Technology, Mind, and Behavior

© 2022 The Author(s)

ISSN: 2689-0208 https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000083

MULTI-STUDY PAPER

AI Journalists and Reduction of Perceived Hostile Media Bias:

Replication and Extension Considering News Organization Cues
Joshua Cloudy, Jaime Banks, and Nicholas D. Bowman
College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University

As news organizations struggle with issues of public distrust, artificially intelligent (AI) journalists may offer a means to reduce
perceptions of hostile media bias through activation of the machine heuristic—a common mental shortcut by which audiences
perceive a machine as objective, systematic, and accurate. This report details the results of two experiments (n = 235 and 279,
respectively, U.S. adults) replicating the authors’ previous work. In line with that previous work, the present studies found additional
support for the argument that AI journalists’ trigger machine-heuristic evaluations that, in turn, reduce perceptions of hostile media
bias. Extending that past work, the present studies also indicate that the bias-mitigation process (if AI, then machine-heuristic
activation, therefore perceived bias reduction) was moderated by source/self-ideological incongruity—though differently across
coverage of two issues (abortion legalization and COVID-19 vaccine mandates).

Keywords: artificial intelligence, hostile media bias, machine heuristic, defensive processing, value-relevant involvement

Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000083.supp

News organizations are increasingly integrating artificial intelli-
gence (AI) technologies into newsroom practices (Ali & Hassoun,
2019), deploying them to write stories on a range of topics from
sports and finance to politics (Tatalovic, 2018). At present, “only a
minority of pioneering organizations” utilize AI technologies for
journalistic purposes and “these algorithms are still not fully
Action Editor: Danielle S. McNamara was the action editor for this article.
ORCID iDs: Joshua Cloudy https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5788-1879.
Jaime Banks is now at the School of Information Studies, Syracuse
University. Nicholas D. Bowman is now at the S.I. Newhouse School of
Public Communications, Syracuse University.
Disclosures: The authors have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
Open Science Disclosures:
The data are available at https://osf.io/4spgk/
The experimental materials are available at https://osf.io/4spgk/
The preregistered design and analysis plan is accessible at https://
osf.io/4spgk/
Open Access License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC-BY-
NC-ND). This license permits copying and redistributing the work in any medium
or format for noncommercial use provided the original authors and source are
credited and a link to the license is included in attribution. No derivative works are
permitted under this license.
Contact Information: Correspondence concerning this article should
be addressed to Joshua Cloudy, College of Media and Communication,
Texas Tech University, P.O. Box 43082, Lubbock, TX 79409, United
States. Email: jcloudy@ttu.edu
autonomic, or present truly AI capabilities, in the sense of expres-
sing a transformative creativity” (Montal & Reich, 2017, p. 843).
However, while these technologies are primarily used to generate
stories from statistics or reports (van Dalen, 2012), the creative
capabilities of these technologies are progressing steadily (de Vries,
2020). They “increasingly engage in traditionally human creative
capacities” (Singh et al., 2022, p. 47), and recent research has
explored the potential of these technologies to affect news audi-
ence’s perceptions of news (Liu & Wei, 2018; Tandoc et al., 2020;
Waddell, 2018). To prepare for this broadening of AI’s news
coverage capacities, it is prudent to now consider the potential
impacts on news processes and effects with respect to complex
social issues.
In our past work (Cloudy et al., 2021a), we investigated the
potential for AI journalists to trigger mental shortcuts that could
mitigate problematic perceptions of bias in news media—the hostile
media effect. The hostile media effect is a perceptual effect in which
opposing partisans consume an identical news story, yet both
perceive the story as biased against their side (Vallone et al.,
1985). This tendency for partisans to perceive a hostile media
bias—that is, to perceive that the media is biased in a hostile manner
against one’s side—occurs even in the face of objective facts (Reid,
2012). This perceived bias presents severe challenges for media
(Feldman, 2017; Perloff, 2015) and for informed democracies more
broadly (Tsfati & Cohen, 2005). In that past work, we found that AI
journalists activate the machine heuristic (a common mental short-
cut that assumes machine sources are objective and systematic;
Sundar, 2008) which, in turn, reduces perceptions of hostile media

