Academic Journal

A Media Repertoires Approach to Selective Exposure: News Consumption and Political Polarization in Eastern Europe

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: A Media Repertoires Approach to Selective Exposure: News Consumption and Political Polarization in Eastern Europe
المؤلفون: Tóth, Fanni, Mihelj, Sabina, Štětka, Václav, Kondor, Katherine
المساهمون: Economic and Social Research Council
المصدر: The International Journal of Press/Politics ; volume 28, issue 4, page 884-908 ; ISSN 1940-1612 1940-1620
بيانات النشر: SAGE Publications
سنة النشر: 2022
الوصف: In recent years, links between selective news exposure and political polarisation have attracted considerable attention among communication scholars. However, while the existence of selective exposure has been documented in both offline and online environments, the evidence of its extent and its impact on political polarisation is far from unanimous. To address these questions, and also to bridge methodological and geographical gaps in existing research, this paper adopts a media repertoires approach to investigate selective news exposure and polarisation in four Eastern European countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Serbia. Using a combination of population surveys, expert surveys and qualitative interviews, the data for the study were collected between November 2019 and May 2020. We identify five types of news repertoires based on their relative openness to counter-attitudinal sources, and show that selective news repertoires are present in 29% of the entire sample. Our findings also reveal significant cross-country differences, with the more selective news repertoires more prominent in countries characterised by higher levels of polarisation. Furthermore, while the selection of news sources is in line with people's electoral (and to a lesser extent ideological) preferences, our findings show that exposure to counter-attitudinal sources can also be strongly correlated with political and ideological leanings. Our qualitative data suggest that this is because exposure to counter-attitudinal sources can reinforce attitudes, and potentially contribute to polarisation. Qualitative data also highlight the influence of environmental factors (e.g., family), and suggest that selective news consumption is associated with normatively different conceptions of media trust.
نوع الوثيقة: article in journal/newspaper
اللغة: English
DOI: 10.1177/19401612211072552
الاتاحة: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/19401612211072552
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/19401612211072552
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/19401612211072552
Rights: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
رقم الانضمام: edsbas.9FB3CCAA
قاعدة البيانات: BASE
الوصف
DOI:10.1177/19401612211072552