Crafting Our Own Biased Media Diets the Effects of Confirmation, Source, and Negativity Bias on Selective Attendance to Online News

Abstract

Audiences’ online information acquisition has raised questions about the nature of selective exposure in today’s high-choice and fragmented news environment. To offer an overview of the relative contribution of several key drivers of selective exposure to political news, we assess the guiding influence of (1) confirmation bias, (2) source bias, and (3) negativity bias. The findings of an experiment in two countries (UK and US, N = 858), demonstrate that confirmation bias has the most profound effect on selective exposure into news on immigration and the privatization of health-care systems, in conjunction with comparable and significant effects of source and negativity biases. The studied moderating role of preexisting levels of involvement and skepticism provides additional insights into news selection mechanisms. We conclude that today’s online media diets are guided by different biases, which may fragment audiences based on their news preferences and issue positions.