Avenues to News and Diverse News Exposure Online: Comparing Direct Navigation, Social Media, News Aggregators, Search Queries, and Article Hyperlinks-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Avenues to News and Diverse News Exposure Online: Comparing Direct Navigation, Social Media, News Aggregators, Search Queries, and Article Hyperlinks

Published:2021-05-31 Issue: Volume: Page:194016122110091
ISSN:1940-1612
Container-title:The International Journal of Press/Politics
language:en
Short-container-title:The International Journal of Press/Politics

Author:

Wojcieszak Magdalena¹²^ORCID,Menchen-Trevino Ericka³,Goncalves Joao F. F.⁴^ORCID,Weeks Brian⁵^ORCID

Affiliation:

1. University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

2. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

3. American University, Washington, DC, USA

4. Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

5. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Abstract

The online environment dramatically expands the number of ways people can encounter news but there remain questions of whether these abundant opportunities facilitate news exposure diversity. This project examines key questions regarding how internet users arrive at news and what kinds of news they encounter. We account for a multiplicity of avenues to news online, some of which have never been analyzed: (1) direct access to news websites, (2) social networks, (3) news aggregators, (4) search engines, (5) webmail, and (6) hyperlinks in news. We examine the extent to which each avenue promotes news exposure and also exposes users to news sources that are left leaning, right leaning, and centrist. When combined with information on individual political leanings, we show the extent of dissimilar, centrist, or congenial exposure resulting from each avenue. We rely on web browsing history records from 636 social media users in the US paired with survey self-reports, a unique data set that allows us to examine both aggregate and individual-level exposure. Visits to news websites account for about 2 percent of the total number of visits to URLs and are unevenly distributed among users. The most widespread ways of accessing news are search engines and social media platforms (and hyperlinks within news sites once people arrive at news). The two former avenues also increase dissimilar news exposure, compared to accessing news directly, yet direct news access drives the highest proportion of centrist exposure.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

Sociology and Political Science,Communication

Link

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/19401612211009160

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