1
2 CLOUDY, BANKS, AND BOWMAN
bias; this reduction becomes more extreme as the strength of one’s
issue attitude increases (Cloudy et al., 2021a).
Importantly, a limitation of that work is that the stimuli accounted
for cues from the news reporter but not for the potential influence of
news organization cues which could trigger other heuristics. Thus, in
the present studies, we replicated those procedures across two issue
topics to test for potential message effects and extend that work by
testing the impact of ideological incongruence between the AI’s host
news organization and the audience member’s own political ideology.
Findings suggest that the indirect relationship between AI journalist
and perceived hostile media bias does vary, which we argue is a result
of differences in the topics value relevance. This investigation largely
replicates the past findings (Cloudy et al., 2021a)—that AI journalists
cue the machine heuristic, which reduces perceived hostile media
bias—with audience/source ideological incongruity influencing the
process differentially across the two topics.
Review of Literature
The mainstream media is facing a crisis of trust that presents
potentially serious “threats to our democratic politics and social
cohesion” (Lee & Hosam, 2020, p. 1,016). While the magnitude of
distrust in the media may have recently reached “an unprecedented
magnitude” (Dahlgren, 2018, p. 24), the perception among partisan
audiences that the media are biased against their own positions is not
new (Vallone et al., 1985). Partisans are those individuals who have
unequivocal opinions about a particular issue (Schmitt et al.,
2004)—that have a particular stance, often pro or anti with respect
to a particular issue. Even when viewing the exact same news
content, partisans on both sides of an issue have tendencies to
perceive ostensibly neutral media content as hostile in its bias
against a given audience member’s side (Perloff, 2015), a phenom-
enon known broadly as the hostile media effect. The greater a
partisan’s attitude extremity—that is, the more entrenched and
deeply held their opinion on an issue is—the more likely they
are to perceive hostile media bias (Gunther, 2017). The perception
of hostile media bias has potentially serious consequences for
journalism and democracy. Perceptions of hostile media bias can
lead to feelings of indignation among partisans, serving as bridge for
public criticism of the media as unjust (Hwang et al., 2008). These
perceptions of unfair treatment from the media decrease trust in
democracy (Perloff, 2015) and increase partisans’ willingness to use
violent forms of resistance (Tsfati & Cohen, 2005).
AI Journalism and the Machine Heuristic:
A Summary of Cloudy et al. (2021a)
Despite ample research into hostile media bias, there is limited
understanding of how to successfully mitigate this perceptual bias
(Feldman, 2017). Past studies have focused on mitigation strategies
aimed at increasing the media literacy of news consumers (e.g.,
Vraga & Tully, 2015). The emergence of AI journalists (algorithmic
[demi-]agents that take information and turn it into news reports;
Carlson, 2015) may offer a potential source-based solution to
mitigating the perception of hostile media bias (Cloudy et al.,
2021a). When presented with news information, news audiences
often do not have the opportunity to fully process a story (Delgado
et al., 2010), are not motivated to deeply engage the news content
(Eveland, 2001), and/or do not have access to the underlying
motivations of the journalists by which they may interpret the
validity of the content (Voakes, 1997). So, instead, they often
rely on heuristics (i.e., mental shortcuts often engaged automatically
and intuitively) in making assessments of the journalist. With regard
to people’s engagement with interactive technologies, broadly,
evidence indicates that technological affordances of varied modali-
ties, agency, interactivity, and navigability can cue a range of
heuristics that influence credibility judgments (i.e., the Modality,
Agency, Interactivity, and Navigability [MAIN] model; Sundar,
2008). AI journalists, specifically, offer particular agency-related
cues—that is, the agentic source to which a news story is attributed
is often a machine agent. Thus, AI journalists can promote hostile
media bias-reductive heuristic judgments (Cloudy et al., 2021a) by
tapping into audience perceptions of machines as inherently sys-
tematic, objective, and lacking the inherent biases of humans—a set
of expectations known as the machine heuristic (Sundar, 2008).
The role that AI journalists may play in reducing perceived hostile
media bias has been nascently explored with mixed results; these
investigations have operationalized the machine heuristic as mod-
erating the relationship between source and emotional involvement
(Liu & Wei, 2018), moderating the relationship between source and
perceived hostile media bias (Wang, 2021), or failed to directly
measure the machine heuristic (Waddell, 2019). More recently, we
argued (Cloudy et al., 2021a) that heuristics influence judgment
through a specific mediating (rather than moderating) pathway: “if
source cue, then objectivity heuristic, therefore less-biased news”
(cf, Bellur & Sundar, 2014, p. 3). Following, the machine heuristic
should be considered a mediator between the AI journalist source
cue and perceived hostile media bias: if AI, then machine heuristic
evaluations, therefore reduced perceptions of hostile media bias.
That study found support for this mediating function of the machine
heuristic. Additionally, in investigating the moderating role of
attitude extremity, we found no direct relationship between attitude
extremity and perceived hostile media bias (as suggested in other
literature; Hansen & Kim, 2011). Instead, we found that attitude
extremity moderated the extent to which the machine heuristic
reduced perceptions of hostile media bias, with higher attitude
extremity accelerating reduction of perceived hostile media bias.
In approaching these studies’ replication goal, then, we propose the
following hypotheses in line with that revised model: When presented
with a news story ostensibly written by an AI journalist, partisans
encounter source cues suggesting the machinic nature of the author.
Cues that suggest the source is a machine should trigger machine-
heuristic evaluations—shorthanded judgments that the source is
objective, accurate, and systematic (Sundar, 2008). Thus (H1): An
AI journalist will generate stronger machine-heuristic evaluations
than will a human journalist.
Perceptions of the source as biased against one’s position can
contribute to perceptions of hostile media bias even when the news
content is focused on objective statistics (Reid, 2012). However,
when presented with source cues that promote belief in the source
as objective and free of bias, perceptions of hostile media bias may
be reduced (Waddell, 2019). The machine heuristic is a mental
shortcut indicating intuitively perceived objectivity, thus (H2):
