The relationship between incidental news exposure and political participation: A cross-country, multilevel analysis

Autor(en)

Jörg Matthes, Alon Zoizner, Andreas Nanz, David Nicolas Hopmann, Yannis Theocharis, Selina Noetzel

Abstrakt

In the modern, networked information environment, incidental exposure (IE) to political news is often theorized to benefit democracy, particularly by fueling political participation. Using cross-national survey data with more than 28,000 respondents from seventeen countries, we distinguished between first-level IE (i.e., the mere scanning of incidentally encountered information) and second-level IE (i.e., effortful processing of incidentally encountered information). We found that first-level IE was negatively related to political participation carried out through social media, while second-level IE was positively associated to both social media-based and offline participation. Furthermore, we found that the association between first-level IE and offline participation turned significantly positive for the healthiest democracies. Overall, findings suggest that the participatory role of first-level IE depend on the current quality state of a democracy.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Haifa, Technische Universität München, University of Southern Denmark (SDU)

Journal

Digital Journalism

ISSN

2167-0811

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2024.2436548

Publikationsdatum

11-2024

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Communication

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/919f1c5c-1186-4d73-81b2-649e72d51c95