Depolarized by the Media? The Role of Heterogeneous and Homogeneous Traditional and Digital Media Diets in Issue Polarization Around COVID-19 in the United States

ABSTRACT

Research suggests that a heterogeneous media diet can foster more objective information evaluations, reducing issue polarization as a result. These findings beg the question: Can increased news heterogeneity reduce issue polarization around COVID-19? Using data from a cross-sectional survey in the United States (N = 1,262), this study found that – in line with theoretical expectations – at high levels of homogeneity of traditional and digital news consumption, the difference in support for COVID-19 prevention between Biden and Trump supporters was significantly large. Conversely, this attitude gap narrowed at high news heterogeneity levels. Our results continue to advance research on the role of homogeneous and heterogeneous media diets and biased cognitive processing in issue polarization, a crucial endeavor as polarization poses a challenge to effective public health policy implementation and pandemic management. At the outset, the implications of our findings for pandemic communication (and health communication more generally) are discussed.

On March 11 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, launching governments and international organizations in a race to develop and implement measures to reduce the spread of this novel coronavirus. In this context, issue polarization – a phenomenon in which people’s attitudes and beliefs about an issue become stronger and more extremely divergent (Kopecky, 2022) – around COVID-19 raised alarm bells for governments and health organizations everywhere, as attitudes toward COVID-19 management and prevention appeared to be driven, to a concerning extent, by factors such as prior-beliefs, ideological stances and political preferences (Clarke et al., 2021; Hunger et al., 2023). The United States (U.S.) offered a paradigmatic example of issue polarization along political lines (Becher et al., 2021; Dolman et al., 2022), with Democrats significantly more supportive of COVID-19 preventive measures than Republicans (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2020; Kerr et al., 2021).

Many believe the next pandemic is looming (e.g., Osterholm, 2020). It is thus crucial to understand the potentialities and limitations of information to reduce polarization around pandemic management measures, as polarization poses a challenge to effective policy implementation and pandemic management (Clarke et al., 2021; Hunger et al., 2023; Wright et al., 2020). Against this backdrop, it is crucial to investigate avenues to reduce COVID-19 attitude polarization and increase support for its prevention. In this sense, the literature has found that higher network heterogeneity is linked to lower issue polarization, suggesting that the more people engage in a varied information diet, the more exposed they are to alternative views and arguments, introducing new considerations into the attitude formation process and reducing issue polarization as a result (e.g., J. K. Lee et al., 2014; Knobloch-Westerwick & Johnson, 2014; cf. Garrett et al., 2014).

We examined this assumption using data collected among a panel sample of U.S. residents (N = 1,262) during May and June 2021 through a paid-panel company (Bilendi) (De Coninck et al., 2021). We used the available data to investigate if the homogeneity of traditional news consumption (i.e., television and print) and digital news consumption (i.e., online news outlets) moderated the relation between presidential candidate preference and support for COVID-19 preventive measures. In this sense, this study is at the cross of the literature on information heterogeneity, issue polarization, and research on how communication can advance public health goals and policies. Thus, this study contributed to the literature on how different media diets can foster or reduce issue polarization around policy responses to public health crises (Darius & Stephany, 2022; Neumann et al., 2021). The implications of our findings for pandemic communication (and health communication more generally) are then discussed.

Biased cognitive processing and issue polarization

Biased cognitive processing – also called biased argument processing, biased assimilation, defensive processing, refutational processing, confirmatory bias, attitude congruence bias or motivated reasoning – is a systematic thought process caused by the tendency of the human brain to simplify information through a filter of personal experience and preferences (Igartua, 2013; Igartua et al., 2011). Thus, biased processing implies using schemata, prior attitudes, and other internal and peripheral cues to maintain and defend prior attitudes and belief systems (Ewoldsen et al., 2022). More specifically, this filtering process describes an individual’s proclivity to overestimate the quality of information aligned with their existing attitudes while underestimating that of information contradicting them (Banisch & Shamon, 2021; Kunst, 2021) to avoid the cognitive dissonance resulting from exposure to counter-attitudinal information (Festinger, 1962).

