Learning from Online News: Selective and Incidental Exposure

• In Event: Political Communication Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: Political Communication Virtual Poster Session I

Abstract

An essential principle of democratic theory is that citizens should make their decisions based on informed thinking (Bode et al., 2013), and the news is one of the primary sources for people's political knowledge (Chaffee & Kanihan, 1997; Eveland, 2002; Hollander, 2014; Pan et al., 1994). A fair amount of scholarly work identified that exposure to news messages is positively associated with people's political learning or knowledge (Bode, 2016; David, 2009; Lecheler & De Vreese, 2017; Pan et al., 1994;). Besides, studies presented how online news has a different impact on learning than the traditional types of news because online users can come across with information and "accidentally informed" (Tweksbury et al., 2001). However, in most studies, the effects of incidental and selective exposure on learning have been studied independently (e.g., Lu & Lee, 2019; Lee & Kim, 2017; Tweksbury et al., 2001; Zaller, 1992). As both exposure patterns are important features of online news that explain people's engagements to political information (Weeks et al., 2017), considering both patterns at the same time will provide us a better explanation of how people learn from online news. Thus, this study compared the effects of selective and incidental exposure on political learning.
Moreover, motivations have an important role in information processing and learning (Eveland, 2002). In the light of increasingly polarized American media and public opinion, people's motivation to select and process news messages can vary depending on their pre-existing beliefs or preferences, and these can result in a gap in their political knowledge and learning (David, 2009; Elenbaas et al., 2014; Eveland, 2002; Moeller & De Vreese, 2019). Therefore, this research addresses how people with different motivated reasoning styles affect their news choice and political learning, based on the concept of a need for cognition and evaluation (Taber & Lodge, 2006). I expect that people who have weaker accuracy motivation and those who are more likely to overestimate support for their own opinions are more likely to select politically congruent messages than incongruent ones. As a result, those who choose congruent news will learn more than those who were accidentally exposed to the information because people gain more knowledge from politically congenial facts and learn less from the information that challenges their beliefs (Jerit & Barabas, 2012). Accordingly, I hypothesize:
H1: In the selective exposure condition, people will be more likely to choose politically congruent news over incongruent news.
H2: In the selective exposure condition, people's (a) need to evaluate will be positively related to, and (b) need for cognition will be negatively associated with selecting the pro-attitudinal news.
H3: People who read pro-attitudinal news will learn more than those who read counter-attitudinal news.
H4: People in the selective exposure condition will learn more than those in the incidental exposure condition.
Based on an experiment embedded within the survey, this study investigates how people select, learn, or dismiss political information depending on their prior political beliefs and reasoning styles. Participants in two conditions (incidental, selective condition) will read three news articles dealt with three current partisan issues: immigration, climate change, and unemployment, and report the degree to which they recall information and the level of confidence in their knowledge.
This study aims to better understand the variations of effects across different exposure types to generate better ideas about maintaining and improving the media environment. If a particular kind of exposure is more effective in improving people's political knowledge than another type of exposure, researchers and news providers can find out in which situation people acquire information more effectively and what kind of news media environment can be more beneficial or detrimental to democratic ideals and values.
Additionally, in a high-choice media environment, it is still unclear how individuals' motivations at the time of information selection affect how they follow and learn from the news (David, 2009). Therefore, this study contributes to the motivated reasoning literature by enhancing our understanding of how different motivated reasoning styles are associated with the way people select and learn from the news.

Author

• Gyo Hyun Koo, University of Texas at Austin