A study released this week by a University of Colorado researcher shows that websites that post “fake news” are twice as influential in America than fact-checking sites such as Politifact and Snopes.

Fake news websites — sites that look credible but are not actually real media organizations, according to assistant professor Chris Vargo of CU’s College of Media, Communication and Information — outpaced fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes, both in terms of articles produced each month and their influence on the broader media agenda during the study’s two-year timeline.

In addition to the fact-checking websites getting outpaced, traditional media outlets — which Vargo listed as options like the Washington Post, local television stations and local newspapers — felt increasing pressure to respond to fake news articles and refute false claims, directing and diverting attention to and from issues.

“In this way, fake news had the ability to keep things that they want in the agenda,” Vargo said.

The newly-released book, “Fixing Post-Truth Politics,” examines the rise of “fake news” in great detail. One aspect of the rise that is greatly overlooked is the human tendency for someone to seek out information in which he or she agrees, while discounting information with which he or she disagrees.

Psychologists call the theory “selective exposure:” Upon exposure to specific aspects of information, people tend to incorporate specific portions into their mindset. These choices are made based on their perspectives, beliefs, attitudes and decisions. People mentally dissect the information to which they are exposed, and tend to select favorable evidence while ignoring the unfavorable.

In the early 1960s, Columbia University researcher Joseph T. Klapper asserted in his book “The Effects Of Mass Communication” that audiences were not passive targets of political and commercial propaganda from mass media, but that mass media reinforces their previously held convictions.

Throughout the book, he argued that the media has a small amount of power to influence people and, most of the time, it just reinforces our preexisting attitudes and beliefs. He argued that the media effects of relaying or spreading new public messages or ideas were minimal because there is a wide variety of ways in which individuals filter such content. Due to this tendency, Klapper argued that media content must be able to ignite some type of cognitive activity in an individual in order to communicate its message.

An example of this is the rush to be first with a story. As a reader, you are more likely to react to something the first time you read or hear about it, particularly if it is unfamiliar or sensational. After your first consumption of a story, you are much less likely to click on the same story from other news outlets. The newness of a story ignites the cognitive activities of surprise and curiosity.

Before Klapper’s research, the prevailing opinion was that mass media had a substantial power to sway individual opinion and that audiences were passive consumers of prevailing media propaganda. However, Klapper’s research showed that people gravitated towards media messages that bolstered previously held convictions set by their peer groups, societal influences, and family structures. This did not change over time, even when presented with more recent media messages.

Klapper noted that audiences were selective to the types of programming that they consumed. Adults would patronize media that was appropriate for their demographics and children would steer clear of media that was boring to them. Individuals would either accept or reject a mass media message based upon internal filters that were innate to that person.

This also helps to explain the extreme level of bitterness and distaste we often see people on one side of the political divide have for people from the other side. The messages from the niche media are not only supportive of the people and positions from the side you are on, but hyper-critical of the other side. If your selective exposure has you inclined to believe that all ideas on your side of the spectrum are great, you may also believe that ideas from the other side are garbage and perhaps even dangerous.

To take that a step further, you may believe thanks to selective exposure that someone who supports the latter beliefs, by association, has a garbage personality and perhaps is even dangerous — even though there is a 99.9999 percent chance that is not the case at all.

Feeding into this human instinct has been the rise of partisan media:

The (Colorado) study chose which news outlets were partisan based on “a number of organizations that would point out their partisan nature,” Vargo said. These partisan sources included outlets like the Huffington Post, Salon, Fox News and Breitbart.

“Especially in the election, partisan media really appeared to be especially susceptible to the agendas of fake news,” Vargo said. “It goes back to this idea of partisan media kind of abusing any source they can to try to illustrate or support a claim they’re making.”

In “Fixing Post-Truth Politics,” author Tom Mitsoff examines the conscious decisions of Fox News and MSNBC to slant their news to the conservative and liberal viewpoints, respectively:

Fox News and MSNBC understood this trend many years ago. They quickly realized that becoming merely a copy of CNN — their primary competitor in the 24-hour news channel niche — would be a path to financial red ink. So, they catered to specific political mindsets – MSNBC went Democratic / liberal, and Fox News went Republican / conservative.

Those were brilliant business strategies. Data from Nielsen, the company that gathers viewership data that helps determine ratings, showed that Fox News was the most-watched of the cable news channels for the 15^th straight year in 2016. MSNBC’s ratings showed substantial year-over-year improvement in 2016 compared to 2015, though the network still finished third behind Fox and CNN.

As mentioned earlier, conservative-based media is a growth market and continues to grow in the wake of the 2016 election. Fox News’s dominance in cable news is attributable to that business decision made many years ago, recognizing an underserved market.

A “just-the-facts” approach to news delivery traditionally did not incorporate political favoritism. But the company that is standing out among cable news providers went that route. Fox’s high ratings have brought great financial success, much like the conservative radio talk shows. And make no mistake, other news providers are looking for a way to gain attention and consumer eyeballs just like Fox.

For much more on the frenetic changes in the media landscape in recent years, read “Fixing Post-Truth Politics,” available via Amazon.