Varieties of resonance: The subjective interpretations and utilizations of media output in France

The resonance of media output plays an important role in the age of misinformation and fake news. While scholars have extensively studied resonance, they have mostly focused on whether and why particular messages align with the predispositions of their intended audience rather than systematically analyzing how they are interpreted by the wider population. Based on computational text analyses of the news media coverage from 118 outlets in France and weekly surveys of what people retained from the news during the same period, this paper investigates the ways in which the frames used by the media trigger different types of resonance in accordance with people's diverse interpretations and utilizations of the messages to which they have been exposed. We theoretically argue that resonance is not just an objective alignment between a message and one's predispositions, but a subjective interpretation and utilization of the message heard. We empirically identify three different types of subjective resonance: problem-solving, problem aggravating, and problem-generating. This research contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms of resonance by expanding on previous works on the cognitive and emotional dimensions of resonance.