The link between biased cognition and issue polarization has been widely investigated. Research from as early as the 1970s has found that biased processing or assimilation of information drove issue polarization on a range of topics in the U.S., ranging from capital punishment to the assassination of John F. Kennedy (Lord et al., 1979; McHoskey, 1995). More recently, studies have focused on biased cognition and issue polarization on other crucial topics such as climate change (Newman et al., 2018), immigration (Igartua, 2013), and homosexuality (Boysen & Vogel, 2007). Against this backdrop, researchers have proposed that issue polarization along political lines stems from individuals using their political preferences as a heuristic cue to process information in a way that maintains attitude consistency with the stance advanced by their preferred party or candidate (Taber & Lodge, 2006; Taber et al., 2009). In this sense, politically biased cognitive processing describes a tendency to accept or reject information based on political or party preferences (Guay & Johnston, 2022; Kahan, 2013; Kahan et al., 2017).

In a context where political parties advance progressively more opposing stances on many issues, issue polarization is bound to grow. As a result, attitudes can be expected to become increasingly immune to information as politically biased cognitive processing becomes a more prevalent form of information processing (Kahan, 2013). Experimental research has indicated that in the U.S., politically biased cognition drove issue polarization of attitudes toward affirmative action, gun control, marijuana legalization, animal testing in the pharmaceutical industry, and foreign aid, among other topics (Taber & Lodge, 2006; Taber et al., 2009). Furthermore, liberals and conservatives have been found to be equally predisposed to politically biased processing (Guay & Johnston, 2022).

Against this background, the literature has investigated whether heterogeneous news diets can increase exposure to alternative viewpoints, fostering more objective information processing and thereby reducing issue polarization along political preferences (Bozdag & van den Hoven, 2015; Sunstein, 2004). As political polarization regarding pandemic preventive measures poses a challenge to public health governmentality (Clarke et al., 2021; Hunger et al., 2023; Wright et al., 2020), this paper investigates the extent to which a heterogeneous media diet can contribute to reducing issue polarization around public health policies among political partisans.

Issue polarization and heterogeneous news consumption

For the most part, the link between issue polarization and biased cognition has been studied under conditions assuming homogeneous information environments. In this sense, studies have found that exposure to attitude-consistent (homogeneous) information may increase issue polarization by reinforcing existing attitudes (e.g., Tewksbury & Riles, 2015). For instance, Garrett et al. (2014) found that people’s tendency to engage with attitudinal-consistent – and avoid counter-attitudinal – information (i.e., selective exposure) meant that increased media use was associated with higher affective polarization. These studies supported a strong link between exposure to attitude-consistent information or homogeneous information environments and polarization (e.g., Kim, 2017).

Conversely, network heterogeneity was found to decrease issue polarization (see also Bakshy et al., 2015; Flaxman et al., 2016; Jang, 2014a, 2014b; Kim, 2011; Kim et al., 2013; J. Lee & Choi, 2020). Crucially, J. K. Lee et al. (2014) found a positive relationship between social media use, social network heterogeneity, and lower issue polarization, suggesting that network heterogeneity could reduce issue polarization by exposing people to more diverse information and opinions, moving media users from more politically biased toward more objective information processing. In other words, as network heterogeneity increases, new considerations may be introduced into the attitude formation process (Chong & Druckman, 2007), forcing a more objective evaluation of the information at hand and reducing issue polarization as a result.

Taken together, there are solid theoretical grounds to assume that homogeneity of news consumption – defined as the extent to which individuals consume only either liberal or conservative news outlets (i.e., homogeneity) or consume a more ideologically varied news diet, resulting in exposure to a broader range of arguments and viewpoints (Sindermann et al., 2021) – will increase the variety of arguments and viewpoints people are exposed to, resulting in reduced issue polarization. Based on these theoretical expectations, this study examines the assumption that a homogeneous news diet will curb politically biased information processing (or the tendency to accept or reject information based on political preferences) by introducing different considerations into the attitude formation process (Guay & Johnston, 2022; Kahan, 2013; Kahan et al., 2017) thereby reducing issue polarization.

