ABSTRACT

Audiences’ online information acquisition has raised questions about the nature of selective exposure in today’s high-choice and fragmented news environment. To offer an overview of the relative contribution of several key drivers of selective exposure to political news, we assess the guiding influence of (1) confirmation bias, (2) source bias, and (3) negativity bias. The findings of an experiment in two countries (UK and US, N = 858), demonstrate that confirmation bias has the most profound effect on selective exposure into news on immigration and the privatization of health-care systems, in conjunction with comparable and significant effects of source and negativity biases. The studied moderating role of preexisting levels of involvement and skepticism provides additional insights into news selection mechanisms. We conclude that today’s online media diets are guided by different biases, which may fragment audiences based on their news preferences and issue positions.

摘要

受众群体的在线信息获取提出了有关当今选择和零散的新闻环境中选择性曝光的性质的疑问。为了概述选择性暴露于政治新闻的几个主要驱动因素的相对贡献，我们评估了（1）确认偏差，（2）来源偏差和（3）消极偏差的指导影响。实验的两个国家（美国和英国，这一发现ñ = 858），证明确认偏见对有选择地接触有关移民的新闻和医疗保健系统的私有化具有最深远的影响，同时与来源和消极偏见的可比性和重大影响相结合。预先存在的参与和怀疑程度的调节作用已为新闻选择机制提供了更多见解。我们得出的结论是，当今的在线媒体饮食受到不同偏见的指导，这些偏见可能会根据受众的新闻偏好和发布位置来使其分散。