Stronger machine-heuristic evaluations will reduce perceived hos-
tile media bias.
Partisans with strongly held attitudes are motivated to engage in
defensive processing of information as a means of protecting their
prior beliefs and/or their sense of self (Gunther, 2017). In anticipation
 AI JOURNALISTS AND REDUCTION OF HMB
of consuming potentially self-threatening information, partisans’
typical defensive response is to perceive higher levels of source
bias to justify rejection of expected unfavorable information
(Carpenter, 2019). However, when presented with a source that is
perceived to be objective/accurate/systematic, partisans’ defensive
response switches from preparing to justify the rejection of unfavor-
able information to preparing to assimilate favorable information
(Cloudy et al., 2021a). That is, partisans’ processing of information is
more malleable than nonpartisans’ because they are constantly
seeking ways to maintain their preexisting beliefs (Gunther et al.,
2012). When confronted with a human journalist, it is often difficult
for audiences to judge the underlying motivations of the journalist
(Tsfati & Cohen, 2005). To manage this uncertainty, partisans are
motivated to preemptively process news coverage defensively, which
increases perceptions of hostility as they are preparing to dismiss
information that does not align with their prior beliefs (Tsfati &
Cohen, 2013). However, when confronted with an AI journalist
perceived as objective and accurate, partisans should shift to prepar-
ing to attend to information that is favorable. Thus (H3): Higher issue
attitude extremity will intensify the extent to which machine-heuristic
evaluations reduce perceptions of hostile media bias.
Disentangling Issue and Source Cues:
Extending Cloudy et al. (2021a)
The grounding study for this investigation (Cloudy et al., 2021a)
relied on stimuli that engaged only a single partisan topic (abortion)
and only a single relatively neutral source organization (both
journalist types were affiliated with USA Today). That initial study
design, as we acknowledge, limits the ability to determine whether
the observed dynamics may differ for other partisan topics and
whether the news organization cues (independent of the individual
journalist cues, as a distinct agency-cueing affordance) may influ-
ence the perceived hostile media bias-mitigation process. Thus, the
present investigation extends that work by accounting for those
potential dynamics.
It is possible that the initial findings may have been limited to the
specific issue and its presentation (i.e., message effects; see Slater et
al., 2015). In the source study (Cloudy et al., 2021a), we found
evidence to suggest that machine heuristic activation by AI journal-
ists should be topic-independent in that machines were seen as
universally less vested in partisan issues than were humans across a
range of issues (e.g., global warming, surveillance, gun control).
However, it is possible that topic could still play a role in the
machine heuristic’s ability to reduce perceived hostile media bias
since a machine’s systematicity and accuracy may be seen as more
or less relevant to some issues and attitude extremity may be more or
less malleable in relation to some issues. Notably, past investiga-
tions into perceived hostile media bias have found both consistent
(Gearhart et al., 2020) and inconsistent (Giner-Sorolla & Chaiken,
1994) perceptions of bias across different topics. Thus, we here
replicate Cloudy et al. (2021a) in using the same long-standing
partisan issue of abortion (see Carmines et al., 2010) and extend that
work by testing the model with the more recently polarizing issue of
COVID-19 vaccine mandates (Largent et al., 2020).
Additionally, the present studies seek to disentangle the impacts
of different source cues by parceling out the potential impacts of the
journalist’s ontological category cue (i.e., human vs. AI) from that of
the journalist’s news organization (i.e., agencies that lean
3
ideologically liberal, moderate, or conservative). These dynamics
are critical to understand given the theorized dynamics of ego-
protective processing (Tsfati & Cohen, 2013) that may be promoted
by the ideological incongruence between an audience member and
the media organization deploying an AI journalist. Some hypothe-
size that social networking services (SNS) encourage increased
selective exposure to ideologically congruent news (e.g., Spohr,
2017). Indeed, partisan news consumers are selectively exposed to
ideologically congruent news on SNS (Mukerjee & Yang, 2021)
which may, in turn, increase the likelihood of ending up in filter
bubbles and echo chambers (Cinelli et al., 2021). However, SNS
often incidentally expose partisans to counter-attitudinal informa-
tion (Weeks et al., 2017) because such platforms often serve as a hub
for an individual’s ideologically heterogeneous network of family,
friends, and acquaintances (Masip et al., 2018). Thus, SNS users are
embedded in “egocentric publics” which are “constituted by in-
dividuals who treat their extended social networks as a forum for
self-expression” (Wojcieszak & Rojas, 2011, pp. 493–494). These
loosely connected networks likely lead to greater exposure to
diverse and ideologically incongruent news (Rojas et al., 2016)
despite overt attempts to select ideologically congruent news (Masip
et al., 2020). In short—the contemporary news media landscape
presents opportunities for audience’s filter bubbles to be burst
through incidental exposure, so it is critical to explore the role of
source-audience ideological incongruity.
Partisans are often more attuned to source cues than nonpartisans
(Gunther et al., 2012), especially when presented with content that is
ostensibly neutral or balanced (Gunther et al., 2012). In particular,
partisans are sensitive to cues that suggest a source is an ingroup or
outgroup member (Reid, 2012). When presented with a news story
from an ideologically incongruent media organization, partisans are
likely to see that news as biased against their position; in turn, seeing
that same news from an ideologically congruent media organization,
they are likely to see it as biased in favor of their position (Yun et al.,
2018). AI journalists, however, can reduce perceptions of news bias
even when ostensibly deployed by perceptibly partisan news networks
(Waddell, 2019). However, past investigations into this dynamic did
not account for network/audience ideological (in)congruence.
Given that perceptions of the source as affiliated with an outgroup
can increase perceptions of hostility or create those perceptions
where they otherwise would not exist (Gunther et al., 2016),
perceptions that an AI journalist was created by or is under the
control of an outgroup (in this case, an ideologically incongruent
news organization) may override expectations of source objectivity.
It is known that when people assess their trust in a machine agent,
they often consider the attributes of an absent-yet-conspicuous
