Today, people can easily select media outlets sharing their political predispositions, a behavior known as partisan selective exposure. Additional research is needed, however, to better understand ...the causes and consequences of partisan selective exposure. This study investigates the relationship between partisan selective exposure and political polarization using data from the National Annenberg Election Survey. Cross‐sectional results show strong evidence that partisan selective exposure is related to polarization. Over‐time analyses document that partisan selective exposure leads to polarization. Some evidence supports the reverse causal direction, namely that polarization leads to partisan selective exposure. Implications for the study of media effects and normative implications—both positive and negative—are discussed.
La polarisation et l’exposition sélective partisane
Natalie Jomini Stroud
De nos jours, les gens peuvent aisément sélectionner les médias qui partagent leurs prédispositions politiques, un comportement connu sous le nom de l’exposition sélective partisane. Des études additionnelles sont toutefois nécessaires pour mieux comprendre les causes et les conséquences de l’exposition sélective partisane. Cette étude explore la relation entre l’exposition sélective partisane et la polarisation politique à partir de données du National Annenberg Election Survey. Les résultats en coupe transversale offrent des preuves solides à l’effet que l’exposition sélective partisane est liée à la polarisation. Des analyses au fil du temps documentent le fait que l’exposition sélective partisane mène à la polarisation. Certaines preuves soutiennent la direction causale inverse, à savoir que la polarisation mène à l’exposition sélective partisane. Les implications pour l’étude des effets médiatiques et les conséquences normatives (tant positives que négatives) sont discutées.
Mots clés : exposition sélective, polarisation, effets médiatiques, communication politique
Polarisierung und voreingenommene selektive Wahrnehmung
Natalie Jomini Stroud
Heutzutage können Menschen ohne Probleme Medienangebote auswählen, die ihre politischen Prädispositionen widerspiegeln ‐ ein Verhalten, welches als voreingenommene selektive Wahrnehmung bezeichnet wird. Wir benötigen allerdings intensivere Forschung, um die Gründe und Konsequenzen dieser voreingenommenen selektiven Wahrnehmung besser zu verstehen. Die Studie untersucht die Beziehung zwischen voreingenommener selektiver Wahrnehmung und politischer Polarisierung mittels Daten der Nationalen Annenberg Wahlbefragung. Querschnittsanalysen geben deutliche Hinweise darauf, dass voreingenommene selektive Wahrnehmung in Zusammenhang mit Polarisierung steht. Analysen im Zeitverlauf dokumentieren, dass voreingenommene selektive Wahrnehmung zu Polarisierung führt. Einige Hinweise stützen auch die umgekehrte Kausalrichtung, nämlich dass Polarisierung zu voreingenommener selektiver Wahrnehmung führt. Implikationen für die Untersuchung von Medienwirkungen und normative Implikationen – positiv als auch negativ – werden diskutiert.
Schlüsselbegriffe: selektive Wahrnehmung, Polarisierung, Medienwirkungen, politische Kommunikation
This study examines selective exposure to political information, arguing that attraction to proattitudinal information and aversion to counterattitudinal information are distinct phenomena, and that ...the tendency to engage in these behaviors varies by partisanship. Data collected in a strict online experiment support these predictions. Republicans are significantly more likely to engage in selective avoidance of predominantly counterattitudinal information than those with other partisan affiliations, while non‐Republicans are significantly more likely to select a story that includes proattitudinal information, regardless of its counterattitudinal content. Individuals across the political spectrum are receptive to predominantly proattitudinal content and to content that offers a mix of views, but the form these preferences take varies by partisanship. The political significance of these findings is discussed.
Using data from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey, this study looks at the relationships between Internet access and online exposure to information about the presidential campaign and ...political efficacy, knowledge, and participation. Results show that Internet access and online exposure to information about the presidential campaign are significantly associated with these important political variables. Several of the associations between Internet access and exposure with political efficacy, knowledge, and participation are detectable even when taking sociodemographic variables, party identification, partisan strength, political interest, and other media exposures variables into account. Although statistically significant, these associations are quite small.
The Gender Gap in Online News Comment Sections Van Duyn, Emily; Peacock, Cynthia; Stroud, Natalie Jomini
Social science computer review,
04/2021, Letnik:
39, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Women are less likely than men to discuss or engage in politics. This study extends research on the gender gap in politics to an online context by exploring whether women are less likely to engage in ...political discussion online, whether this follows socialization theories of a private versus public sphere distinction, and whether perceptions of incivility help to explain these gender differences. Through a survey of commenters and comment readers based on a probability sample in the United States (n = 965) and a survey of actual commenters and comment readers across 20 news sites (n = 12,110), we find that women are less likely than men to comment online, particularly on state, national, or international topics. However, women are more likely than men to comment on local news. We also find that perceptions of incivility are related to commenting, although they do little to explain gender differences in commenting. Our results suggest that the gender gap in online political discussion is the product of women’s political socialization more so than the civility of the site.
