While partisan selective exposure could drive audience fragmentation, other individual factors might also differentiate news diets. This study applies a method that disentangles the differential contributions of the individual characteristics to audience duplication networks. By analyzing a nationally representative survey about US adults’ media use in 2019 (N = 12,043), we demonstrate that news fragmentation is driven by a myriad of individual factors, such as gender, race, and religiosity. Partisanship is still an important driver. We also distinguish between media exposure and media trust, showing that many cross-cutting ties in co-exposure networks disappear when media trust is considered. We conclude that audience fragmentation research should extend beyond ideological selectivity and additionally investigate how and why other individual-level preferences differentially contribute to fragmentation both in news exposure and in news trust.

尽管党派的选择性接触可能会导致受众分散，但其他个人因素也可能使新闻饮食有所不同。这项研究应用了一种方法，可以消除个体特征对受众重复网络的不同贡献。通过分析有关2019年美国成年人媒体使用情况的全国代表性调查（N = 12,043），我们证明了新闻碎片是由众多个体因素（例如性别，种族和宗教信仰）驱动的。党派关系仍然是重要的推动力。我们还区分了媒体曝光度和媒体信任度，这表明当考虑到媒体信任度时，共同曝光网络中的许多交叉联系都会消失。我们得出的结论是，受众分散化研究应该超越意识形态选择性，并且还要研究其他个人层面的偏好如何以及为什么在新闻曝光和新闻信任方面差异化地导致碎片化。