An information-based explanation for partisan media sorting

Abstract

Partisan voters tend to seek political news from media sources that match their predispositions. Scholars and pundits often attribute this partisan media sorting to psychological biases, and they typically assume that it leads voters to make worse decisions at the ballot box. To reinterpret this evidence and provide an alternative explanation, we develop two formal models of media choice—one in which voters only want to hear good news about their party and another in which voters only care about making good electoral decisions. Both models predict partisan media sorting, so sorting does not constitute evidence that voters are poorly informed or that they are driven by psychological biases. However, the models do produce competing predictions about when voters will consume more or less news and about whether signals from the news should influence vote choices. Reassessing the empirical literature, we find some support for both explanations.