TY - JOUR
T1 - Null effects of news exposure
T2 - a test of the (un)desirable effects of a ‘news vacation’ and ‘news binging’
AU - Wojcieszak, Magdalena
AU - von Hohenberg, Bernhard Clemm
AU - Casas, Andreu
AU - Menchen-Trevino, Ericka
AU - de Leeuw, Sjifra
AU - Gonçalves, Alexandre
AU - Boon, Miriam
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) gratefully acknowledge the support of the European Research Council, “Europeans exposed to dissimilar views in the media: investigating backfire effects,” Proposal EXPO- 756301 (ERC Starting Grant, Magdalena Wojcieszak – PI). The authors are also grateful to Pablo Barbera and Andy Guess for their feedback on previous drafts of the paper, and to Youjia Huang, Thomas Struett, and Randall Whiteman for their research assistance. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Research Council.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Democratic theorists and the public emphasize the centrality of news media to a well-functioning society. Yet, there are reasons to believe that news exposure can have a range of largely overlooked detrimental effects. This preregistered project examines news exposure effects on desirable outcomes, i.e., political knowledge, participation, and support for compromise, and detrimental outcomes, i.e., attitude and affective polarization, negative system perceptions, and worsened individual well-being. We rely on two complementary over-time experiments that combine participants’ survey self-reports and their behavioral browsing data: one that incentivized participants to take a ’news vacation’ for a week (N = 803; 6M visits) in the US, the other to ‘news binge’ for 2 weeks (N = 939; 4M visits) in Poland. Across both experiments, we demonstrate that reducing or increasing news exposure has no impact on the positive or negative outcomes tested. These null effects emerge irrespective of participants’ prior levels of news consumption and whether prior news diet was like-minded, and regardless of compliance levels. We argue that these findings reflect the reality of limited news exposure in the real world, with news exposure comprising on average roughly 3% of citizens’ online information diet.
AB - Democratic theorists and the public emphasize the centrality of news media to a well-functioning society. Yet, there are reasons to believe that news exposure can have a range of largely overlooked detrimental effects. This preregistered project examines news exposure effects on desirable outcomes, i.e., political knowledge, participation, and support for compromise, and detrimental outcomes, i.e., attitude and affective polarization, negative system perceptions, and worsened individual well-being. We rely on two complementary over-time experiments that combine participants’ survey self-reports and their behavioral browsing data: one that incentivized participants to take a ’news vacation’ for a week (N = 803; 6M visits) in the US, the other to ‘news binge’ for 2 weeks (N = 939; 4M visits) in Poland. Across both experiments, we demonstrate that reducing or increasing news exposure has no impact on the positive or negative outcomes tested. These null effects emerge irrespective of participants’ prior levels of news consumption and whether prior news diet was like-minded, and regardless of compliance levels. We argue that these findings reflect the reality of limited news exposure in the real world, with news exposure comprising on average roughly 3% of citizens’ online information diet.
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U2 - 10.1057/s41599-022-01423-x
DO - 10.1057/s41599-022-01423-x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85142257133
SN - 2662-9992
VL - 9
JO - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
JF - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 413
ER -