The Paradox of Media Diversity: Values, Exposure, and Democratic Citizenship

media diversity;selective exposure;motivated reasoning;cross-cutting exposure;democratic citizenship;information-seeking;Communications;Social Sciences;Communication

Kim, Dam HeeWeeks, Brian ;

University of Michigan

关键词: media diversity;    selective exposure;    motivated reasoning;    cross-cutting exposure;    democratic citizenship;    information-seeking;    Communications;    Social Sciences;    Communication;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/138625/dheekim_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Put forward by democratic theory, it is normatively expected that individuals value and seek news from diverse viewpoints in order to become good citizens.In this normative assumption, this dissertation identifies two paradoxes of media diversity: First, despite values widely ascribed to diversity-seeking, some individuals fail to seek diverse viewpoints (i.e., the diversity deficit).Second, individuals who consume diverse viewpoints do not appear to uniformly garner democratic benefits by becoming more politically informed, engaged, and capable of deliberation (i.e., there are mixed effects of diverse exposure on democratic citizenship).These paradoxes are explained with two sets of moderators: first, by applying the framework of Motivation, Opportunity and Ability (MOA), and second, by expanding on the theory of motivated reasoning.To accomplish this, two waves of survey data from an online panel of 1,328 Americans were collected during the 2016 presidential election campaign.On the first paradox, the results suggest that individuals with the right motivation, opportunity, and ability successfully translate their diversity values into diverse exposure.Specifically, people with strong diversity-seeking skills who also habitually consume news better-match their diversity values with diverse exposure.Political interest additionally helps individuals actualize their diversity values through diverse exposure on social media by following information sources.To explain the second paradox, this dissertation proposes and demonstrates three distinct motivations for cross-cutting exposure—defensive dismissal, defensive deliberation and balanced deliberation.For individuals with defensive motivations (who dismiss or counter-argue opposing views), diverse exposure suppresses political knowledge, but facilitates political participation and diverse news sharing on social media.In contrast to normative expectations, for individuals who are motivated to process opposing views in a balanced fashion, diverse exposure suppresses political knowledge, but increases political participation.These individuals with strong balanced deliberation motivations reap primarily deliberative benefits through diverse exposure by engaging in more cross-cutting discussion.Furthermore, sub-group analyses suggest that the majority of significant findings take place among partisans.Despite the popular negative narrative, partisans appear to function as good citizens in a few notable aspects.Compared to weak or non-partisans, partisans make better use of resources at hand to match their professed diversity values with diverse exposure, through which they in turn garner greater democratic benefits, including political participation and cross-cutting discussion.Overall, this dissertation argues that to better understand the muddied relationship between diverse exposure and democratic citizenship, it is important to consider psychological factors such as individual diversity values, different motivations for cross-cutting exposure, and strength of party affiliation.Finally, it makes practical suggestions regarding the ways in which the news industry, policymakers, and audiences can work together to build a news media landscape for an informed, engaged, and deliberative citizenry.