Selective exposure to partisan media: Moderating factors in evaluations of the president

Abstract

The conditions in which moderating factors – media trust, mediabias, and political ideology – increase or limit the approval ratings of a politician in a partisan media environment were investigated using data obtained from the 2010 Pew survey. The findings show that media trust and media bias intensify negative presidential evaluations among consumers of conservative news programs, whereas these factors do not influence presidential approval among consumers of liberal news programs. The findings also reveal that conservatives tend to choose to be exposed to news messages that are congenial to their ideological orientations, while liberals select a more balanced diet of news messages. This study proposes that moderating factors have different effects on conservative and liberal news consumers.

Keywords:

• Selective exposure
• Presidential evaluations
• Partisan media
• Political ideology

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2016. This work was also supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A3A2924760).

Notes

1 The authors would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the non-partisan media effect.