creator of that machine (Fogg & Tseng, 1999; cf, Sullins, 2006)
such that they are seen as inherently related, resulting in either halo
effects (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) or horn effects (Burton et al.,
2015). That is, any positive evaluations of the creator (or in this case
the deploying news organization) enhance those of the machine
(here, the AI journalist) or any negative evaluations are tainting.
Thus, seeing a news organization as ideologically incongruent (i.e.,
an outgroup) likely impacts the associated journalist as an outgroup
member, resulting in a reduction in perceived objectivity, systema-
ticity, and accuracy (i.e., reduced machine heuristic evaluations).
Put differently, the outgroup source cues (i.e., the AI journalist being
described as a bot for an ideologically incongruent news organiza-
tion) will likely put the audience on high alert for potential bias
4 CLOUDY, BANKS, AND BOWMAN
(Gunther et al., 2016). This heightened awareness of potential
source bias should override the heuristics derived from any machine
cues because the AI journalist would be viewed in tandem with the
incongruent, and therefore hostile, news organization. Following,
we predict (H4): Stronger perceived ideological incongruence
between the audience member and the media organization will
suppress machine-heuristic evaluations.
The Present Studies
Based on the literature reviewed, we propose the following model
(Figure 1) based on the logic that if the source is an AI journalist,
then it will trigger machine-heuristic evaluations of source objec-
tivity, therefore reducing perceptions of hostile media bias (H1–
H2). This reduction of perceived hostile media bias will be more
extreme as attitude extremity increases (H3). However, machine-
heuristic evaluations will be dampened as ideological incongruence
increases (H4). We test this model across two different samples,
each of which encountered news on a different partisan topic.
Method
This investigation was approached as a self-replication/extension
—researchers reconducting the procedures of their own past study in
ways that are operationally similar (see Schmidt, 2009) but that add
new elements to the design such that the study may both examine
similarities or differences with the original work (Kraus, 2015) but
also extend the prior results in theoretically relevant ways (Bonett,
2012). In this manner, we may be more confident that the results of
the original study were not the result of Type I error (Hüffmeier
et al., 2016) as well as consider the potential moderating effects of
source incongruity—a potential that emerged in the original work
(Cloudy et al., 2021a). In line with the original study logic and
following guidance of Bellur and Sundar (2014), we manipulated
the cue (human/machine), then measured engagement of the
machine heuristic as a distinct variable, and then separately mea-
sured the subsequent biased processing.1
This study was approved by the institutional review board at Texas
Tech University. All materials for both studies can be found at https://
osf.io/4spgk/ (Cloudy et al., 2021b), including the preregistered
hypothesis and analysis plan, instrumentation, and experimental
Figure 1
Proposed Conceptual Model for AI Journalist-Cued Reduction of
Hostile Media Bias Mediated by the Machine Heuristic
Note. AI = artificial intelligence.
stimuli. Anonymized data sets, baseline data descriptives, and analy-
sis output files for both studies are also available in that repository.
Participants
Participants were recruited from Prolific panels and compensated
U.S. $2.38, per Prolific’s standard hourly rate of $9.52 × estimated
15 min. All participants were 18 years of age or older, U.S. residents,
U.S. in nationality, and fluent in English. Prolific’s sampling criteria
were used to recruit conservatives and liberals. Sampling for the
abortion issue (Study 1) occurred prior to sampling for the vaccine
issue (Study 2), and those who participated in the former were
ineligible to participate in the latter. For each issue, N = 300
participants were initially sampled (in line with the original study).
To further ensure partisan samples, for the abortion issue, only those
with a declared pro-life or pro-choice stance were recruited and for
the vaccine issue only those who indicated they feel positively or
negatively about COVID-19 vaccines were recruited. Sampling
excluded those indicating a neutral position or who did not disclose
a position (since perceptions of hostile media bias should not
manifest for those with neutral stances).
The participants in the abortion-issue sample were 18–65 (M =
28.57, SD = 10.10), 69.8% female and 30.2% male, 88.9% liberal
and 11.1% conservative, and leaned heavily toward support for
abortion (86.8% vs. 13.2% who were against). The participants in
the vaccine-issue sample were 18–72 (M = 27.34, SD = 9.24),
74.6% female and 25.4% male, 89.2% liberal and 10.8% conserva-
tive, and leaned heavily toward support for vaccines generally
(96.4% vs. 3.6% against). The unbalanced sample is noted as a
limitation of the present investigation.
Procedure
The following procedures were identical for both issue samples.
Participants were taken to an online survey and then randomly
assigned to one of six conditions: 2 × 3, Source (human or AI
journalist) × News organization (ideologically liberal, moderate, or
conservative) condition. They were then shown a Facebook profile
for the journalist displaying the journalist’s name and news organi-
zation affiliation and asked to complete the machine heuristic
measure and attention checks. Then, participants were shown a
news story ostensibly from the journalist that was embedded into a
Facebook post after which they completed a measure of perceived
hostile media bias and another attention check. Participants then
1
Notably, Bellur and Sundar (2014) recommend manipulating heuristic
accessibility by experimentally priming/not-priming the heuristic through an
unrelated task and then engaging the priming variable as a stage-one
moderator in order to determine whether the heuristic is actually being
activated. In the original study (Cloudy et al., 2021c), we had attempted to
devise such a prime by having people report their liking of magazine covers
conveying either machine heuristic-related content or nature/lifestyle-related
content. In piloting that portion of the design, we found that we could not
manipulate the machine heuristic by priming—merely mentioning
“machine” resulted in very high machine heuristic scores (M range 5.78–
6.08 on a 7-point scale; see Cloudy et al., 2021b for stimuli and results) that
were not significantly different among those viewing the machine heuristic or
nature/lifestyle primes. We interpreted those findings to suggest that the
machine heuristic may be such a strong and universal heuristic that its
accessibility exceeds boundaries for possible manipulation; thus, in the
original study and this replication, we abandoned that portion of Bellur
and Sundar’s guidance.
 AI JOURNALISTS AND REDUCTION OF HMB 5