However, the lion’s share of the literature on the relationship between heterogeneous news diets and polarization focuses on digital media use (e.g., Garrett, 2009; Garrett et al., 2014; J. K. Lee et al., 2014). In turn, the role of news heterogeneity and issue polarization in offline (traditional) media environments – where algorithmic filtering is impossible – is less understood (Sindermann et al., 2021). Thus, the question remains: Are there differences in the relationship between heterogeneous traditional (i.e., television and print) versus digital (i.e., online news platforms) media diets and issue polarization? In other words, is the relationship between news heterogeneity and issue polarization the same online and offline?

In this sense, Sindermann et al. (2021) survey on the heterogeneity of news consumption in Germany found that participants reported similar levels of heterogeneity in television news networks, print media, and online news websites. These findings suggest that heterogeneous or homogeneous news consumption patterns are similar both online and offline. Based on this literature, we expect news heterogeneity to play a similar role in issue polarization for both traditional and digital news consumption. To test this assumption, this study investigates – alongside the hypothesis that a heterogeneous news diet will be related to lower issue polarization – to what extent varied traditional and digital news diets each moderate the relationship between political preferences and support for COVID-19 preventive measures.

Our study

In the U.S., the issue of COVID-19 response was highly contentious as experts, civil society organizations, and large parts of the population accused the Trump administration of failing to mount an effective and timely response to the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the (evitable) death of hundreds of thousands of Americans (Parker & Stern, 2022). It is thus unsurprising that the COVID-19 response became a crucial campaign issue in the 2020 Presidential Election, which saw Trump defeated by Democratic candidate Joe Biden in an election with the highest voter turnout since the 2008 election of Barack Obama (Fowers et al., 2020).

However, despite Biden’s victory, support for COVID-19 preventive measures remained highly polarized across political lines, with Biden voters significantly more supportive of preventive measures than those who supported Trump (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2020; Kerr et al., 2021). In this context, our study pertained to the extent to which people reported COVID-19 pandemic attitudes consistent with their preferred political candidate in the 2020 Presidential Election, namely if Biden voters reported higher support for COVID-19 preventive measures than Trump voters (e.g., Bruine de Bruin et al., 2020). A wider gap in COVID-19 attitudes between Biden and Trump voters evidences higher issue polarization along political preferences. In turn, we examined the relationship between preferred candidate and COVID-19 attitudes at different levels of homogeneity of traditional and digital news consumption. Based on studies showing that higher news heterogeneity is related to exposure to a larger variety of arguments and viewpoints (e.g., Jang, 2014a, 2014b; Knobloch-Westerwick & Johnson, 2014; J. K. Lee et al., 2014) and thereby lower issue polarization (e.g., J. Lee & Choi, 2020; J. K. Lee et al., 2014), we can expect to observe lower issue polarization at lower levels of homogeneity of news consumption.

Our proposed theoretical model is outlined in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Full theoretical model.

Method

Data used in this study were collected through an online questionnaire administered to adults aged 18–65 in the U.S. using a paid-panel company (Bilendi). The survey was fielded for four weeks in May and June of 2021. Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to participation in the study. The study was approved by the Social and Societal Ethics Committee of K.U. Leuven (G-2020–2590). For more information on the dataset, see De Coninck et al. (2021). Given our goal of exploring the relationship between political candidate preference and COVID-19 attitudes, we retained only those participants (N = 1,262) who reported having voted for either Donald J. Trump or Joe Biden in the U.S. 2020 Presidential Election. Conversely, participants who abstained, voted for a different candidate, were not eligible to vote, or refused to answer (n = 241) were excluded from the sample.

