Selective exposure and its effects on citizens’ electoral behavior: The influence of media consumption on voting in the Spanish general elections of 2015 and 2016

Abstract

The new trend of politically polarized media in Spain has led the authors of this paper to rethink the relationship between media and citizens within selective exposure, perception and retention theory and its influence on electoral behavior. The selection of political information contents by citizens during electoral campaigns forms a diet that influences their votes. Therefore, this research article attempts to clarify the relationship between the consumption of political information from mass media and the voters’ electoral behavior amid the new media reality of the country. For this, and per the post-electoral surveys of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS, for its acronym in Spanish), it studies the effects of citizens’ media exposure during the 2015 and 2016 general elections on voting. In these years, there was a crisis in the party system in Spain after several decades of bipartisanship and institutional stability. The results allow concluding that the political discussion in the country builds on two lines of confrontation: ideological (left-right) and territorial, which politically polarizes those citizens from territories with their own identity (mainly Catalonia). Media positively influence the political narrative since voters consume political information from related media as a symbol of electoral reaffirmation.