American Journal of Political Science · 2010 · 94 citations · 17 references
Social SciencesCommunicationPolitical ScienceMass CommunicationMedia StudiesPublic OpinionMass MediaMedia EconomicsNew MediaNews AudiencesNews MediaPolitical Economy Of MediaMedia BiasMedia PartisanshipNews Consumption PatternsNews Television AudiencesOnline News AudiencesOnline Political News
Online news is cheaper to produce and consumers prefer media that align with their beliefs. The study proposes a framework predicting that Internet news consumers will hold more extreme political views and be interested in a broader range of political issues than television‑only consumers. The authors test these predictions using two large datasets of news exposure and political views. The results show that cable news viewers who also use online sources are more liberal or conservative than those who do not, and that online news users are more likely to be interested in niche political issues.
We propose a framework for understanding how the Internet has affected the U.S. political news market. The framework is driven by the lower cost of production for online news and consumers' tendency to seek out media that conform to their own beliefs. The framework predicts that consumers of Internet news sources should hold more extreme political views and be interested in more diverse political issues than those who solely consume mainstream television news. We test these predictions using two large datasets with questions about news exposure and political views. Generally speaking, we find that consumers of generally left‐of‐center (right‐of‐center) cable news sources who combine their cable news viewing with online sources are more liberal (conservative) than those who do not. We also find that those who use online news content are more likely than those who consume only television news content to be interested in niche political issues.
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