answered questions about their issue stance and attitude extremity.
Finally, they completed a manipulation check and answered a
political ideology measure for seven news organizations and them-
selves. Importantly, this procedure follows the if AI, then machine
heuristic evaluations, therefore reduced perceptions of hostile media
bias time-order, allowing for the model’s first- and second-stage
causal claims to be tested (i.e., they see only the source and report
machine heuristic activation, and then see the story and assess bias).
Stimulus
We used the source study’s original stimulus (Cloudy et al.,
2021a) for the journalist profiles and abortion content, and then used
them as a template to also create stimuli for the vaccination-mandate
topic and news organizations. In order to ensure that the source was
clear to participants, they viewed a profile for the journalist that
identified the name and organizational affiliation of the journalist
(Figure 2). The human journalist’s name was presented as “Quinn
Smith,” and the AI journalist was presented as “NewsBot.” Imme-
diately following the journalist’s name was the news organization
affiliation of the journalist. The fictitious news article ostensibly
from the journalist was presented as part of a Facebook post from the
journalist (Figure 3). The headline and image for both issue con-
ditions were designed to indicate the issue in a neutral manner, in
line with the source study’s design. The Facebook post was pre-
sented as if it was posted recently and had achieved wide reach—a
known condition for perceived hostile media bias to manifest
(Gunther & Liebhart, 2006). The three news organizations

