Editing Media bias (section)

=== Demand-driven bias ===
Demand from media consumer for a particular type of bias is known as demand-driven bias. Consumers tend to favor a biased media based on their preferences, an example of [[confirmation bias]].<ref name=":5" />

There are three major factors that make this choice for consumers:
* Delegation, which takes a filtering approach to bias.
* Psychological utility, "consumers get direct utility from news whose bias matches their own prior beliefs."
* Reputation, consumers will make choices based on their prior beliefs and the reputation of the media companies.

Demand-side incentives are often not related to distortion. Competition can still affect the welfare and treatment of consumers, but it is not very effective in changing bias compared to the supply side.<ref name=":5" />

In demand-driven bias, preferences and attitudes of readers can be monitored on social media, and mass media write news that caters to readers based on them. Mass media skew news driven by viewership and profits, leading to the media bias. And readers are also easily attracted to lurid news, although they may be biased and not true enough.

Dong, Ren, and Nickerson investigated Chinese stock-related news and weibos in 20132014 from Sina Weibo and Sina Finance (4.27 million pieces of news and 43.17 million weibos) and found that news that aligns with Weibo users' beliefs are more likely to attract readers. Also, the information in biased reports also influences the decision-making of the readers.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Dong |first1=H. |last2=Ren |first2=J. |last3=Nickerson |first3=J. V. |date=January 2018 |title=Be Careful What You Read: Evidence of demand-driven media bias |url=https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10098190-careful-what-you-read-evidence-demand-driven-media-bias |journal=Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems |language=en}}</ref>

In Raymond and Taylor's test of weather forecast bias, they investigated weather reports of the New York Times during the games of the baseball team the Giants from 1890 to 1899. Their findings suggest that the New York Times produce biased weather forecast results depending on the region in which the Giants play. When they played at home in Manhattan, reports of sunny days predicting increased. From this study, Raymond and Taylor found that bias pattern in New York Times weather forecasts was consistent with demand-driven bias.<ref name=":4" />{{Better source needed|reason=The current source may not be sufficiently reliable as it had only 6 citations as of March 2024 ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=March 2024}}

Sendhil Mullainathan and Andrei Shleifer of Harvard University constructed a behavioural model in 2005, which is built around the assumption that readers and viewers hold beliefs that they would like to see confirmed by news providers, which they argue the market then provides.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Mullainathan |first1=Sendhil |last2=Shleifer |first2=Andrei |year=2005 |title=The Market for News |url=http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33078973 |journal=American Economic Review |volume=95 |issue=4 |pages=1031–1053 |doi=10.1257/0002828054825619 |jstor=4132704}}</ref>

Demand-driven models evaluate to what extent media bias stems from companies providing consumers what they want.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Gentzkow |first1=Matthew |last2=Shapiro |first2=Jesse M. |year=2006 |title=Media Bias and Reputation |url=https://www.brown.edu/Research/Shapiro/pdfs/bias.pdf |journal=Journal of Political Economy |volume=114 |issue=2 |pages=280–316 |doi=10.1086/499414 |s2cid=222429768}}</ref> Stromberg posits that because wealthier viewers result in more advertising revenue, the media as a result ends up targeted to whiter and more conservative consumers while wealthier urban markets may be more liberal and produce an opposite effect in newspapers in particular.<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Strömberg |first=David |date=November 1999 |title=The Politics of Public Spending |type=PhD |oclc=42036086 |publisher=Princeton University |url=http://people.su.se/~dstro/chapter1.pdf |archive-date=15 April 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100415122740/http://people.su.se/~dstro/chapter1.pdf |access-date=19 January 2021}}</ref>