Full length articleSelf-expression just a click away: Source interactivity impacts on confirmation bias and political attitudes
Section snippets
Confirmation bias in selective exposure and attitudinal consequences
As the terms confirmation bias and selective exposure have sometimes been used synonymously in the literature, it should be clarified here that the present investigation considers the confirmation bias to be a specific pattern of selective exposure, with the latter being a broader and multilayered concept (Knobloch-Westerwick, Westerwick, & Sude, 2020). Selective exposure can be defined as “any systematic bias in selected messages that diverges from the composition of accessible messages” (
Impacts from source interactivity
The term source interactivity (SI) captures the ability of users to express themselves on media via interactive features. It builds on Sundar et al.’s (2015) notion of self-expression that describes how users utilize interactive features on a website for customizability, as well as gatekeeping for others (e.g., blogging and social bookmarking). Potentially, the seemingly superficial click to voice a reaction to a political online message matters substantially for one's own political views.
Method
A 2 × 4 x 2 selective exposure experiment featured attitude consistency (AC; attitude-consistent vs. attitude-discrepant), topic (on four issues), and SI presence (SIP; present vs. absent) as within-subjects factors. Participants browsed four iterations of an online news platform for 3 min each. Each iteration covered a different political topic. Two iterations were randomly assigned to have SI present - wherein participants could click on “up-vote” and “down-vote” arrows next to article leads
Impact of SI presence on reinforcement (H1)
To test H1, first, a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to examine the main effect of SI condition on attitude reinforcement (averaged across relevant websites). To isolate the impact of experimental condition, this model did not include covariates. There was no difference in average reinforcement between SI conditions (p = .881). To test the robustness of this finding, a multi-level regression model with random intercepts by participant (4 observations per participant, corresponding to each
Discussion
Much hope existed that the internet would invigorate political deliberation, as desirable for democracies, but on the other hand, concerns exist that this landscape of interactive use of public affairs information leads societies into unprecedented levels of polarization and intolerance (Dahlgren, 2005). Clearly, online interfaces are changing how people consume political information and news (Lee & Tandoc, 2017; Thorson & Wells, 2016), as users can provide direct feedback on articles in the
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Daniel J. Sude: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization. George D.H. Pearson: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft. Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
References (55)
- et al.
Social media as a catalyst for online deliberation? Exploring the affordances of facebook and YouTube for political expression
Computers in Human Behavior
(2013) - et al.
Stumbling upon news on the Internet: Effects of incidental news exposure and relative entertainment use on political engagement
Computers in Human Behavior
(2013) - et al.
Incivility on Facebook and political polarization: The mediating role of seeking further comments and negative emotion
Computers in Human Behavior
(2019) - et al.
Testing the effects of incivility during internet political discussion on perceptions of rational argument and evaluations of a political outgroup
Computers in Human Behavior
(2019) - et al.
Measuring individual differences in affective, heuristic, and holistic intuition
Personality and Individual Differences
(2007) Competitive analysis, marketing mix and traffic
- et al.
Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4
Journal of Statistical Software
(2016) - et al.
A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of political communication
Journal of Communication
(2008) Explaining the emergence of political fragmentation on social media: The role of ideology and extremism
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
(2018)pwr: Basic functions for power analysis. R package version 1.2-2
(2018)