Figure 2
Facebook Stimulus Profiles for Human and AI Journalist Conditions

Note. AI = artificial intelligence. Adapted with permission from “The Str(AI)ght Scoop: Artificial Intelligence Cues Reduce Perceptions of Hostile Media
Bias,” by J. Cloudy, J. Banks, and N. D. Bowman, 2021, Digital Journalism, advance online publication (https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1969974).
Copyright 2021 by Taylor & Francis Ltd (http://www.tandfonline.com).
6 CLOUDY, BANKS, AND BOWMAN

Figure 3
Facebook Stimulus Posts for Human and AI Journalist for Abortion and Vaccine Mandates

Note. AI = artificial intelligence. Adapted with permission from “The Str(AI)ght Scoop: Artificial Intelligence Cues Reduce Perceptions of Hostile Media
Bias,” by J. Cloudy, J. Banks, and N. D. Bowman, 2021, Digital Journalism, advance online publication (https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1969974)
. Copyright 2021 by Taylor & Francis Ltd (http://www.tandfonline.com).
 AI JOURNALISTS AND REDUCTION OF HMB
(CNN, USA Today, and Fox) were selected as being ideologically
liberal, moderate, and conservative as indicated by AllSides (2021).
As in the original study (Cloudy et al., 2021a), participants did not
read an actual news story.
Measures
The machine heuristic, perceived hostile media bias, and attitude
extremity measures are the same as in the source study, and
assessments of the source’s ideological incongruence is a novel
measure. Unless otherwise indicated, all measures were presented as
7-point semantic differentials.
Machine Heuristic
The machine heuristic was measured with seven items (Banks
et al., 2021) that assessed participants’ impressions of the journalist
as objective, ordered, efficient, accurate, unemotional, logical, and
reliable. Notably, this measurement of the machine heuristic is based
on an operationalization that somewhat conflates more general
machine heuristic evaluation with source evaluation. This is a func-
tion of the strength and high accessibility of the machine heuristic
(discussed in Cloudy et al., 2021a) that requires the heuristic be
measured as it is anchored to a particular source. The measure was
internally consistent for both the abortion data set, M = 4.17 (SD =
1.15, ω = .810) and the vaccine-mandate data set, M = 4.21 (SD =
1.16, ω = .826).
Hostile Media Bias
Perceived hostile media bias was measured using three items
adapted from Gunther et al. (2016), which assessed the degree to
which participants perceived the news content, evidence, and
journalist together to be biased, measured from 1 = strongly biased
against [abortion/COVID-19 vaccine mandates] to 7 = strongly
biased in favor of [abortion/COVID-19 vaccine mandates]. For
those reporting a pro-issue stance, their scores were recoded (revers-
ing scores of 1–7 to 7–1) so that a score of 7 is representative of
strongly perceived hostile bias against those positions. For those
reporting an anti-issue stance, their scores were not recoded as a
score of 7 already represents a strongly perceived hostile bias. For
the abortion data set, perceived hostile media bias overall averaged
M = 4.40 (SD = 1.28, ω = .913) and for the vaccine-mandate data
set, M = 4.06 (SD = 1.17, ω = .892).
Attitude Extremity
Attitude extremity was measured using three items (Cho &
Boster, 2005) capturing the extent to which participants viewed
the issue as negative (positive), undesirable (desirable), and unfa-
vorable (favorable). The 7-point semantic differential scale values
were coded −3 to +3. In order to assess extremity of attitudes
independent of attitude valence, the absolute value of the scores
(0–3) was used in the analysis. For the abortion data set, attitude
extremity overall averaged M = 2.52 (SD = .728, ω = .979) and for
the vaccine-mandate data set, M = 2.42 (SD = .786, ω = .960).
7
Source Incongruity
Every participant separately rated the perceived political ideolo-
gies of the three stimulus news organizations plus three additional
distractor organizations (very liberal to very conservative); partici-
pants also rated their own political ideology on the same scale in a
separate item. From those ratings, we calculated source incongru-
ence by taking the absolute value of the difference between the
participant’s ideology and the organization’s rated ideology for only
the organization viewed in their randomly assigned stimulus
(|ideologyself—ideologyorg|). For the abortion data set, source
incongruity overall averaged M = 2.73 (SD = 1.88) and for the
vaccine-mandate data set, M = 2.47 (SD = 1.83).
Data Cleaning
For each study’s data set, from an initial N = 300, responses were
culled if they did not pass attention checks (n = 9 abortion, n = 1
vaccines) and those responses were replaced. Additionally, those
that did not pass the source-type manipulation check (n = 4 abortion,
n = 7 vaccines—all in the human condition) were removed. Also,
because perceived hostile media bias is understood to emerge only
among those with partisan issue positions (Gunther, 2017), we
removed all cases in which participants (despite our sampling only
for those with specific positions) indicated that they had no opinion
on the issue (n = 19 abortion, n = 6 vaccines) and those who
indicated they were neutral in their political ideology (n = 7
abortion, n = 4 vaccines). This process resulted in N = 235 for
the abortion-topic data set and N = 279 for the vaccine-topic
data set.
Results
Proposed Model Test
As stated in the preregistered analysis plan (Cloudy et al., 2021b),
we used Hayes’ PROCESS macro for SPSS, testing Model 21 for
multiple moderated mediation with Stage 1 (W moderating the
relationship between X and M) and Stage 2 (Z moderating the
relationship between M and Y) moderated mediation on both data
sets. Moderated mediation is a test of conditional indirect effects.
That is, it is a test of a mediator’s ability to mediate only at certain
levels of a moderator(s).
For variance in Model 21 to be interpreted, the confidence
intervals around the index of moderated mediation should exclude
zero. For both data sets, the index of moderated mediation did not
exclude zero: abortion = −.050 (95% LLCI = −.125, ULCI =
.003); vaccines = .001 (−.014, 0.016). Lacking this criterion,
Model 21 is rejected for both data sets and thus, further interpreta-
tion of the model as specified is not warranted (see Hayes, 2018).
Equivalence tests indicate that perceived hostile media bias, atti-
tude extremity, and source incongruity did not differ by agent-type
experimental condition in either data set (see online materials;
Cloudy et al., 2021b).
Post Hoc Modifications
On reflection, at least one potential reason for the results above is
that our proposed model overlooked an important relationship
already supported in extant literature on hostile media bias: the
8 CLOUDY, BANKS, AND BOWMAN
influence of the source’s perceived ideological incongruity on
perceived hostile media bias (rather than merely on machine heu-
ristic activation, as modeled). News perceived to come from con-
gruent sources is more likely to be viewed favorably whereas
incongruent sources increase perceptions of hostile media bias
(Yun et al., 2018), which is consistent with past work that has
demonstrated an interaction between partisanship and source on
perceptions of hostile media bias (Reid, 2012). Additionally, out-
group sources have been shown to increase perceptions of hostility
even when news content was slanted in favor of the ingroup
(Gunther et al., 2016). Indeed, in the present studies, the bivariate
relationship between source incongruity and perceived hostile
media bias was significant for both data sets: abortions r = .419,
p < .001; vaccines r = .444, p < .001. However, there was no
evidence of a statistically significant Stage 1 highest-order uncon-
ditional interaction for either the abortion, F(1, 231) = 3.63, p =
.058, ΔR2 = .01, or vaccine, F(1, 275) = 0.13, p = .715, ΔR2 < .001,
data set (H4 not supported). One way to account for the influence of
source incongruity on perceived hostile media bias is to specify
Stage 2 moderated mediation for the effect. Given this, we respe-
cified the model to include source incongruity only as a Stage 2
moderator for both data sets (see Figure 4) as we found no evidence
of Stage 1 interaction in the original model proposed in our
preregistration plan (see online materials; Cloudy et al., 2021b).
Study 1: Abortion Data Set
The respecified model for the abortion data set was tested using
Hayes (2018) PROCESS, Model 16. There was a main effect of
agent type on machine heuristic evaluations, B = .60 (.314, .884).
Additionally, the highest-order unconditional interaction for both
moderators was statistically significant, F(2, 228) = 10.38, p < .001,
ΔR2 = .07. The index of partial moderated mediation for source
incongruity was significant, −.06 (−.127, −.014), as was the index
of partial moderated mediation for attitude extremity, −.15 (−.301,
−.015). Probing this interaction showed conditional indirect effects
when source incongruity was at the mean and attitude extremity was
Figure 4
Post Hoc Model for AI Journalist-Cued Reduction of Hostile Media
Bias Mediated by the Machine Heuristic
Note. AI = artificial intelligence.
at the maximum, −.16 (−.300, −.044), when source incongruity was
one standard deviation above the mean and attitude extremity was at
the mean, −.20 (−.367, −.071), and when source incongruity was
one standard deviation above the mean and attitude extremity was at
the maximum, −.27 (−.453, −.121; see Figures 5 and 6).
Study 2: Vaccine-Mandate Data Set
The respecified model for the vaccine data set was tested using
Hayes (2018) PROCESS, Model 16. There was a main effect of
agent type on machine heuristic evaluations, B = .53 (.265, .799),
and the highest-order unconditional interaction for both modera-
tors was statistically significant, F(2, 272) = 5.08, p = .007, ΔR2 =
.03. The index of partial moderated mediation for source incon-
gruity was significant, −.05 (−.089, −.010), but the index of partial
moderated mediation for attitude extremity was not, .02 (−.059,
.098). Thus, it is appropriate to infer that source incongruity
negatively moderates the indirect effect of machine heuristic
evaluations on perceptions of hostile media bias independent of
any moderation of the indirect effect by attitude extremity; how-
ever, no inference can be made that attitude extremity indepen-
dently moderates the indirect effect. To probe the interaction of one
moderator in a moderated mediation model with two moderators, a
value must be chosen for the second moderator as a function of the
program (Hayes, 2018). So, when source incongruity is at the mean
there is a significant effect at all levels of attitude extremity, one
standard deviation below the mean, −.13 (−.234, −.030), at the
mean, −.11 (−.193, −.036), and at the maximum, −.10 (−.192,
−.015). Additionally, source incongruity was also significant at
one standard deviation above the mean at all levels of attitude
extremity, one standard deviation below the mean −.21 (−.357,
−.080), at the mean −.19 (−.317, −.080), and at the maximum
−.18 (−.311, −.065; see Figure 7).
With respect to our initial hypotheses in relation to these post hoc
models, in the abortion data set, an AI journalist generated higher
machine heuristic evaluations compared to a human journalist (H1
supported). In turn, perceptions of hostile media bias reduced (H2
supported), and this reduction intensified as attitude extremity and
source incongruity increased (H3 supported). For the vaccine data
set, an AI journalist generated higher machine heuristic evaluations
compared to a human (H1 supported) which in turn reduced
perceptions of hostile media bias (H2 supported)—this reduction
was strongest at higher levels of source incongruity (a respecified
relationship).
Discussion
The present studies largely replicated the findings from Cloudy
et al. (2021a) for the issue of abortion (Study 1): An AI journalist did
activate the machine heuristic, which, in turn, reduced perceptions
of hostile media bias—especially among those with the strongest
attitudes. For the issue of vaccine mandates (Study 2), an AI
journalist did also activate the machine heuristic, which in turn
reduced perceptions of hostile media bias, however there was no
evidence to support the independent effect of attitude extremity to
moderate the relationship. The present studies extended the original
work by demonstrating that for both abortion and vaccine mandates
the machine heuristic-induced reduction of perceived hostile media
bias intensified as source incongruity increased. This investigation’s
 AI JOURNALISTS AND REDUCTION OF HMB 9

