Homogeneity of Media Diet in a Fragmented Media Landscape

Abstract

The study assesses the nature of selective exposure and avoidance behaviors among political liberals and conservatives using a survey of 351 American citizens obtained through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Analyses of a new “homogeneity of media diet” measure indicate that although liberals and conservatives consume a comparable total number of media sources, the homogeneity of those media sources is significantly higher among liberals than it is among conservatives. In fact, whether looking at political ideology or party affiliation, the story is the same: people on the left are significantly more likely than conservatives to selectively attend to ideologically-consonant media sources and are significantly more likely than conservatives to selectively avoid ideologically-divergent media sources. Analyses include an examination of partisan perceptions of the ideological leanings of various media sources as well as the predictive power of self-reported selective exposure. Implications for democratic theory are discussed.