The Myth of Partisan Selective Exposure: A Portrait of the Online Political News Audience

Abstract

In a digital environment with many ideologically tinged news outlets, people often assume that audiences will consume content from politically like-minded sources. Such expectations are wholly in keeping with theories of selective exposure, which have long informed studies of media uses and effects (Zillmann & Bryant, 1985), and have helped create a powerful myth of a stark red/blue divide in news consumption (Dilliplane, 2011; Levendusky, 2013; Mullainathan & Shleifer, 2005). Although this myth has been contested using a variety of methods and media platforms (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2011; Messing & Westwood, 2014; Weeks, Ksiazek, & Holbert, 2016), it perseveres due to the increasingly extreme political polarization among voters within the United States and across the globe (Bump, 2016). In today's political climate, partisans disagree not just about policies but also about "basic facts" (Doherty, Kiley, & Johnson, 2016). "Filter bubbles" offer a straightforward explanation of the mechanism that makes this extreme partisan divide possible. As online news consumption shifts to social network sites (

Smartphone-size screens constrain cognitive access to video news stories

“…The experiment used here is modelled on one originally fielded by Soroka and McAdams (2015). Our approach draws considerably from the literature on news engagement, both with respect to news content and platform (Kulta & Karjaluto, 2016;Nelson & Webster, 2017), and where screen size is concerned (e.g. Detenber and Reeves, 1996;Lombard et al, 2000), as well as the extant literature on information processing and media effects (Grabe et al, 2000).…”

Social network sites and acquiring current affairs knowledge: The impact of Twitter and Facebook usage on learning about the news

“…Whereas news outlets today are present on a wide array of social media to drive traffic to their websites, these news media have the most followers on Twitter compared to other platforms (including Facebook): Twitter, thereby, drives relatively the most direct traffic to news websites (i.e., taking into account the number of users, see Ju et al, 2014). Nevertheless, Facebook is still a major source of traffic to news websites (Nelson & Webster, 2017). Although, this arguably can be explained by its unprecedented popularity rather than its nature of providing news: Even a marginal proportion of news of Facebook would lead to many clicks in absolute terms due to its scale.…”

Factors Motivating Customization and Echo Chamber Creation Within Digital News Environments

“…As previously noted, digital media platforms allow for individually tailored experiences that affect what users see. The concept of echo chambers-where individuals are largely exposed to conforming opinions-is well-debated in the literature, with some scholars disregarding their existence (Bruns, 2017;Garrett, 2009;Nelson & Webster, 2017) while others express fears that echo chambers will create political divides and ideological segregation (Flaxman et al, 2016). Despite the drawbacks of echo chambers, tailoring digital environments and narrowing information inputs may allow users to better handle the volume of information available.…”