ABSTRACT Today’s hybridised media landscape has brought about fundamental shifts in political news consumption, increasing concerns about polarisation and ‘echo chambers.’ There is, however, no clear consensus regarding how echo chambers impact exposure to dissenting ideas or the purpose they serve for audiences. This paper discusses research combining Critical Discourse Analysis with a cultural studies Audience Reception epistemology to explore how 24 Western Australians engage with online news representations of asylum seekers. Findings revealed that, while many self-selected into echo chambers, most were motivated by convenience and/or self-care, and echo chambers did not restrict exposure to dissenting ideas. I argue that these findings challenge those reported in the ‘selective exposure’ literature, aligning more closely with a ‘uses and gratifications’ framework. I discuss the implications for communications scholarship and practice, highlighting a need to re-orient conceptualisations of news consumption that problematise echo chambers and more closely examine the different functions echo chambers serve.

中文翻译：

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是什么促使政治新闻参与数字空间？在极化和混合媒体生态学中重新想象“回声室”

摘要当今的混合媒体格局已引起政治新闻消费的根本转变，越来越引起人们对两极化和“回声室”的担忧。但是，关于回声室如何影响不同意见或它们为受众服务的目的，目前尚无明确共识。本文讨论了将批评性话语分析与文化研究受众接受认识论相结合的研究，以探索24名西澳大利亚人如何与寻求庇护者的在线新闻节目互动。研究发现表明，尽管许多人被自己选择进入回声室，但大多数人是出于便利和/或自我照顾的动机，而回声室并没有限制接触异议。我认为这些发现挑战了“选择性暴露”文献中的报道，与“使用和满足”框架更加紧密地结合。我讨论了通信学术和实践的意义，强调了需要重新定位使消声室成问题的新闻消费的概念，并更加仔细地研究回声室的不同功能。