The article is unbiased and provides a mass amount of educational input for my topic. It is
similar to some of my other sources that also touch on our political actions. The authors
goal was to explain how we make political decisions and the factors that guide us to them,
the most influential being the biased media.

Voting is the most important political action that all citizens should make. That is why I
felt the need to use this source, because voting comes to mind when I think about political
actions and how they are affected by bias. It was very helpful to be reminded that the
media profits off of tension, and I can use that information to prove the power the media
has to manipulate us.

Yair, Omer, and Raanan Sulitzeanu-Kenan. "When do we care about political neutrality? The
hypocritical nature of reaction to political bias." PLoS ONE, vol. 13, no. 5, 2018, p.
e0196674. Gale In Context: Opposing Kromer 7
Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A537218251/OVIC?
u=lincclin_sjrcc&sid=OVIC&xid=abdbc02b. Accessed 13 Feb. 2021.
Bias very much exists where political favoritism is shown to one party over another on the
news. The extent to which this bias motivates people’s political actions is great. This is what
the author meant when they said society tends to make decisions based on whether it serves
the interest of their preconceived views. People generally view situations as less severe or
more severe, destructive or safe, correct or incorrect, based on the type of bias their brains
are being fed. Political inaccuracies within the media can easily influence the way we vote,
as shown in polling statistics from viewers of different media outlets.
This source was the most in depth one I have read so far. It explained specific actions of
voters and proved how they could be traced back to the biased news they were watching.
The statistics were very useful in showing me the relation between the bias and people’s
actions. I can trust this source because it is from my school’s online database and it does not
appear the show bias because it outlines the faults of both political sides. The author was
very successful in proving the correlation between the issues in the media and people’s
reactions.
The research and knowledge I got from reading this source will be beneficial when I begin
the section of my work about people’s specific actions, rather than just their views. This
section will be trickier because it goes beyond just the people’s views to show how those
views translate into real, political action. The experiment they performed will provide me
with a lot of statistics and examples for my research.