Fox fuels anger with its hyperbolic narratives because anger disrupts the ability to seek, rationalize, and weigh information. This leads to a psychological bias called affect heuristic, where people use mental shortcuts that are significantly influenced by emotion. It’s the same bias that makes people say things they later regret in a fit of anger—in the heat of the moment they are, in fact, thinking differently. With their guards down, Fox’s audience is then told they are part of a group of “ordinary Americans.” This identity is hammered home over and over, which is why there are so many
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