When Burglar Alarms Sound, Do Monitorial Citizens Pay Attention to Them? The Online News Choices of Journalists and Consumers During and After the 2008 U.S. Election Cycle

Boczkowski, Pablo J.; Mitchelstein, Eugenia; Walter, M. T.

doi:10.1080/10584609.2012.722173

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…We chose the top 50 sites because these sites account for over 90% of the reported online political news consumption. We chose October 2014 as the time period for our sample because news audiences exercise more interest in political news as the election day nears (Boczkowski, Mitchelstein, & Walter, 2012). This may lead to an overestimation of political news use generally; however, our focus is less on determining the size of the political news audience than it is understanding the behavior of this audience.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Nelson

Webster

2017

Social Media + Society

144

115

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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 (

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Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Nelson

Webster

2017

Social Media + Society

144

115

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…These qualitative case studies, while thick with description about newsroom culture and practice, nevertheless are thin in providing empirical data from which to measure, quantitatively , the extent to which audience behaviors might be influencing editorial decisions. In recent times, Boczkowski and his colleagues (see especially Boczkowski et al, 2011, in press; Boczkowski & Peer, 2011) have begun to address this gap by calculating the relative congruence between editors’ choices (signaled by story placement on news homepages) and audiences’ clicks (indicated by “most viewed” lists on the same news homepages). Their methods involved capturing data at a single point in time (Boczkowski et al, 2011) or at several points during the day (Boczkowski & Peer, 2011) and assessing this “snapshot” of thematic preferences, that is, the relative proportion of public affairs news represented among the top 10 choices for both the journalist and audience groups.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Amid this uncertainty about audience influence on professional news judgment, and in the absence of academic literature examining homepage choices of editors and related audience behaviors in a single study, Pablo Boczkowski and his colleagues have made a vital contribution to the literature. Their recent work (in particular, Boczkowski, 2010; Boczkowski, Mitchelstein, & Walter, 2011, in press; Boczkowski & Peer, 2011) has found a significant gap between the news preferences of journalists 3 and consumers: namely, that journalists generally prefer “hard” news (public affairs) while consumers generally prefer “soft” news (nonpublic affairs). 4 Missing from their analysis, however, is an examination of time-lagged influence one way or another.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Audience Clicks and News Placement

Lee

Lewis

Powers

2012

Communication Research

170

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The rise of sophisticated tools for tracking audiences online has begun to change the way media producers think about media audiences. This study examines this phenomenon in journalism, building on a revised theoretical model that accounts for greater audience engagement in the gatekeeping process. Research suggests that news editors, after long resisting or ignoring audience preferences, are becoming increasingly aware of and adaptive to consumer tastes as manifest via metrics. However, research also finds a gap in the news preferences of editors and audiences. This study asks: Who influences whom more in this disparity? Through longitudinal secondary data analysis of three U.S. online newspapers, and using structural equation modeling, this study finds that (a) audience clicks affect subsequent news placement, based on time-lagged analysis; (b) such influence intensifies during the course of the day; (c) there is no overall lagged effect of news placement on audience clicks; and (d) the lagged effect of audience clicks on news placement is stronger than the inverse. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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“…Especially in times leading up to elections, the confirmation bias could have important implications for democracy. In pre‐election periods, citizens are usually more interested in political topics and parties than in times of political routine (e.g., Boczkowski, Mitchelstein, & Walter, ). The extent to which citizens come across attitude‐consistent or attitude‐discrepant messages has an impact not only on their strength of partisanship but also on their likelihood of political participation (e.g., Knobloch‐Westerwick & Johnson, ; Knobloch‐Westerwick & Meng, ), both of which ultimately can affect voting decisions and election outcomes.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Online Information Searching in Germany and the United States: Confirmation Bias, Source Credibility, and Attitude Impacts

et al. 2015

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Before the 2013 German federal election, 121 participants completed a 2‐session online study (which paralleled a U.S. study before the 2012 presidential election). They browsed online search results pertaining to 4 political issues while selective exposure was unobtrusively measured. In a 4 × 2 × 2 (topic × issue stance × source credibility) within‐subjects design, the search results indicated either issue support or opposition, associated with low‐ or high‐credibility sources. Hypotheses were derived from cognitive dissonance, approach‐avoidance, and motivated cognition models. Findings yielded a confirmation bias. Attitude‐consistent exposure uniformly reinforced attitudes; attitude‐discrepant exposure uniformly weakened attitudes. Analyses with parallel U.S. data showed a stronger confirmation bias in the United States than in Germany.

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When Burglar Alarms Sound, Do Monitorial Citizens Pay Attention to Them? The Online News Choices of Journalists and Consumers During and After the 2008 U.S. Election Cycle

Cited by 17 publications

References 46 publications

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

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

Audience Clicks and News Placement

Political Online Information Searching in Germany and the United States: Confirmation Bias, Source Credibility, and Attitude Impacts

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