Incidental exposure to shared news on Facebook is a vital but understudied aspect of how citizens get involved with politics. This experiment investigates the influence of recommender characteristics (tie strength, political knowledge, political similarity) and different media sources (tabloids, legacy, and digital-born outlets) including multiple mediators (e.g., social pressure, outlet credibility) on incidental exposure to political news on Facebook. A 3 × 3 multi-stimulus, between-subject experiment with two additional quasi-factors and 135 different stimuli was conducted using a representative sample (N = 507). Results showed that strong ties and recommenders with high knowledge increase news exposure, but the impact of knowledge is limited to recommenders with similar political opinions. Similar effects occur for different media types, which also have an independent impact on news exposure. Structural equation modeling reveals that media source effects are mediated through media perceptions, whereas recommender effects work via the desire for social monitoring and perceived issue importance.
AalbergT.BlekesauneA.ElvestadE. (2013). Media choice and informed democracy. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18, 281-303. doi:10.1177/1940161213485990
2.
AlhabashS.MaM. (2017). A tale of four platforms: Motivations and uses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat among college students?Social Media & Society, 3, 1-13. doi:10.1177/2056305117691544
3.
AtkinC. (1973). Instrumental utilities and information seeking. In ClarkeP. (Ed.), New models for mass communication research (pp. 205-242). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
4.
BakshyE.MessingS.AdamicL. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348, 1130-1132. doi:10.1126/science.aaa1160
5.
BakshyE.RosennI.MarlowC.AdamicL. (2012). The role of social networks in information diffusion. In MilleA.GandonF.MisselisJ.RabinovichM.StaabS. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on World Wide Web (pp. 519-528). New York, NY: ACM. doi:10.1145/2187836.2187907
6.
BolsenT.LeeperT. J. (2013). Self-interest and attention to news among issue publics. Political Communication, 30, 329-348. doi:10.1080/10584609.2012.737428
7.
BondR. M.FarissC. J.JonesJ. J.KramerA. D. I.MarlowC.SettleJ. E.FowlerJ. H. (2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 489, 295-298. doi:10.1038/nature11421
8.
ChoiJ. H.WattJ. H.LynchM. (2006). Perceptions of news credibility about the war in Iraq: Why war opponents perceived the Internet as the most credible medium. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 209-229. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00322.x
9.
GlynnC. J.OstmanR. E.McDonaldD. G. (1995). Opinions, perception, and social reality. In GlasserT. L.SalmonC. T. (Eds.), Public opinion and the communication of consent (pp. 249-277). New York, NY: Guilford.
10.
GranovetterM. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360-1380. doi:10.1086/225469
11.
HargittaiE.NeumanW. R.CurryO. (2012). Taming the information tide: Perceptions of information overload in the American home. The Information Society, 28, 161-173. doi:10.1080/01972243.2012.669450
12.
HartW.AlbarracínD.EaglyA. H.BrechanI.LindbergM. J.MerrillL. (2009). Feeling validated versus being correct: A meta-analysis of selective exposure to information. Psychological Bulletin, 135, S555-S588. doi:10.1037/a0015701
13.
IyengarS.HahnK. S. (2009). Red media, blue media: Evidence of ideological selectivity in media use. Journal of Communication, 59, 19-39. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.01402.x
14.
KarakayaliN.KilicA. (2013). More network conscious than ever? Challenges, strategies, and analytic labor of users in the Facebook environment. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18, 175-193. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12005
15.
KarnowskiV.KümpelA. S.LeonhardL.LeinerD. J. (2017). From incidental news exposure to news engagement. How perceptions of the news post and news usage patterns influence engagement with news articles encountered on Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 76, 42-50. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.06.041
16.
KimY.ChenH.-T.Gil de ZúñigaH. (2013). Stumbling upon news on the Internet: Effects of incidental news exposure and relative entertainment use on political engagement. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 2607-2614. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2013.06.005
17.
KleemansM.Hendriks VettehenP. G. J.BeentjesJ. W. J.EisingaR. (2011). The influence of age and gender on preferences for negative content and tabloid packaging in television news stories. Communication Research, 39, 679-697. doi:10.1177/0093650211414559
18.
