The Antecedents of Incidental News Exposure on Social Media

Abstract

Social media users incidentally get exposed to news when their networks provide content that they would otherwise not seek out purposefully. We developed a scale of incidental news exposure on social media and conducted a survey to examine its antecedents. We found that information received through weak ties, rather than strong ties, was significantly associated with incidental news exposure. The amount of time spent, frequency of getting news updates, and the frequency clicking on news-related links on social media were correlated with incidental exposure. Our findings suggest that promoting news consumption on social media can be achieved not only through giving users information they want but also by exposing users to information they are not consciously looking for.