How Right Wing Media Maintains Bias
Over the past few days I have been observing the Fox news website. Unfortunately, since I have a conservative parent, I am far too familiar with new source. I have been fascinated with our increasingly polarized political climate. We have more information at our fingertips than ever. Yet more people tend towards extreme new sources causing them to dig deeper into their biases.
Through observing the visual language of the website has helped me to learn how they are connecting with their audience. It is helpful to first understand the values liberal and conservatives.
Right wing values:
Patriotism, religion, tradition, rural, family values, the common man
Right wing attitudes towards change:
Past minded. Slow to change. Returning to an idealized memory of the past.
Left wing values:
Education, diversity, science, urban life
Left wing attitudes towards change: Progess, Future minded. Realizing an idealized vision of the future.
“So to have our typography understood, we must understand our readers, although typographers often design people much like themselves, it unwise to assume that we know about others and their experiences without knowing something about their cultural values.”
As I read about Context in Crisp’s book, the design choices of the site become clear. I imagine that the site ten years ago, did not look much different than it does now. The colors are patriotic, which reflect the nationalistic values of the right wing audience. A simple block san serif font amplifies hard hitting messages. There is nothing sleek or trendy to be found in the design. This may be the designers preference or it may show deference to the back to basics mindset of the audience.
Saloni and I concluded that the take away from this approach is that simple and direct communication inspires trust. People don’t trust anything that makes them think to much. Saloni proposed a trust recipie, shown below,
We eventually settled on a ven diagram showing the components of trust with trust at the intersection of all three.
Finally, my notes said some thing about an elevator pitch. I took that a bit literally and wrote a poem from the right wing news to it’s audience:
Don’t look over there
The fire pit is right here
Down the rabbit hole
More to hate and to fear
We share your values
We look just like you
The world is on fire
And liberals are liars
You’re under attack
But we’ve got your back
Maybe I should stick to designing….
