“Pick and choose” opinion climate: How browsing of political messages shapes public opinion perceptions and attitudes

ABSTRACT

High-choice media environments allow people to cocoon themselves with like-minded messages (confirmation bias), which could shape both individual attitudes and perceived prevalence of opinions. This study builds on motivated cognition and spiral of silence theory to disentangle how browsing political messages (both selective exposure as viewing full articles and incidental exposure as encountering leads only) shapes perceived public opinion and subsequently attitudes. Participants (N = 115) browsed online articles on controversial topics; related attitudes and public opinion perceptions were captured before and after. Multi-level modeling demonstrated a confirmation bias. Both selective and incidental exposure affected attitudes per message stance, with stronger impacts for selective exposure. Opinion climate perceptions mediated selective exposure impacts on attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• Confirmation bias
• selective exposure
• political polarization
• spiral of silence
• public opinion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Daniel J. Sude is a Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. His research examines social influences on selective exposure to and persuasion by political messages.

Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick (Ph.D., Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media, 1999) is a professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University and serves as co-editor of Communication Research. Her research interests include the selection, processing, and effects of mediated communication. A key thread in her work pertains to antecedents and consequences of selective exposure to mediated messages.

Melissa J. Robinson (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2017) is an instructor in the Communication Department at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines the psychological and behavioral effects of mediated health communication on the individual, often considering the role of media selection in these effects.

Axel Westerwick (Ph.D., RWTH Aachen University, 1999) is a senior lecturer at the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on how source perceptions influence selection and effects of mediated messages. His work pertains to the intersection of political communication, health communication, and new communication technologies.

Notes

1. Upon reviewer inquiry, findings with log-transformed selective exposure time data were explored and revealed the same patterns as for raw selective exposure data in seconds.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for programming was provided by the second author's research funds at the Ohio State University.