Open AccessA Media Repertoires Approach to Selective Exposure: News Consumption and Political Polarization in Eastern Europe
Author(s) -
Fanni Tóth,
Sabina Mihelj,
Václav Štětka,
Katherine Kondor
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
the international journal of press/politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.064
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1040-1620
pISSN - 1940-1612
DOI - 10.1177/19401612211072552
Subject(s) - openness to experience , ideology , politics , news media , polarization (electrochemistry) , consumption (sociology) , population , political science , qualitative research , czech , social psychology , sociology , psychology , media studies , social science , demography , linguistics , chemistry , philosophy , law
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.