No trade-offs between news and entertainment: Evidence from online engagement data

Abstract

In today’s high-choice media environment, some scholars are concerned that people selectively consume media content based on personal interests and avoid others, which might lead to audience fragmentation across different content genres. Individually, there might be trade-offs between those genres, especially entertainment versus news. This study analyzed a large user engagement dataset (~40,000 users’ comments) collected from the Chinese information application Toutiao, one of the most popular information distribution platforms in China. The results showed that (1) the commenters were not fragmented between content genres, and (2) the users’ news engagement was positively associated with their entertainment engagement. The findings indicate that the availability of high media choices will not reduce the news engagement of those who have strong interest in entertainment. Instead, news engagement might increase alongside the augmentation of the sum of information engagement. Finally, we discussed the differences between relative news engagement and absolute news engagement.

Non-News Websites Expose People to More Political Content Than News Websites: Evidence from Browsing Data in Three Countries

“…Citizens have unprecedented amount of content at their disposal and can easily immerse themselves in movies, sports, or celebrity life. In fact, although engagement with news and entertainment is not mutually exclusive (Huang & Yang, 2022 ), news consumption does decrease the more choice is available to people, a pattern detected in the U.S (Feldman et al, 2013 ; Prior, 2007 ) and in Europe (Aalberg et al, 2013 ). Ultimately, large groups of society may further withdraw from the political process, become less knowledgeable, more susceptible to populism or misinformation, and less able to vote in accordance with their personal or group interests (Prior, 2007 ).…”

Do social media undermine social cohesion? A critical review

“…Across six countries, overall news consumption was very low—the probability that someone would consume news ranged from 0.005 in the United States to 0.02 in Spain. However, using social media substantially increased the odds that the user would then visit a news site (see also Huang & Yang, 2022). Furthermore, inadvertent exposure to political content is correlated with political participation (Valeriani & Vaccari, 2016).…”

Non-news websites expose people to more political content than news websites: Evidence from browsing data in three countries

“…Citizens have unprecedented amount of content at their disposal and can easily immerse themselves in movies, sports, fashion, or celebrity life. In fact, although engagement with news and entertainment is not mutually exclusive (Huang & Yang, 2022), news consumption does decrease and that of entertainment increases the more choice is available to people, a pattern detected in the U.S. (Feldman et al, 2013;Prior, 2007) and in Europe (Aalberg, Blekesaune, & Elvestad, 2013). Ultimately, large groups of citizens may further withdraw from the political process, become less knowledgeable, more susceptible to populism or misinformation, and less able to vote in accordance with their personal or group interests (Prior, 2007).…”