Figure 5
Moderation Effect of Attitude Extremity on the Relationship Between Machine Heuristic
and Hostile Media Bias for Abortion Data Set

Note. Top chart displays moderation effects at +1 and 0 SD and the maximum of attitude extremity,
and the bottom chart displays moderation effects at all observed levels of the moderation, including the
range of statistical (Attitude extremity ≥ 2.19).

outcomes, then, generally continue to suggest that problematic
perceived media bias among partisan audiences may be mitigated
by deployment of AI journalists; however, further investigation is
required into the exact dynamics of defensive processing, machine
heuristic resistance, and ideological incongruity. These results are
consistent with past work that has demonstrated AI journalists’
ability to reduce perceptions of bias (Waddell, 2019) and that this
ability may be contingent on audiences possessing intuitive beliefs
that machines are inherently objective and accurate (Liu & Wei,
2018; Wang, 2021). Importantly, there is some recent research that
suggests AI journalists may not reduce relative perceptions of
hostile media bias when controlling for the machine heuristic
(Jia & Liu, 2021). We would argue that this further suggests the
machine heuristic as the mechanism explaining AI journalists’
ability to reduce perceptions of hostile media bias.
Machine Heuristic as a Hostile Media Bias Mitigator
Under Conditions of Source Incongruity
We found that when source incongruity is low, or when people
have low-strength attitudes, there is no impact of the machine
heuristic on perceptions of hostile media bias. This is consistent
with past evidence that strong attitudes are typically needed to
generate perceptions of hostile media bias (Giner-Sorolla &
10 CLOUDY, BANKS, AND BOWMAN

Figure 6
Moderation Effect of Source Incongruity on the Relationship Between Machine Heuristic
and Hostile Media Bias for Abortion Data Set

Note. Top chart displays moderation effects at +1, 0, and −1 SD of source incongruity, and the
bottom chart displays moderation effects at all observed levels of the moderation, including the range
of statistical (Source incongruity ≥ −1.83 and 2.77).

Chaiken, 1994) and that news coming from an ingroup source is
unlikely to be viewed as hostile (Gunther et al., 2016; Reid, 2012).
Thus, the machine heuristic likely has no impact on perceptions of
hostile media bias when source incongruity or attitude extremity is
low because of a basement effect—an individual’s perception of
hostility is already low and therefore has little room to vary.
However, that past evidence would suggest as source incongruity
increases, particularly among those with strong partisan attitudes,
perceptions of hostile media bias should increase as well. Contrary
to that logic, our analysis showed that as source incongruity and
attitude extremity (for those in the abortion sample) increased, there
was even greater reduction of perceived hostile media bias through
the machine heuristic.
These findings are, however, consistent with our original argu-
ment (Cloudy et al., 2021a) that when partisans are confronted with
a source they view as objective, they are motivated to attend to
positive information as a form of ego defense. Typically, strong
partisans are motivated to perceive media coverage as hostile in
order to justify rejecting unfavorable information (Gunther, 2017).
That is, when confronted with messages that may contradict
their already established attitude, partisans engage in biased proces-
sing of the message to reduce potential cognitive dissonance
 AI JOURNALISTS AND REDUCTION OF HMB 11

Figure 7
Moderation Effect of Source Incongruity on the Relationship Between Machine Heuristic
and Hostile Media Bias for Vaccine-Mandate Data Set

Note. Top chart displays moderation effects at +1, 0, and −1 SD of source incongruity, and the
bottom chart displays moderation effects at all observed levels of the moderation, including the range
of statistical (Source incongruity ≥ −1.87).

