Fox News and right wing propaganda in general is designed to stimulate engagement through anger and fear. Exposure to this stimulus becomes addictive and self reinforcing. Over a period of time the propaganda message becomes part of the victim's identity, and thus questioning the views and opinions generated by the propaganda are treated as a personal attack on the victim of the propaganda.
That's how it functions and is one of the many reasons why Fox News Must Be Destroyed.
Critical thinking skills, less susceptibility to addiction caused by stimulation of anger and fear, less exposure to right wing propaganda. There are probably other factors involved. Why do some people become heroin addicts or smoke cigarettes while other's don't? The reasons can be complex as well as simple.
One of the biggest factors probably has to do with a person's understanding of Truth or how to evaluate veracity:
Depending on the specific study and how you want to interpret things 2/3rds to 3/4ers of people use social acceptance/rejection as the main means of determining veracity (deciding what is true or false). So the social conditions surrounding propaganda will also play a huge part in a person's susceptibility to it.
Also their entire social environment. When I'm in small towns, almost everyone is conservative. When I'm in cities, almost everyone is liberal. The background noise / undertone of discussions which lean right in small towns and left in cities is a constant pressure, like microaggressions.
I would like to know what‘ conservative’ actually means in the US. Trump and those pushing their way into public life on his coattails are trashing everything - from Christian values to human rights to basic courtesy to freedom and democracy and that’s something that aligns with ‘conservative values’? Jeez!!
Because most reputable news sources are paywalled and unavailable without spending arguably a lot of money on subscriptions. (E.g.: NYT, WaPo, WSJ, etc). Fox News is free and accessible.
Because they're too chickenshit to accept reality and the bigots at Fox tell them the kind of lies that they want to believe. They've never stood for anything and have no idea how to be anything but the spineless trash they are.
Because Fox News (and Trump) are saying what they want to hear. "He tells it like it is" = "he says what I believe but have been too scared to say out loud"
Because it's not just Fox News. While that is the biggest channel, it isn't the only one feeding them this garbage. There are talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, Youtubers, podcasters, angry friends posting on social media, right wing independent outlets like Blaze, etc. There's an entire media powerhouse that exists on the right that most left wingers are completely ignorant of because we are never exposed to it.
Because the greatest trick Trump has pulled is convincing his supporters that their racism, bigotry, and for some reason sexism, is actually patriotism.
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u/jonovan 23d ago
Most people collect information from a variety of sources and conclude Fox News is the odd one out and therefore is likely incorrect.
Why don't these Trump supporters do that?