Does Exposure to Online News Media Depend on Individuals’ Political Attitudes and Trust in These Media? A Comparison Between Declarative and Behavioral Data

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes “selective exposure” to online news media (i.e., preferential exposure to congenial and trusted media) by comparing the behavioral and declarative data of 1,536 participants over a one-month period. We recorded their Internet activity over a one-month period and then asked them about their level of trust in several news media outlets, the frequency with which they had been exposed to them, and their political position and orientation along a progressive-conservative axis.. Results show that 1) participants’ trust in the different news media varies according to their political attitudes, 2) participants’ probability of declaring exposure to a specific news media is impacted by their trust in this media, as well as by their political attitudes, 3) these effects are much weaker when considering participants’ effective exposure to news media. Overall, these results indicate that selective exposure to online news media exists, but it is exaggerated when studied only by means of declarative data.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully thank the Editor, the Associate Editor, and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the manuscript. We also want to thank the Scientific Committee and the experts of the Fondation Descartes for their constructive comments on the preparation of the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2023.2186246.

Notes

¹ We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for raising this important issue.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Fondation Descartes.

Notes on contributors

Aurélien Brest

Aurélien Brest is starting his PhD thesis at Université de Bordeaux, on the topic of fake news sharing behavior online. He also works at the Fondation Descartes on trust and misinformation issues.

Laurent Cordonier

Laurent Cordonier is currently associate researcher at Paris-Diderot University and research scientist at the Fondation Descartes. His work focuses on children’s socialization process, social cognition, collective beliefs, and on exploring how some methods and knowledge of cognitive science can be integrated into classical sociological paradigms.