Why is 'Our Neighborhood' always the victim?

I recently came across a study by Patrick van Erkel and his team from the University of Amsterdam, which has been widely discussed in political science and communication circles. The research is based on a panel survey conducted with approximately 4,000 people in Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland during the 2024 European Parliament elections.

The findings show that people believe internet-based fake news and disinformation are primarily targeting the political party they support. Disinformation suffered by the opposing side is either ignored or dismissed with the thought that "they deserved it anyway."

This concept, which was established at Stanford University in 1982 and is known in political communication literature as the Hostile Media Effect, tells us this: The stronger your attachment to an ideology or party, the more biased and ill-intentioned you perceive the mainstream media to be toward you.

This concept has expanded its influence even further with fake news produced by artificial intelligence and social media. Now, we are also facing a "Hostile Misinformation Effect." In Turkey, where polarization has practically become a way of life, we are witnessing much harsher and more concrete examples of this concept.

Everyone is a Victim in Turkey

The medium where disinformation is most frequently created in Turkey is social media. Algorithms trap us in echo chambers we call "filter bubbles," while opposing neighborhoods derive their own victimhood narratives from the world of news and content on social media—some of which are fake. This is because algorithms do not reward consensus and solidarity.

They reward anger, fear, and a sense of victimhood. Content that demonizes the other side receives more comments, engagement, and shares, and becomes more visible. As a result, people swim in a content universe that constantly reproduces not only their own ideas but also their own victimhood stories.

For example, remember the last general election period. Public opinion was shaped and fronts were solidified through fake audio recordings or edited videos produced by artificial intelligence that were circulated on X or TikTok. We all remember the responses of "Foreign powers and their domestic extensions are targeting our leader and our party!" to the messages from the opposing sides claiming, "The trolls have pressed the button again, they are running a smear campaign against us!"

Of course, one should not underestimate the "state wisdom" argument, which is frequently used to close ranks. Even if the sentences are constructed in different contexts, the story does not change: Everyone believes their own neighborhood is the target. Meanwhile, another finding of the study is that people who are "political news addicts" find news to be more biased and directed against them. Therefore, people who constantly follow daily politics, watch accounts that only support their own views, and feed only from their own neighborhood's news sources do not become more informed over time; they feel the hostile media effect more intensely.

After a point, every new piece of news that emerges does not pass the reality test first, but the political perspective test. The question "Is it true?" remains in the background. These people code the lies produced against the other side as "well-deserved truths," and the lies produced against their own side as "a grand conspiracy." Another striking detail in the study is that the hostile misinformation effect is experienced at a much higher level among people with right-wing ideological positions.

Perhaps the most important conclusion of the research is that all sides believe they are victims of disinformation. In this context, if you have started to think that every piece of news you see on the internet, on television, or in newspapers is just an assassination of character carried out against "your party," perhaps you have become a prisoner of algorithms and your own motivated reasoning impulses.

The antidote is not to leave our information flow to the mercy of profit-oriented algorithms, clickbait, and social media trolls. For this reason, we should add independent outlets that present the reality of the street and politics through an editorial filter and do not lie to the public to our "preferred sources" list in our browsers. Only then can we burst the filter bubbles surrounding us, break free from the noise of fake news and disinformation, and reach the truth.