{"id":24724,"date":"2021-01-31T11:41:19","date_gmt":"2021-01-31T15:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=24724"},"modified":"2021-02-04T00:09:58","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T04:09:58","slug":"why-do-people-watch-fox-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-watch-fox-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do People Watch Fox News? To Affirm Beliefs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Why do people watch Fox News? How does Fox News promote the idea of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/deep-story\/\">deep story<\/a> and hold up conservative beliefs and emotional truths?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many liberals ask, &#8220;why do people watch Fox News?&#8221; Fox News is an important platform for conservatives because it validates their worldviews, and provides them with a master narrative that builds common ground amongst conservatives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, why do people watch Fox News? Read more to find out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Why Do People Watch Fox News? The Emotional Template of Conservatism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>If there\u2019s any institution more trusted by conservative Louisianans than big business or church, it might be Fox News. <\/strong>One faithful viewer interviewed by Hochschild described Fox News stars like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill O\u2019Reilly as being more akin to family for her than distant television personalities.&nbsp;But why do people watch Fox News in the first place? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By devoting inordinate coverage to highly racialized topics like the 2014 Ebola outbreak, crime in urban centers like Chicago, and the \u201cbirther\u201d conspiracy theory regarding President Barack Obama\u2019s place of birth, Fox News serves up race-infused fear and paranoia to its older, conservative, and overwhelmingly white viewership. This has lead many to refer to the network as Fox News propaganda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The right-wing news network powerfully shapes the emotional world of its viewers, providing them with a deep story or master narrative of the world, in which they are the brave, right-thinking heroes fending off the forces of liberalism, secularism, and political correctness.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps most importantly, it validates viewers\u2019 emotional orientations, confirming their ideas about what\u2019s right and wrong and what\u2019s important or unimportant. One viewer said that she likes Fox News because it doesn\u2019t try to manipulate her emotions and make her feel guilty the way other news sources do\u2014a source of great resentment for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She says that the liberal media implicitly try to blame the world\u2019s humanitarian problems on America\u2014and, specifically, conservative white Americans like <em>her<\/em>. They are trying to impose liberal emotional rules on her, dictating to her what she ought to care about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fox News is comforting because it validates her deep emotional belief that the world\u2019s problems are not <em>her <\/em>problems, and that she doesn\u2019t have to feel guilty about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since Fox News caters so specifically to one worldview instead of reporting news, many consider Fox New propaganda, and now a news network. However, this doesn&#8217;t stop conservatives from trusting and connecting with the network. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do people watch Fox News? How does Fox News promote the idea of a deep story and hold up conservative beliefs and emotional truths? Many liberals ask, &#8220;why do people watch Fox News?&#8221; Fox News is an important platform for conservatives because it validates their worldviews, and provides them with a master narrative that builds common ground amongst conservatives. So, why do people watch Fox News? Read more to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":24732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,24],"tags":[194],"class_list":["post-24724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-society","tag-strangers-in-their-own-land","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Do People Watch Fox News? To Affirm Beliefs - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why do people watch Fox News? 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This outlet functions as a way to confirm emotional truths for conservatives and shapes a common worldview.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-watch-fox-news\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-01-31T15:41:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-04T04:09:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/tv-news-watching-tv-silhouette-bright-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-watch-fox-news\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-watch-fox-news\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carrie Cabral\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2ababb7c63a94ff5d2190f71dc417d56\"},\"headline\":\"Why Do People Watch Fox News? 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