Partisan Motivations in Cross-Cutting Media Exposure

• In Event: (De)Polarization?

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 they are also consistently trying to avoid political perspectives that they do not find agreeable. Moreover, with the shift from a low-choice to a high-choice media environment, such attitudes will cultivate even further given the conducive environments that allow for preference-based media use. Consequently, many observers across these countries 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 (i.e. cross-cutting exposure). While existing literature has focused on the individual-level characteristics (e.g. political interests and knowledge) and attributes of the media systems (e.g. presence of public service broadcasters and low media-party parallelism), little attention is given in explaining how political contexts influence different partisans’ tendency to engage in exposure diversity. Thus, this paper asks whether there are partisan differences in preferences for counter-attitudinal information across countries by focusing on the incentive structures different political environment provide for different partisans to engage diverse viewpoints about the economy. Using various individual and party-levels data across 20 European countries, I find that such structures, which are manifested in how salient the economy is to the parties and the different political roles each parties have in influencing the economy, possess significant effects in cross-cutting media exposure for different partisans across countries. Ultimately, whether partisans are willing to be exposed to counter-attitudinal information about a particular issue is most likely going to be determined by how much that particular issue is perceived to be politically or electorally beneficial to their respective parties.

Author

• Lie Philip Santoso, Duke Kunshan University