Seeking Similarity, Not Avoiding Difference: Reframing the Ideological Selective Exposure Debate

To what extent do individuals seek to craft an information environment that reflects their political predispositions? Unprecedented search and filtering capabilities facilitated by new information technologies mean that individuals’ decisions regarding their information exposure are more important than ever. This paper presents data from two complementary projects to address the selective exposure question. The first project uses data collected in a national random-digit-dial telephone survey (n=1,510) to examine how Americans use the control afforded by the Internet to shape their overall exposure to political information. The second project uses data collected in a web-administered experiment conducted with a national sample of online news readers (n=727) to study subjects’ use of individual news items. The results suggest that though people are drawn to opinion-supporting information, they do not systematically exclude contact with other opinions. Acknowledgements: The author is grateful to Paul Resnick for his advice and encouragement throughout the project, and to Bruce Bimber, Paul Edwards, and Russ Neuman for their enormously helpful insights. Thanks also to the Pew Internet & American Life Project for sponsoring the survey research and to John Horrigan and Lee Rainie for their valuable contribution to its design and analysis. Paper to be presented at the 56th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Dresden, Germany, June 19 23, 2006. Reframing the Selective Exposure Debate 4/15/06 1 Americans’ preferences regarding which viewpoints they encounter fundamentally shape their exposure to political information. This exposure process has been the subject of inquiry and debate since the 1940s (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944). While many findings point toward some form of selectivity, the process is not well understood and the literature remains plagued by discrepant claims. Decisions about what news sources to use and which articles to read are profoundly important to the future of deliberative democracy. If individuals seek to expand their familiarity with information that supports their beliefs while limiting their exposure to other perspectives, the prospects for deliberation are dire. Exposure to political difference is a defining element of effective deliberation and has important consequences for society at large. The presence of political viewpoints stimulates more thorough information searches and more careful scrutiny of alternatives (Mendelberg 2002; Nemeth 1986; Nemeth and Rogers 1996; Delli Carpini et al. 2004). Exposure to other perspectives also increases familiarity with the rationales that motivate opposing views, which can in turn foster political tolerance (Mutz 2002; Price et al. 2002). Conversely, if individuals effectively avoid viewpoint-challenging information, the society to which they belong is likely to become more politically fragmented (Sunstein 2002). Absent contact with other viewpoints, groups of citizens will become more polarized, and their ability to find common ground and to reach political agreement will dwindle. In light of the important stakes for political deliberation and democratic society, it is critical that we understand what choices people will make in the changing landscape of political news. It is increasingly easy to realize an information environment that is consistent with one’s preferences. Technologies such as the Internet are an important element of this landscape because they augment people’s ability to selectively acquire political information, allowing them to more effectively find information on either side of a controversy (DiMaggio et al. 2001); (Bimber and Davis 2003: 152). Two characteristics of online news media are particularly important. First, the Reframing the Selective Exposure Debate 4/15/06 2 range of viewpoints accessible online is wider than with traditional news media, such as television or newspapers. Politically extreme groups have a significant presence online (e.g., Zook 1996; Cleaver 1999). Second, the mechanisms for controlling which viewpoints one encounters are increasingly effective. Search engines, news aggregations services (such as Google News), and partisan news sites afford opportunities for searching and filtering information that are unparalleled in traditional news media. Such an environment provides an ideal opportunity to explore exposure preferences. Given the flexibility of the medium, the choices that individuals make should more closely reflect their underlying preferences. Ideologically-motivated selective exposure, the tendency to craft an information environment that reflects one’s political beliefs, has been a topic of debate for several decades (Sears and Freedman 1967; Frey 1986). According to selective exposure theory, individuals’ prefer exposure to arguments supporting their position over those supporting other positions (e.g., Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944; Sweeney and Gruber 1984). Scholars argue that this preference also leads individuals to prefer information sources that are more supportive of their opinions over less supportive alternatives (Mutz and Martin 2001; Lowin 1967). For example, recent empirical investigations indicate that readers of conservative political books rarely read liberal books (Krebs 2004b; Krebs 2004a; Krebs 2003), and that popular political blogs tend to interlink with other blogs expressing similar viewpoints (Adamic and Glance 2005). Critics of the theory of ideological selective exposure question the existence of an underlying psychological tendency to seek support and avoid challenge. According to these scholars, the data do not support the claim that citizens are disproportionately exposed to viewpoint-supporting information (Sears and Freedman 1967; Chaffee et al. 2001). Furthermore, they offer evidence that individual exposure choices are largely