What Affects First- and Second-Level Selective Exposure to Journalistic News? A Social Media Online Experiment

Bibliographic Data

ID12658643
AuthorsJakob Ohme (0000-0001-9131-5283, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author), Cornelia Mothes (0000-0002-7268-1664, Technische Universität Dresden)
Year2020
Volume21
Issue9
Pages1220-1242
Publication date2020-03-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournalism Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-670X • E-ISSN: 1469-9699
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1461670x.2020.1735490
OpenAlexW3011805020
LanguageEN
Citations received29
References cited36

On social media, journalistic news products compete with entertainment-oriented and user-generated contents on two different stages of news use: First, users navigate their attention through a continuous stream of information in their newsfeed and, second, they potentially click on some of these posts to spend time with the actual full-contents. The present study conceptualizes these two types of news use behaviors in social media environments as first- and second-level selective exposure. Based on this new approach, we investigated main drivers of journalistic news exposure on both exposure levels in an online survey experiment before the German federal election in 2017 (N = 210). To achieve high ecological validity, we developed a Newsfeed Exposure Observer (NEO)-Framework to recreate realistic user settings for online experiments studying selective exposure in the digital era, where news posts are complemented by popularity cues like social endorsements or individual recommendations. Findings show that, at the first level of selective exposure, attention to journalistic news posts is particularly affected by political interest. However, the decision to click on posts in the newsfeed and to spend time with the linked contents seems more strongly driven by social factors than by individual predispositions

Advertising · Business · Entertainment · German · Internet privacy · News media · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Public relations · Social media · Social media optimization · World Wide Web · Computer Science · History · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology

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