In line with our research aims, we divided our sample (M_age = 45.69, SD = 13.85; 44.1% women and 55.9% men) into two groups: those who reported voting for Donald J. Trump (n = 462) and those who reported voting for Joe Biden (n = 800). A one-way ANOVA indicated significant differences across these two groups by age, F(1, 1260) = 34.31, p < .001, η² = .027. Specifically, the average age in the Trump group (M = 48.66; SD = 14.17) was older than in the Biden group (M = 43.98; SD = 13.38). Similarly, a chi-square test indicated a significant association between party affiliation and gender, (1, 1262) = 6.16, p = .013. In the Trump group, 237 participants were men and 225 were women. In the Biden group, 468 participants were men and 332 were women. Thus, in both groups, the sample was predominantly male. Likewise, participants in the Biden group reported higher levels of educational attainment (M = 5.73; SD = 1.44, n = 800) than those in the Trump groups (M = 5.21; SD = 1.54, n = 462), $X^2$(6, 1262) = 51.80, p < .001. As such, we included age, gender, and education as control variables in all our analyses.

Dependent variable and moderators

We measured support for COVID-19 preventive measures (i.e., COVID-19 support for short) using an eight-item subscale (e.g., “Everyone should be wearing masks when out in public”) on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Scores were internally consistent (Cronbach’s α = .80), and item responses were recoded so that higher scores would indicate higher measures’ support.

To measure the homogeneity of news consumption, a difference score variable was constructed by subtracting the frequency of conservative news consumption from the frequency of liberal news consumption. We removed negative signs from the resulting values so that scores reflect the extent to which participants reported higher or lower homogeneity of news consumption (irrespective of whether homogeneity tended toward liberal or conservative news). Thus, when the values for both liberal and conservative news consumption were high, the resulting score was equal or close to zero – reflecting higher heterogeneity of news consumption. Conversely, higher scores indicate higher homogeneity of news consumption.

To construct this homogeneity of traditional news consumption difference score variable, we first measured the frequency of liberal news consumption by asking participants how often they watched certain news programs (i.e., Public Broadcasting News, C-Span, MSNBC News, CNN News) or read certain newspapers (i.e., The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The L.A. Times, The Boston Globe) in the past month on a scale from 1 (never); 4 (every week); 7 (every day). Scores were highly internally consistent (Cronbach’s α = .97). All items were combined into a single scale and coded so that higher scores indicate higher liberal news consumption. Conversely, we measured the frequency of conservative news consumption by asking participants how often they watched certain news programs (i.e., Fox News, One America, America News Network) or read certain newspapers (i.e., The Wall Street Journal) in the past month on a scale from 1 (never); 4 (every week); 7 (every day). Scores were highly internally consistent (Cronbach’s α = .92). All items were combined into a single scale and coded so that higher scores indicate higher conservative news consumption. We then subtracted the scores for conservative news consumption from liberal news consumption to build the homogeneity of traditional news consumption variable used in this study.

Similarly, for the homogeneity of digital news consumption difference score variable, we measured the frequency of liberal digital news consumption by asking participants to report how often they read online news from liberal sources (i.e., cnn.com, usatoday.com, nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com) in the past month on a scale from 1 (never); 4 (every week); 7 (every day) (Cronbach’s α = .95). All items were then combined into a single scale and recoded so that higher scores indicate higher liberal digital news consumption. On the same scale, we measured frequency of conservative digital news consumption by asking participants to report how often they read online news from conservative sources (i.e., foxnews.com, wsj.com) (Cronbach’s α = .86). All items were then combined into a single scale and recoded so that higher scores indicate higher conservative digital news consumption. We then subtracted the scores for conservative news consumption from those of liberal news consumption to build the homogeneity of digital news consumption variable used in this study.

Data analysis

To examine the main effects of candidate preference on the dependent variable and moderators, we used UNIANOVA with gender, age, and education as covariates. Moderation effects were tested using Hayes (2018) SPSS macro PROCESS and 5,000 bootstrap re-samples. This study reported unstandardized coefficients (b), 95% confidence intervals, and one-tailed significance tests, as all hypotheses were directional (Meiser, 2011). Gender, age, and education were added as covariates within all moderation analyses.

Results

The data supported the assumption that Trump voters would report lower support for COVID-19 preventive measures than Biden voters (Table 1). Conversely, there were no significant differences in traditional or digital news consumption homogeneity across the different candidate preference conditions.

