Demand for Slant: How Abstention Shapes Voters' Choice of News Media

Abstract

Political commentators warn that the fragmentation of the modern media landscape induces voters to withdraw into ‘information cocoons' and segregate along ideological lines. We show that the option to abstain breaks ideological segregation and generates ‘cross‐over' in news consumption: voters with considerable leanings towards a candidate demand information that is less biased towards that candidate than voters who are more centrist. This non‐monotonicity in the demand for slant makes voters' ideologies non‐recoverable from their choice of news media and generates disproportionate demand for media outlets that are centrist or only moderately biased. It also implies that polarisation of the electorate may lead to an ideological moderation in news consumption.

The supply of media slant across outlets and demand for slant within outlets: Evidence from US presidential campaign news

“…Gentkzow et al (2015) distinguish between two mechanisms for this case, which they refer to as "delegation" and "reputation". Delegation is the case of consumers rationally preferring a like-minded news source because it provides optimal instrumental value for decisions (e.g., Burke, 2008;Chan and Suen, 2008;Oliveros and Várdy, 2015;Fang, 2016). For example, in Chan and Suen's model, like-minded news sources provide media consumers with more useful information about whom to vote for.…”

Social Connectivity, Media Bias, and Correlation Neglect

“…In a setting without voting or strategic senders,Levy and Razin (2018) examine information exchange on a social network by agents who may neglect correlation, whileAcemoglu et al (2010) analyse exchange of information when some agents do not fully update their beliefs.8 In a related experimental paper,Kawamura and Vlaseros (2017) show that voters overweigh an unbiased public signal even in a setting without deliberation (and hence without observing multiple realisations of the same message). Our paper suggests that information exchange reinforces this effect, implying that a when the signal comes from a biased newspaper, the bias would increase when connectivity is larger.9 See, for example,Bernhardt et al, 2008, Gentzkow and Shapiro, 2010, Duggan and Martinelli (2011,Oliveros and Várdy, 2015, Piolatto andSchuett, 2015, and others. 10 This is without loss of generality, as the report can always be interpreted as a recommendation.…”

Information Gatekeeping and Media Bias

“…In each period, the incumbent grants access to only one of these outlets or denies access to all. 39 The incumbent's optimal access control strategy is again driven by the same considerations as in Proposition 1. Among outlets that satisfy the public credibility condition, the incumbent grants first-period access to the one with the highest probability of being corrupt.…”

“…See The Washington Post article "It's been 263 days since Hillary Clinton last held a press conference. "on August 24, 2016 39. In our model, there is no reason for the incumbent to grant access to more than one outlet.…”