How Does Multi-Platform Social Media Use Lead to Biased News Engagement? Examining the Role of Counter-Attitudinal Incidental Exposure, Cognitive Elaboration, and Network Homogeneity

Abstract

Using an online panel survey in the United States, this study examines how multi-platform social media use impacts news engagement on social media. Results show that multi-platform social media use prompts incidental exposure to counter-attitudinal news and further encourages people to cognitively elaborate on the counter-attitudinal information, which in turn contributes to news engagement on social media. However, news engagement is performed in a biased way that is supportive of like-minded content and non-supportive of counter-attitudinal content. Furthermore, the indirect effect of multi-platform social media use on biased news engagement becomes stronger when one’s network is more homogeneous. Although studies have pointed to the democratic prospects of multi-platform social media use as it leads to cross-cutting exposure, our results suggest that it could lead users to engage with news in ways that confirm their pre-existing attitudes and disconfirm counter-attitudinal ones.