Demand for Online News, Inertia, and Misperceptions

• In Event: Depolarization Strategies

Abstract

Individuals prefer reading like-minded news, which may contribute to polarization and hinder the smooth functioning of democracy. Most theories explaining pro-attitudinal news consumption assume that individuals are familiar with the distribution of slant in the media landscape and deliberately choose their news consumption taking slant into account. In this paper, we test whether these assumptions are warranted using a randomized survey experiment. We first test whether people misperceive the slant of the news outlets they like on Facebook. We then provide a subset of individuals with information on the actual slant of their outlets and allow all participants to reoptimize their news bundle. To test whether news consumption suffer from inertia, we analyze to what extent the control group changes its news bundle. By comparing the treatment and control groups, we measure how slant misperceptions affect news choices. Preliminary data suggests that people believe that the news they consume is not as biased as counter-attitudinal news. This could explain why individuals tend to consume like-minded news. Our study may suggest that providing individuals with information on news slant can depolarize the electorate.

Authors

• Roee Levy, Tel Aviv University

• Hannah Trachtman

• Luca Braghieri