(Carpenter, 2019); however, the presence of an AI journalist appears
to shift their motivation from preparing to reject potentially unfa-
vorable information in order to protect the self to preparing to
assimilate favorable information to protect the self (see Gunther &
Schmitt, 2004). This is a particularly notable result given that the
presence of an outgroup source has been shown to “trigger a
defensive toggle switch” such that “favorable slant went unnoticed
and was judged no less hostile than the balance” news coverage
(Gunther et al., 2016, p. 15). This inability of favorable content to
reduce perceptions of hostile media bias in the presence of an
outgroup source suggests source plays a particularly potent role
in perceived hostile media bias. That an AI journalist seems to
overcome, and even reverse, the expected effect of an outgroup
source cue suggests the machine heuristic is a particularly powerful
heuristic in news perceptions.
Considering Values and Identities as Machine
Heuristic-Resistant
While these studies largely replicated the results from Cloudy
et al. (2021a), we did not replicate the relationship between
attitude extremity and perceptions of hostile media bias for the
issue of vaccine mandates (Study 2). We suggest this topic-
specific difference may be the result of abortion being a
12 CLOUDY, BANKS, AND BOWMAN
longstanding issue often tied to important belief systems whereas
the issue of COVID-19 vaccine mandates is relatively novel such
that people may not have developed deep attachments to their
attitudes around this issue. For those who consider themselves
pro-choice or pro-life, the issue of abortion is likely connected to
deeply held values (see Johnson & Eagly, 1989) that are “central to
and strongly connected with [their] social identities” (Killian &
Wilcox, 2008, p. 569). Issues that are relevant to people’s value
system, and, thus, their self-concept, are likely to be highly
correlated with attitude extremity (Cho & Boster, 2005).
COVID-19 vaccine mandates, on the other hand, may not be
closely tied to important values and/or longstanding beliefs about
vaccine mandates. Indeed, the support for COVID-19 vaccine
mandates is significantly lower than support for vaccine mandates
more generally (Haeder, 2021).
While both issue attitudes for abortion (Carmines & Woods,
2002) and COVID-19 related issues (Collins et al., 2021) tend to
split along the left–right political divide, we argue that the abortion
divide is reflective of differences in issue-related values whereas
the COVID-19 vaccine mandate divide is not. Conflicting attitudes
on abortion are the result of conflicting value systems (Harris &
Mills, 1985) and beliefs (Tamney et al., 1992). That abortion has
become aligned with political identity is reflective of political
sorting based on abortion attitudes (Adams, 1997). That is,
abortion partisans are likely to move to the party that aligns
with their attitudes on abortion because the issue of abortion is
linked to their deeply held values (Killian & Wilcox, 2008). We
argue that for COVID-19 vaccine mandates, sorting is occurring in
the opposite direction. That is, people are aligning their beliefs on
COVID-19-related issues with their political identity (see Conway
et al., 2021).
COVID-19 quickly became politically polarized (Gadarian
et al., 2021), which, in turn, likely increased the salience of
political identity and the political divide surrounding COVID-
19 beliefs. When this sort of divide is made salient in a policy
conflict, political partisans are likely to shift their beliefs toward
the perceived beliefs of their group (Bonomi et al., 2021). Indeed,
partisans have embraced COVID-19 related beliefs and attitudes
consistent with their political identity (Gadarian et al., 2021) and
COVID-19-related policy issues have provided them with the
opportunity to symbolically perform their political identity as a
means of social differentiation (Kenworthy et al., 2021). This sort
of performativity is consistent with impression-relevant involve-
ment, which differs from value-relevant involvement in that it is
not focused on preserving “one’s belief systems” rather it is
focused on conforming to the “implicit and explicit expectations
of others” (Cho & Boster, 2005, p. 240). That is, people’s attitudes
are motivated, not by their values or core beliefs about an issue, but
by a desire to “maintain positive relationships with other people”
who are important to them (Johnson & Eagly, 1989, p. 310).
Therefore, these attitudes are not likely to be as strong as they
are not rooted firmly in one’s values, but instead must remain
flexible and responsive to potential changes in the socially desir-
able attitude of one’s reference group. As such, impression-
relevant involvement is not related to attitude extremity (Cho &
Boster, 2005). Future research should explore the dynamics of held
values and identities in the extent to which the machine heuristic
may (not) mitigate perceptions of hostile media bias.
Limitations and Future Research
These studies are subject to standard limitations of online survey
methodologies, most notably a reliance on self-report measures and
assumptions that participants paid attention to the stimuli. As with
the original study, attention and manipulation checks were included
throughout to help ensure that they did pay attention and understood
the content. Additionally, the sample leans largely female and
liberal. Thus, caution must be used when interpreting these findings.
Future research should explore these dynamics with more balanced
samples, particularly along gender and ideological lines.
As a replication, these studies feature many of the same limita-
tions detailed in the original study (Cloudy et al., 2021a). In order to
confidently establish the cause-and-effect relationship proposed in
these studies, some limitations were maintained in order to minimize
the impact of external factors that may operate differently or be
present in the real world. First, to ensure that participants were first
encountering the source cue, the Facebook profile for the source was
shown before the Facebook post (i.e., on separate pages of the
survey), which may not reflect the only or dominate way people
would encounter news posted on the platform in real life. Second, in
an attempt to minimize confounds, the source was presented in a
gender-neutral way with little physical or demographic indicators.
While this is likely consistent with how an AI journalist would be
presented, it may not be consistent with how a human journalists
would present themselves on social media. Third, the stimulus
stories featured thumbs up, heart, and surprise-indicative emojis,
but no angry emoji reactions which could have served as social
proofing of a lack of negative reaction to the story; further, those
displayed emojis could themselves be subject to differential, biased
interpretations (cf, Hayes et al., 2016). Finally, the title “AI jour-
nalist” was used to represent the broad category of automated
technology used to produce written content. However, there are
different kinds of AI technologies (e.g., neural networks, machine
learning) and audiences may or may not be savvy to the nuances of
the—and so may or may not engage machine-heuristic judgments.
Future research should attend to these limitations by exploring the
media context and formats, source-agent cues, message valence and
issue framing, depth of processing of a complete news article, and
extant mental models for AI in the course of consuming AI-
presented news content. Additionally, as a self-replication there
is the potential for experimenter bias (Kunert, 2016), therefore,
future research should investigate if these results replicate when
conducted by other scholars.
In addition, one limitation is that USA Today was chosen as the
moderate news organization based on its past use as a neutral source
(Cloudy et al., 2021a; Gunther et al., 2016) and its AllSides (2021)
media rating as being in the center. However, the AllSides media
rating for USA Today shifted during the course of these studies from
center to lean-left, which is consistent with how participants in our
sample rated it. Further, the current studies’ design did not assess the
extent to which individuals’ technical knowledge of AI might
influence outcomes. Thus, future research should consider both
context/format differences inherent to forms of news consumption
as well personological factors related to machine heuristic activa-
tion. Additionally, we did not assess how the presence of an AI
journalist affected relevant behavioral outcomes. Future research
should consider what effect an AI journalist has on behavioral
outcomes important to journalism (e.g., sharing the article).
 AI JOURNALISTS AND REDUCTION OF HMB
Conclusion
Perceptions of hostile media bias present a key challenge for
media institutions and democracy (Tsfati & Cohen, 2005). Yet,
there is still little understanding of how news producers can
overcome this perceptual bias (Feldman, 2017). Our findings
suggest that AI journalists can reduce perceptions of hostile
media bias through the activation of machine heuristic-evaluations
of source objectivity—and that source incongruity and attitude
extremity influence these dynamics. This presents both potential
benefits and ethical challenges for the media. In order to meet the
present challenges, the media should lean on innovation guided by
“a dedication to the pursuit of truth and accuracy in reporting, and
ethics” (Pavlik, 2013, p. 181).
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Received January 16, 2022
Revision received May 13, 2022
Accepted May 16, 2022 ▪