Digital News and the Consumption of Political Information

Forthcoming, Mark Graham and William H. Dutton (eds). Society and the Internet. How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

12 Pages Posted: 5 Apr 2019

See all articles by Silvia Majo-Vazquez

Silvia Majo-Vazquez

University of Oxford - Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Sandra González-Bailón

University of Pennsylvania - Annenberg School for Communication

Date Written: June 12, 2018

Abstract

Digital technologies have caused a tectonic shift in how we obtain news. Mass media have given way to multiple forms of networked communication that offer access to personalized information, tailored to our individual preferences. The nature of the current media landscape is often encapsulated in the image of a “balkanized” public space divided by “echo-chambers”, an analogy that has been revived with newer metaphors, including “filter bubbles” and “algorithmic gatekeeping”. In this chapter, we present a strategy to move beyond metaphors and obtain metrics that can help us analyze patterns of news consumption as they change across national contexts, demographic groups, and digital platforms. Our focus is on audience behavior and, in particular, on how much overlap news sources have in the audiences they share. We use that overlap to build audience networks that allow us to determine the strength of fragmentation in news consumption.

Keywords: news, digital, networks, trace data

Suggested Citation

Majo-Vazquez, Silvia and González-Bailón, Sandra, Digital News and the Consumption of Political Information (June 12, 2018). Forthcoming, Mark Graham and William H. Dutton (eds). Society and the Internet. How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3351334 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3351334

Silvia Majo-Vazquez

University of Oxford - Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism ( email )

13 Norham Gardens
Oxford, OX2 6PS
United Kingdom

Sandra González-Bailón (Contact Author)

University of Pennsylvania - Annenberg School for Communication ( email )

Philadelphia, PA
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://dimenet.asc.upenn.edu/people/sgonzalezbailon/

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