uninfluenced by ideology: when asked to choose among political information options, citizens do not systematically avoid challenge (DiMaggio and Sato Reframing the Selective Exposure Debate 4/15/06 3 2003; Iyengar et al. 2003). The theory’s detractors also argue that choices that do yield exposure to mostly viewpoint-reinforcing information are not necessarily motivated by viewpoint selectivity per se, but may instead be secondary consequences of decisions unrelated to ideology (Sears and Freedman 1967). For example, financial analysts may prefer to read the Wall Street Journal because of its coverage of financial news. Their tendency to agree with the paper’s political views is not motivated by an effort to find support or avoid challenge; instead, it is a reflection of their political similarity with those who write about financial news. Scholars on both sides of the debate have tended to treat preference for support and aversion to challenge as linked aspects of a single psychological preference. I argue that by conceiving of these preferences as separate phenomena we can reconcile seemingly contradictory evidence regarding citizens’ political information acquisition practices. Most prior research results can be explained in terms of a systematic preference for viewpoint reinforcement paired with a weaker and less consistent attitude toward viewpoint challenge. I suggest that most individuals are drawn to viewpoint-reinforcing information, but they do not exhibit a systematic bias against viewpointchallenging information. In a few circumstances, individuals may even seek out novel arguments with which they disagree. The ultimate objective of this study is to reconcile the contradictory evidence regarding the influence of individuals’ preferences toward their exposure to political information. I begin with a brief overview of recent research examining how individuals use the media to shape their information exposure. In the next section, I use data from a national telephone survey and a web-administered experiment with national subject recruitment to test the proposition that attitudes toward viewpoint-reinforcing information and viewpoint-challenging information are distinct. I examine data corresponding to individual and aggregate exposure decisions in order to test Reframing the Selective Exposure Debate 4/15/06 4 claims regarding the influence of political viewpoint. The results suggest that reinforcement seeking is commonplace, but systematic avoidance of dissimilar political viewpoints is rare. Media selectivity and selective exposure Prior efforts to use media-afforded selectivity to assess individuals’ propensity to engage in selective exposure have yielded inconsistent results. Some scholars suggest that increasing control is associated with a significant drop in exposure to political difference, while others disagree. On one hand, Mutz and Martin (2001) argue that control and exposure to challenge are inversely correlated. They found that among traditional media sources, those offering the most partisan content are associated with reduced exposure to dissonant information. For example, people are less likely to encounter viewpoints that differ from their own when listening to talk radio than when reading a newspaper or watching television. Similarly, they found that individuals who can choose among competing local sources of partisan news tend to have less contact with dissonant information than those living in areas served by a single (less-partisan) local news source. On the other hand, research examining people’s use of an interactive CD-ROM containing campaign information about the two major candidates in the 2000 election found no evidence of one candidate’s supporters avoiding information about the other (Iyengar et al. 2003). Similarly, analyses of 2000 and 2002 General Social Survey (GSS) data provide little evidence that people are using the Internet to avoid political difference. Strong partisanship is associated with the use of viewpoint-reinforcing sites, but not with a reduction in the use of viewpoint-contrary sites (Baruh 2004). Overall, 2000 GSS respondents reported using sites that are neutral or that challenge their viewpoint as often as they use those that reinforce it (DiMaggio and Sato 2003). Furthermore, they frequently report that their use of these sites led them to revise or refine their opinions. Another survey conducted in 2000 examining knowledge of the presidential campaign suggests that the Internet could reduce the effects of partisan selectivity. In her study of this data, Stroud (2004) found Reframing the Selective Exposure Debate 4/15/06 5 that seeking political information online was associated with comparable increases in knowledge about both presidential candidates, especially among individuals with the lowest levels of political knowledge. It is, however, possible to reconcile evidence that people engage in selective exposure with evidence that they do not avoid viewpoint-challenging information. Mutz and Martin take their findings as evidence that people prefer congruent partisan sources to those that include other viewpoints, but there is another interpretation. The difference may exist because the comparisons focus on individuals selecting among partisan sources, not between partisan sources and those that are less partisan. An individual who chooses a source in which he can find support for his own viewpoint over one in which his viewpoint is absent might most strongly prefer a source representing both perspectives. In other words, the data could reflect a form of de facto selective avoidance, motivated by an attraction to viewpoint-supporting information, not an aversion to viewpointchallenging information. In this case, it is possible that an individual who chooses a viewpointconsistent partisan publication would prefer a source representing multiple viewpoints if one were available. Most data are consistent with the hypothesis that citizens seek viewpoint reinforcement without avoiding challenge.