Individuals seeking news content face a variety of options in the current media landscape, yet scholarly research provides little evidence regarding the conditions under which they might become more or less open to different partisan news outlets. Drawing on the case of Donald Trump’s critiques of Fox News, I argue that elite rhetoric plays an important role in this process for members of both parties. I first conduct an original content analysis of Trump’s tweets from 2017 to 2020 and find that he increasingly attacked Fox News on this platform. Notably, Trump’s increasingly critical rhetoric about Fox correlates significantly with decreases in both Fox’s daytime and prime-time ratings. Two survey experiments shed light on how individuals respond to this intraparty conflict, and I find that Trump’s rhetoric affects both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans view Fox as less conservative and more critical of Trump when exposed to his critiques of the outlet. However, Republicans do not change their viewing habits until Trump promotes an alternative to Fox like OANN. Democrats respond to Trump’s rhetoric by updating their perceptions of Fox’s coverage and ideology as well as increasing their willingness to watch the channel, both in isolation and relative to an alternative like OANN. The results suggest that elite rhetoric is instrumental in shaping views of and demand for partisan outlets among members of both parties and can elevate more ideologically extreme sources among followers. Thus, elite rhetoric serves as a meaningful cue for individuals navigating an increasingly fragmented partisan media landscape.

中文翻译：

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精英攻击党派媒体的影响：来自特朗普和福克斯新闻的证据

在当前的媒体环境中，寻求新闻内容的个人面临着各种各样的选择，但学术研究几乎没有提供证据表明他们在什么条件下可能会对不同党派新闻媒体或多或少地持开放态度。借鉴唐纳德·特朗普对福克斯新闻的批评，我认为精英言论在这一过程中对两党成员都发挥着重要作用。我首先对特朗普2017年至2020年的推文进行了原创内容分析，发现他在这个平台上越来越多地攻击福克斯新闻。值得注意的是，特朗普对福克斯日益批评的言论与福克斯白天和黄金时段收视率的下降密切相关。两项调查实验揭示了个人如何应对这种党内冲突，我发现特朗普的言论对共和党和民主党都有影响。共和党人认为福克斯在面对特朗普对该媒体的批评时不那么保守，而是对特朗普更加持批评态度。然而，在特朗普推出像 OANN 这样的福克斯替代方案之前，共和党人不会改变他们的收视习惯。民主党人对特朗普的言论做出了回应，他们更新了对福克斯新闻报道和意识形态的看法，并提高了观看该频道的意愿，无论是孤立观看还是相对于 OANN 等替代频道。结果表明，精英言论有助于塑造两党成员对党派渠道的看法和需求，并可以在追随者中提升意识形态上更加极端的来源。因此，精英言论对于个人在日益分散的党派媒体格局中提供了有意义的提示。