How social network sites and other online intermediaries increase exposure to news.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31988122.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1073/pnas.1918279117 and PMC identifier 7022199.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Research has prominently assumed that social media and web portals that aggregate news restrict the diversity of content that users are exposed to by tailoring news diets toward the users’ preferences. In our empirical test of this argument, we apply a random-effects within–between model to two large representative datasets of individual web browsing histories. This approach allows us to better encapsulate the effects of social media and other intermediaries on news exposure. We find strong evidence that intermediaries foster more varied online news diets. The results call into question fears about the vanishing potential for incidental news exposure in digital media environments.