Unveiling Complexity: Latent Profiles of Political News Consumption across Media Types and their Relations to Political Views and their Extremity

Abstract

Inconsistent findings regarding the relationships between echo chamber/filter bubble-related phenomena and political views were addressed by investigating associations between different operationalizations of media diversity and views on various political issue domains.Study 1 involved N = 714/721 (samples 1/2) participants who completed scales on news consumption, social and economic orientations, affective polarization, and control variables online. Study 2 included N = 725/713 (samples 3/4) participants who completed similar scales but with a focus on views on war and the war against Ukraine.Study 1 yielded few significant results. Across Study 2 samples, positive relations between counter-attitudinal news consumption and a pro-Russian stance on the war against Ukraine were observed. The opposite was true for consuming news providing different perspectives. The findings indicate a bias when assessing counter-attitudinal news consumption, as media often favors majority opinions. Additionally, future research should re-think the conceptualization of extremity and take into account context variables.