Partisanship, Ideology, and Selective Exposure: A Longitudinal Analysis of Media Consumption in Spain (2008–2019)

Abstract

The literature on selective exposure has shown that ideology and voting govern media consumption decisions, but longitudinal studies are still scarce. To fill this gap, this work analyzes: (a) whether selective exposure guided by ideology and partisanship to three media types (television, radio, and newspapers) is a stable phenomenon in Spain (2008–2019) as expected from a polarized pluralistic media system; and (b) which variable has the strongest effects on news choices (ideology or partisanship). Multinomial logistic regressions are carried out using data sources from six post-electoral surveys conducted by the Center for Sociological Research in the last six Spanish general elections (2008–2019). As dependent variables, we consider the four most important preferred media outlets for each media type, and as independent variables, we include the vote in general election and ideology. Moreover, interest in politics, gender, age, education, and social class are included as control variables, too. Findings show strong evidence that selective exposure based on ideology and partisanship is a well-established phenomenon in Spain for the three media types during the 11 years. Results also show that the effect of partisanship is always stronger than that of ideology for the three news media types. We conclude that selective exposure in Spain needs therefore to be conceived as partisan selective exposure.

Cross-cutting exposure to the Spanish public broadcasting system: influence of ideology, partisanship, and interest in politics on RTVE’s consumption

“…Overall, the results confirm that the consumption of state public television is guided by the audience's ideological and partisan preferences. In this sense, the results endorse the findings of previous works on the importance of political factors as predictors of public television consumption (Fraile & Meilán, 2012;Humanes, 2014Humanes, , 2016Ramírez-Dueñas & Vinuesa-Tejero, 2020;Humanes & Valera-Ordaz, 2023), as can be expected from a polarized pluralistic media system in which public broadcasting management tends to exhibit high levels of political parallelism (Hallin & Mancini, 2004).…”

“…The Spanish media system is a clear example of polarized pluralism (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), with a high level of political parallelism and in which political journalists act in a priestly manner toward political institutions and actors (van Dalen et al, 2012). Several studies confirm the importance of positions on the left-right axis in explaining media consumption in Spain (Fraile & Meilán, 2012;Humanes, 2014Humanes, , 2016Ramírez-Dueñas & Vinuesa-Tejero, 2020;Humanes & Valera-Ordaz, 2023;Ramírez-Dueñas & Humanes, 2023), as opposed to the political interest-oriented exposure, which prevails in Scandinavian countries (Strömbäck et al, 2013;Skovsgaard et al, 2016;Dahlgren, 2019). For example, research by Valera-Ordaz and Humanes (2022) accredits media consumption guided by political orientations in Spain by comparing selective exposure motivated by political preferences with selective exposure guided by interest in politics.…”

“…This type of study analyzes the evolution of RTVE's audiences over time in terms of ideological preferences, and it questions the transformation of RTVE's audiences because of successive changes of government. The results of these studies suggest that the composition of the audiences of La 1 -the main television channel of the public broadcasting corporation-changes according to the party in power, both in terms of ideology (Fraile & Meilán, 2012) and party identification (Humanes, 2014;Valera-Ordaz et al, 2021;Humanes & Valera-Ordaz, 2023), confirming, once again, the politicization suffered by the media -including the public media-in the media systems of southern Europe (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) and the instrumentalization of public media by those in power (Arriaza-Ibarra, 2013).…”

“…In other words, the audiovisual groups have not yet generally adopted ideological segmentation as a commercial strategy, apart from the Atresmedia group with La Sexta. However, political polarization, the transformation of the Spanish party system toward a multi-party model and increased competition in the audiovisual market suggest that, in the future, the segmentation strategy of the US audiovisual market could be assimilated into the Spanish case (Humanes & Valera-Ordaz, 2023).…”

Research on selective media exposure in Spain: a critical review of its findings, application phases, and blind spots

“…Political identity on the left-right axis: ideology, vote recall, sympathy and closeness to parties Political identity on the left-right axis: ideology, vote recall and closeness to parties (Ramírez-Dueñas; Vinuesa-Tejero, 2020;Cardenal et al, 2019a;2019b;Valera-Ordaz, 2023) Political identity on the centre-periphery axis: national identity, nationalism and support for independence(Valera-Ordaz, 2018; Sintes-Olivella; Fondevila-Gascón; Berbel-Giménez, 2023) Interest in politics (Humanes; Mellado, 2017; Rodríguez-Virgili; Sierra; Serrano-Puche, 2022; Valera-Ordaz; Humanes, 2022) Perceived confidence and quality of the media (Moreno-Moreno; Sanjurjo-San-Martín, 2020; Masip; Suau; Ruiz-Caballero, 2020b; Victoria-Mas et al, 2023) Political context, polarisation, longitudinal studies (Ramírez-Dueñas; Vinuesa-Tejero, 2020; Valera-Ordaz, 2022; Humanes; Valera-Ordaz, 2023¸ Sintes-Olivella; Fondevila-Gascón; Berbel-Giménez, 2023) Nature of the news (Cardenal et al, 2019a) Dependent variables Traditional media consumption: press, radio and television Traditional media consumption: press, radio and television Digital media consumption: digital press, social networks, internet browsing and news search enginesselective exposure in Spain. The study reveals that press, radio, and television audiences in Spain are significantly segmented by ideology.…”