Table 1. Means (standard deviations) for variables by preferred candidate.

	Trump n = 462	Biden n = 800	Total N = 1,262	Inferential	Effect size (Eta squared)
Support for COVID-19 preventive measures 1 (low) to 5 (high)	2.62 (.93)	3.28 (0.75)	3.04 (0.88)	F(1,1257) = 239.31, p < .001	.160
Homogeneity of traditional news consumption 0 (heterogeneous) to 6 (homogeneous)	.62 (.70)	0.59 (0.61)	0.60 (0.65)	F(1,1257) = .002, p = .966	<.001
Homogeneity of digital news consumption 0 (heterogeneous) to 6 (homogeneous)	.63 (.87)	0.62 (0.76)	0.62 (0.80)	F(1,1257) = 0.12, p = .725	<.001

Results suggested a moderating effect of homogeneity of traditional news consumption on the relationship between candidate preference and COVID-19 support, ∆R² = .037, F(1, 1255) = 59.01, p < .001. This moderating effect was significant at all values of news consumption, ps <.001. Simple slope tests revealed that, at high levels of homogeneity, participants reported COVID-19 support consistent with the stance advanced by their preferred candidate (Figure 2). Conversely, at low levels of homogeneity (that is, high levels of heterogeneity) in news consumption, the gap between the different groups of voters became smaller, as COVID-19 support increased slightly for Trump voters but declined among Biden voters.

Figure 2. Moderating effect of homogeneity of traditional news consumption on preferred candidate and support for COVID-19 preventive measures. 95% CI in thicker line.

Likewise, results suggested a moderating effect of homogeneity of digital news consumption on the relationship between preferred candidate and COVID-19 support, ∆R² = .015, F(1,1255) = 22.97, p < .001. This moderating effect was significant at all values of digital news consumption, ps <.001. Simple slope tests indicated that, at high news homogeneity levels, participants reported COVID-19 support consistent with the position advanced by their preferred candidate (Figure 3). Conversely, at low news homogeneity levels (i.e., high news heterogeneity levels), the gap between the different voter groups became smaller. Notably, at higher news heterogeneity levels, COVID-19 support increased among Trump voters and decreased for Biden voters. Also noteworthy is that a visual comparison of Figures 2 and 3 reveals that the moderating role of news consumption homogeneity in issue polarization was less pronounced for digital news consumption than for traditional news consumption. Still, the general trend toward lower issue polarization at higher levels of news heterogeneity was observed for both digital and traditional news consumption, supporting our assumption that a heterogenous news diet is related to lower issue polarization online and offline.

Figure 3. Moderating effect of homogeneity of digital news consumption on preferred candidate and support for COVID-19 preventive measures. 95% CI in thicker line.

Discussion

Our data supported the assumption that the gap in support for COVID-19 prevention between Biden and Trump supporters was narrower as levels of homogeneity in traditional and digital news consumption decreased. Thus, in line with our theoretical expectations, there was a strong indication in the data that as news heterogeneity increased, the relationship between candidate preference and COVID-19 attitudes was weaker, suggesting lower issue polarization. In contrast, as news heterogeneity decreased, the relationship between candidate preference and COVID-19 attitudes was stronger and more polarized, suggesting that for those in more homogeneous information environments, attitudes toward COVID-19 prevention were more aligned with the issue stance advanced by their preferred political candidate.

Overall, our results support existing literature on the link between news heterogeneity, biased cognition, and issue polarization. Concretely, previous studies posited that issue polarization results from people using their prior attitudes, beliefs, and political preferences in information processing and interpretation (e.g., Bogado et al., 2023; Igartua, 2013; Kahan, 2013; Lord et al., 1979). In turn, research found that network heterogeneity increases exposure to a larger variety of information about an issue, which, in turn, can reduce issue polarization by introducing different considerations into the attitude formation process (Jang, 2014a, 2014b; J. K. Lee et al., 2014; cf. Garrett et al., 2014). Our study – in line with this existing literature – supported that a heterogeneous news diet can contribute to reducing polarization around pandemic management policies by fostering exposure to more diverse arguments and viewpoints, moving individuals from more biased to more objective information processing (e.g., Bakshy et al., 2015; Flaxman et al., 2016; Jang, 2014a, 2014b; Kim, 2011; Kim et al., 2013; J. K. Lee et al., 2014).

