Partisan Motivations in Cross-Cutting Media Exposure

• In Event: It's My Party: Cues, the News, and Political Communication

Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed an increasing polarization in the public discourses and policies across many western democracies. People have become less receptive of new ideas and consistently try to avoid counter-attitudinal perspectives. Consequently, many are left pondering on whether liberal democracy can survive when many of its citizens are predisposed to avoid hearing the other side. In spite of this pessimism, recent works have documented several factors that could increase the likelihood of people in exposure to differing views. However, while existing literature has mainly focused on the individual-level characteristics and attributes of the media systems, little attention is given in explaining how political contexts could influence the likelihood of partisans to engage in exposure diversity. Thus, this paper asks whether there are partisan differences in exposure to counter-attitudinal information across countries by focusing on how party-level characteristics affect the prospects of partisans to be exposed to diverse viewpoints about the economy. Using various individual and party-levels data across 20 European countries, I find that such characteristics, which are manifested in how salient the economy is to the parties and the different political roles each parties have in influencing the economy, are related to the level of cross-cutting media exposure for different partisans across countries.

Author

• Lie Philip Santoso, Duke Kunshan University