The role of affective and cognitive involvement in the mitigating effects of AI source cues on hostile media bias

•AI source cues can help reduce perceived bias towards a news source.•The mitigating effect depends on ideology congruency between reader and the source.•The level of cognitive and affective involvement also affects the mitigating effect.•AI cues from an incongruent source reduced bias for highly involved individuals.•The effect was reversed for those who are negatively involved with the issue. With an experimental design, this study examined the effect of source cues (Human vs. AI) on hostile media bias through heuristic machine evaluation of machine and human social media profiles. This study also explored the effects of affective and cognitive involvement as moderators along with media source-self ideological incongruity (source incongruity). A 2 (human vs. AI) x 3 (CNN vs. USA Today vs. Fox News) experimental study was conducted (n = 434). Participants exhibited less hostile media bias when presented with a news story with AI source cues through heuristic machine evaluation. The mitigating effect was stronger for those viewing news from an incongruent news source. Such moderated mediated effect was further moderated by two types of involvement (i.e., affective and cognitive). Implications for future research surrounding the two types of involvement, source incongruity, machine heuristic evaluations, and hostile media bias are discussed in light of our findings.