However, most literature on the relationship between network heterogeneity and issue polarization focused on digital media environments (e.g., Boutyline & Willer, 2017; Garrett, 2009; Garrett et al., 2014; Nelson & Webster, 2017). Conversely, our study compared the moderating role of traditional versus digital news heterogeneity in issue polarization and found that – despite commonly observed differences in the structure, usage patterns, and effects between traditional and digital media (e.g., J. Lee et al., 2022; Melki et al., 2022) – both played virtually identical roles in the relationship between candidate preference and COVID-19 attitudes. However, the moderating role of news consumption heterogeneity in issue polarization was more pronounced for traditional than digital news consumption. These findings suggest that people might be less likely to embrace counter-attitudinal information they encounter online versus offline, resulting in an increased incidence of politically biased information processing in digital environments compared to traditional media. Still, the general trend toward lower issue polarization at higher levels of news heterogeneity was observed for both digital and traditional news consumption, supporting our assumption that heterogeneity reduces polarization online and offline. Thus, this study gathered evidence supporting the link between heterogeneous and homogeneous media diets, politically biased cognition, and issue polarization both online and offline.

In this context, our study represents a novel contribution to research on health communication and issue polarization by providing evidence that, for highly polarized and highly salient public health issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a heterogeneous media diet can contribute to curb politically biased information processing (or individuals’ tendency to accept or reject information based on political preferences) by introducing different considerations into the attitude formation process (Guay & Johnston, 2022; Kahan, 2013; Kahan et al., 2017) thereby reducing issue polarization. Taken together, these findings suggest that promoting a varied media diet (both online and offline) appears as a potential avenue to reduce issue polarization around pandemic prevention and other topics. Political polarization poses a severe challenge to effective pandemic management (Clarke et al., 2021; Hunger et al., 2023; Wright et al., 2020). As many argue that the next pandemic is already on the horizon (e.g., Osterholm, 2020), developing interventions to reduce issue polarization around public health crisis management appears essential. Furthermore, as issue polarization grows around many public health issues (e.g., climate change, women’s reproductive rights, vaccination), the conclusions presented in this study can be extended beyond the confines of COVID-19 and pandemic management.

Still, although the effect of news exposure on attitude outcomes was not the focus of our study, it is important to note that exposure to more varied information closed the attitude gap by increasing support for COVID-19 preventive measures among Trump voters but slightly reducing it among Biden supporters. We can only speculate about the meaning of these findings, but as COVID-19 dominated the public debate, it is possible that encountering a variety of both favorable and critical positions toward COVID-19 prevention (Apuke & Omar, 2021; Balakrishnan et al., 2023) may have exerted a moderating effect on COVID-19 attitudes by which attitudes became less extreme on both ends of the attitude spectrum.

In all, the crucial importance of media use and information exposure to advance public health goals in general and support for COVID-19 preventive measures and vaccination more specifically has been empirically corroborated in numerous studies (e.g., Gehrau et al., 2021; Melki et al., 2022; Nazione et al., 2021). Our study contributed to this buoyant literature by highlighting the potential of news heterogeneity to boost support for public health recommendations and policies among skeptical individuals. In this sense, the importance of fostering a heterogeneous news diet for achieving public health goals is highlighted. In digital environments, network heterogeneity can be promoted by imposing stricter regulations around algorithmic filtering and decision-making (Fitsilis, 2019; Krafft et al., 2022). In traditional media, our findings highlight the importance of curbing media monopolies and promoting media plurality and, thereby, public access to various voices and viewpoints for public health management (Barnett, 2010).