We Should Not Get Rid of Incivility Online Masullo Chen, Gina; Muddiman, Ashley; Wilner, Tamar ...
Social media + society,
07/2019, Letnik:
5, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Incivility and toxicity have become concepts du jour in research about social media. The clear normative implication in much of this research is that incivility is bad and should be eliminated. ...Extensive research—including some that we’ve authored—has been dedicated to finding ways to reduce or eliminate incivility from online discussion spaces. In our work as part of the Civic Signals Initiative, we’ve been thinking carefully about what metrics should be adopted by social media platforms eager to create better spaces for their users. When we tell people about this project, removing incivility from the platforms frequently comes up as a suggested metric. In thinking about incivility, however, we’ve become less convinced that it is desirable, or even possible, for social media platforms to remove all uncivil content. In this short essay, we discuss research on incivility, our rationale for a more complicated normative stance regarding incivility, and what other orientations may be more useful. We conclude with a post mortem arguing that we should not abandon research on incivility altogether, but we should recognize the limitations of a concept that is difficult to universalize.
In an era where expertise is increasingly critiqued, this study draws from the research on expertise and scientist stereotyping to explore who the public considers to be a scientist in the context of ...media coverage about climate change and genetically modified organisms. Using survey data from the United States, we find that political ideology and science knowledge affect who the US public believes is a scientist in these domains. Our results suggest important differences in the role of science media attention and science media selection in the publics “scientist” labeling. In addition, we replicate previous work and find that compared to other people who work in science, those with PhDs in Biology and Chemistry are most commonly seen as scientists.
Increasing attention has been placed to the societal downsides of social media, and appropriately so. Less attention has been paid to the qualities to which social media should aspire. We contend ...that this is critically important. Not only must social media, and social media scholars, identify and reduce negative outcomes, but we must also critically engage with what is desirable. The purpose of this theoretical essay is to propose a normative framework for digital public spaces. We lay out four categories, and 14 sub-categories, of normative ideals to which social media could aspire. It is our hope that chronicling these qualities will allow scholars to more critically reflect on their normative assumptions when they research social media and will encourage practitioners to think about how social media could be built with these ideals in mind.
Although diverse political networks are seen as democratically valuable, online social networks enable the construction and maintenance of networks that are less diverse. In this study, we explore ...the cultivation of like-minded networks through blocking those sharing counter-attitudinal partisan memes and engaging with pro-attitudinal partisan memes. We then test the efficacy of an intervention to reduce the spread of homophily-inducing partisan memes. We present four experiments. Study 1 establishes that people react differently to partisan memes than to partisan news. Studies 1-4 confirm that people react differently to pro- and counter-attitudinal memes. Studies 3 and 4 provide limited evidence that reminding people of the diversity of their online networks can reduce digital behaviors that produce more homophilous networks. The results provide initial evidence that partisan memes may give rise to a spiral of homophily.
Partisan incivility is prevalent in news comments, but we have limited insight into how journalists and news users engage with it. Gatekeeping, cognitive bias, and social identity theories suggest ...that journalists may tolerate incivility while users actively promote partisan incivility. Using 9.6 million comments from The New York Times, we analyze whether the presence of uncivil and partisan terms affects how journalists and news users engage with comments. Results show that partisanship and incivility increase recommendations and the likelihood of receiving an abuse flag. Swearing increases the likelihood of a comment being rejected and reduces the chances of being highlighted as a NYT Pick. These findings suggest that journalists and news users interact with partisan incivility differently, and that some forms of incivility may be promoted or tacitly accepted in comments.
Today, people have ample opportunity to engage in selective exposure, the selection of information matching their beliefs. Whether this is occurring, however, is a matter of debate. While some worry ...that people increasingly are seeking out likeminded views, others propose that newer media provide an increased opportunity for exposure to diverse views. In returning to the concept of selective exposure, this article argues that certain topics, such as politics, are more likely to inspire selective exposure and that research should investigate habitual media exposure patterns, as opposed to single exposure decisions. This study investigates whether different media types (newspapers, political talk radio, cable news, and Internet) are more likely to inspire selective exposure. Using data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey, evidence supports the idea that people's political beliefs are related to their media exposure--a pattern that persists across media types. Over-time analyses suggest that people's political beliefs motivate their media use patterns and that cable news audiences became increasingly politically divided over the course of the 2004 election.
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