Social Media News Use and Political Cynicism: Differential Pathways Through “News Finds Me” Perception

Abstract

As citizens inadvertently "encounter" news and political information through digital media and social networking sites, they might perceive themselves to be well informed about politics without actively seeking political information, which has been labeled as the "News Finds Me" (NFM) perception. We attempt to explicate and further advance the conceptualization and corresponding measurement of "News Finds Me" perception.

Origin and evolution of the News Finds Me perception: Review of theory and effects

“…The most current empirical instrument of the NFM includes six items, two per dimension, tapping on the three dimensions of the construct [see Table 1; for similar results with Austrian data see Song et al, (2020)]. Drawing on survey data collected in 2019 in the USA, and in 2020 in Italy and Portugal, results indicate the three-factor construct of NFM has a much better fit for the data than a single factor construct.…”

“…Previous NFM literature concluded the phenomenon encompasses three conceptual dimensions: being informed, not seeking, reliance on peers (Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2017;Lee, 2020;Song et al, 2020;Strauß et al, 2021). The following section captures these three dimensions and proposes a new one named reliance on algorithmic news.…”

“…NFM people hold the epistemic belief that they are well-informed about current political affairs and public events (Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2017;Song et al, 2020;Strauß et al, 2021). To point out, different from news avoiders (Newman et al, 2017), NFM people do have the intention to stay informed about the news as they take place, just engaging less actively and more strategically.…”

“…Gradually, the absence of regular active exposure to news makes it less likely for users to cultivate political interests, and importantly, this steady decrease in political interest is further negatively associated to a decrease in voting (Gil de Zúñiga; Diehl, 2019;Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2020). Additionally, NFM has been linked with political cynicism, especially the reliance on peer dimension of NFM, indicating that an overreliance on peers from one's social network to provide political information may result in the detachment from the political process, thus increasing people's political cynicism (Song et al, 2020).…”

Haber Edinme Amaçlı Sosyal Medya Kullanım Sıklığının Haber Paylaşma Davranışı Üzerindeki Rolü: Bir Saha Çalışması

“…Ayrıca demografik özellikler açısından da haber paylaĢma davranıĢının farklılaĢıp farklılaĢmadığının tespiti yapılmak istenmiĢtir. Daha önceki yapılan çalıĢmalarda sosyal medyayı genelde ya da özelde haber edinme amaçlı kullanma (Palekar ve Sedera, 2018;Gabore ve Xiujun, 2018;Song, Zuniga ve Boomgaarden, 2020) ve sosyal medyada haber paylaĢma (Lee ve Ma, 2012;Karnowski, Leonhard ve Kümpel, 2017;Swart, Peters ve Broersma, 2018;Thompson vd., 2019;Ünal, 2019;Karaman ve Önder, 2017) açısından değerlendirmeler söz konusu olsa da bu çalıĢma söz konusu iki olguyu yapılmıĢ çalıĢmalardan farklı olarak bireylerin kullanım sıklıkları özelinde incelemektedir. Özellikle bireylerin haber edinme amaçlı kullanım sıklıklarına göre kümelendirilmesi ve kümelerin yine bireylerin demografik özellikleri açısından incelenmesi, bu bireylere yönelik mevcut profili çizer niteliktedir.…”