Knobloch-WesterwickS.CarpentierF. D.BlumhoffA.NickelN. (2005). Selective exposure effects for positive and negative news: Testing the robustness of the informational utility model. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 82, 181-195. doi:10.1177/107769900508200112
19.
Knobloch-WesterwickS.JohnsonB. K.WesterwickA. (2015). Confirmation bias in online searches: Impacts of selective exposure before an election on political attitude strength and shifts. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20, 171-187. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12105
20.
Knobloch-WesterwickS.KleinmanS. B. (2012). Preelection selective exposure: Confirmation bias versus informational utility. Communication Research, 39, 170-193. doi:10.1177/0093650211400597
21.
LeeJ. K.KimE. (2017). Incidental exposure to news: Predictors in the social media setting and effects on information gain online. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, 1008-1015. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.018
22.
MaiL. M.FreudenthalerR.SchneiderF. M.VordererP. (2015). “I know you’ve seen it!” Individual and social factors for users’ chatting behavior on Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 49, 296-302. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.074
23.
MarderB.JoinsonA.ShankarA. (2012). Every post you make, every pic you take, I’ll be watching you: Behind social spheres on Facebook. In SpragueR. H. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 45th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 859-868). doi:10.1109/HICSS.2012.12
24.
MarewskiJ. N.GalesicM.GigerenzerG. (2009). Fast and frugal media choices. In HartmannT. (Ed.), Media choice: A theoretical and empirical overview (pp. 107-128). New York, NY: Routledge.
25.
MetzgerM. J.FlanaginA. J. (2013). Credibility and trust of information in online environments: The use of cognitive heuristics. Journal of Pragmatics, 59, 210-220. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2013.07.012
26.
NadkarniA.HofmannS. G. (2012). Why do people use Facebook?Personality and Individual Differences, 52, 243-249. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.11.007
PriorM. (2007). Post-broadcast democracy: How media choice increases inequality in political involvement and polarizes elections. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139878425
29.
RubinA. M. (1994). Media uses and effects: A uses-and-gratifications perspective. In BryantJ.ZillmannD. (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (pp. 417-436). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
30.
ScheufeleD. A.NisbetM. C. (2002). Being a citizen online: New opportunities and dead ends. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 7(3), 55-75. doi:10.1177/1081180X0200700304
31.
SilviaP. J. (2008). Interest—The curious emotion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 57-60. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00548.x
32.
StoycheffE.PingreeR. J.PeiferJ. T.SuiM. (2018). Agenda cueing effects of news and social media. Media Psychology, 21, 182-201. doi:10.1080/15213269.2017.1311214
33.
StroudN. J. (2010). Polarization and partisan selective exposure. Journal of Communication, 60, 556-576. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01497.x
34.
TewksburyD.WeaverA. J.MaddexB. D. (2001). Accidentally informed: Incidental news exposure on the world wide web. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 78, 533-554. doi:10.1177/107769900107800309
35.
ThorsonK.WellsC. (2015). Curated flows: A framework for mapping media exposure in the digital age. Communication Theory, 26, 309-328. doi:10.1111/comt.12087
36.
TsfatiY. (2010). Online news exposure and trust in the mainstream media: Exploring possible associations. American Behavioral Scientist, 54, 22-42. doi:10.1177/0002764210376309
37.
TufekciZ. (2008). Grooming, gossip, Facebook and MySpace. What can we learn about these sites from those who won’t assimilate?Information, Communication & Society, 11, 544-564. doi:10.1080/13691180801999050
38.
TurcotteJ.YorkC.IrvingJ.SchollR. M.PingreeR. J. (2015). News recommendations from social media opinion leaders: Effects on media trust and information seeking. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20, 520-535. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12127
39.
UrbanJ.SchweigerW. (2014). News quality from the recipients’ perspective: Investigating recipients’ ability to judge the normative quality of news. Journalism Studies, 15, 821-840. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2013.856670
40.
ValerianiA.VaccariC. (2015). Accidental exposure to politics on social media as online participation equalizer in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. New Media & Society, 18, 1857-1874. doi:10.1177/1461444815616223
41.
WinterS.KrämerN. C. (2014). A question of credibility: Effects of source cues and recommendations on information selection on news sites and blogs. Communications, 39, 435-456. doi:10.1515/commun-2014-0020
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
