The Hostile Media Effect and Media Bias during the 2021 Capital Riots

Abstract

2021 Capitol Riots was a riot caused by Trump supporters under the pretense that the government, primarily the Democratic Party, was influencing the election. In addition, the supporters believed that the mainstream media also played a role in hiding the election fraud from the people, ultimately causing people to storm the capital due to the belief of them defending democracy. In this paper, I discuss the hostile media effect, a tendency in which people with a solid preexisting idea on an issue to call media coverage bias and media bias, a news outlet`s bias on an issue, when it comes to the Capital Riots. These two tendencies can be seen as two major contributing factors in the voter fraud idea to grow and spread across the group.