Limitations

This study focused on how homogeneity of news consumption moderated the relationship between political candidate preference and attitudes toward COVID-19 pandemic management. As such, we favored a cross-sectional approach to examine variation in the association between candidate preference and COVID-19 attitudes at different levels of news heterogeneity. It is important to note that, given our cross-sectional design, this study did not suggest that candidate preference drives COVID-19 attitudes, as the direction of causality in the relationship between these two variables could not be experimentally confirmed (see Becher et al., 2021; Clarke et al., 2021; Dolman et al., 2022; Hunger et al., 2023 on the link between political preferences and COVID-19 attitudes). Conversely, this study gathered evidence that news homogeneity moderated the relationship between these two variables.

Admittedly, the homogeneity of digital news consumption variable overlaps – to some extent – with the homogeneity of traditional news consumption variable, as both variables consider similar news sources (e.g., CNN for traditional news; cnn.com for digital news). As such, the fact that these variables played an analogous role in the relationship between candidate preferences and COVID-19 attitudes may seem unsurprising, and their inclusion in the study as separate variables appears redundant. However, as research focused heavily on the relationship between network heterogeneity and issue polarization in digital environments but mostly neglected traditional media (Sindermann et al., 2021), this study assessed whether news homogeneity played a similar role in issue polarization online and offline. By including both variables in a comparative analysis, this study showed that homogeneous or heterogeneous news diets played a similar moderating role on issue polarization, regardless of whether news consumption occurred online or offline. Future studies would benefit from using more nuanced digital news consumption measures considering new digital media such as social media platforms and generative artificial intelligence.

On that note, it should be mentioned that homogeneity of news consumption was measured using self-reports. Although some have raised concerns about using self-reports in empirical research (e.g., Heine et al., 2008), there is ample evidence of the validity of self-reports to measure attitudes and behavior (Oishi & Roth, 2009).¹ Moreover, these measures are widely used in research on the effects of media use and information exposure (e.g., Garrett et al., 2014; Melki et al., 2022). Embedded within this research tradition, this study favored self-reports to measure traditional and digital media consumption. Future research should aim to replicate our findings using different methods to measure media use (e.g., internet usage tracking).

Finally, although findings appear bound to the U.S. context, empirical evidence supports the assumption that news heterogeneity may moderate COVID-19 polarization in other contexts where political and ideological polarization around COVID-19 is prevalent (e.g., Clarke et al., 2021; Hunger et al., 2023). By the same token, although this study focuses on issue polarization along political lines (i.e., candidate preference), there are theoretical grounds to assume that news heterogeneity may moderate issue polarization that occurs due to other factors (e.g., religious beliefs, prior attitudes, or personal preferences). In any case, future studies should continue to expand this crucial research to other countries, topics, and issue polarization factors.

Conclusions

Media use and information access are essential tools in public health management (Salmon & Poorisat, 2020). In this sense, the COVID-19 pandemic was no exception (e.g., Gehrau et al., 2021; Melki et al., 2022; Nazione et al., 2021). However, polarization around COVID-19 prevention posed a challenge for governments and health organizations, as skeptical individuals were more likely to reject scientific evidence and public health recommendations, making it harder for governments to mount an effective policy response or, at times, to reach an agreement among political parties on best practices for public health management (Parker & Stern, 2022). In this context, the importance of developing avenues to reduce issue polarization around COVID-19 – and other public health issues more generally – cannot be overstated. Against this backdrop, this study proposed that promoting a varied news diet may contribute to reducing issue polarization while boosting support for public health policies and measures among skeptical individuals. As pandemics become more frequent (Haileamlak, 2022; Osterholm, 2020), research on how to reach a social consensus on the importance of scientific evidence and public health recommendations in effective pandemic management is increasingly crucial.

Disclosure statement

The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

Codebook and datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2021.107548

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant agreement No [870661 (HumMingBird)] and grant agreement No [101004945 (OPPORTUNITIES)]. David De Coninck was supported by funding from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) with grant number No [1219824N (DeMiSo)].

Notes

1. As Howard (1994) put it, “when employed within a sensible design, self-reports often represent a valuable and valid measurement strategy” (p. 403).