 October, 2011 Social Media
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The Flow of Political Information in the Digital Age: What's Better and What's Worse? | ||
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Shanto Iyengar Information overload is the principal consequence of the digital revolution. Technology has provided consumers with access to a far greater number of information sources than they can possibly attend to. The human response to overload is selective attention. In the political domain the exercise of selectivity has two major effects on the composition of the audience for news. First, people with limited interest in public affairs tune out completely and use their media time to follow sports, movies, cooking, pornography, or whatever interests them. Second, the politically inclined can place themselves in the line of “friendly” news coverage. For the political class, enhanced choice makes it possible to avoid exposure to news coverage that might represent a diversity of perspectives on current events. As discussed below, both these forms of selective exposure have important ramifications for the body politic. The disappearance of the less-attentive strata of the electorate from the news audience exacerbates existing inequalities in the distribution of political knowledge and enhances the ability of elites to shape or manipulate public opinion. The increased popularity of news organizations that deliver ideological commentary instead of news facilitates affective polarization. People who encounter information that consistently favors their preferences while denigrating those who may disagree are more likely to fear, even loathe their opponents. It is no coincidence that the increased polarization of the electorate has occurred at precisely the same time as the significant expansion in the audience for Fox, MSNBC, and the political blogosphere. The Demise of the Inadvertent Audience In the heyday of network news, virtually every adult American sat through the evening newscasts aired by the three major newscasts. Since the offerings of the networks were sufficiently homogeneous, Americans of all walks of life and political inclination were exposed to the same “information commons.” Many viewers were exposed to the news as a simple byproduct of their loyalty to the sit/com or other entertainment program that immediately followed the news. These viewers may have been watching television rather than television news. Although precise estimates are not available, it is likely that this “inadvertent” audience may have accounted for close to half the total audience for network news. The massive news audience in the 1960s and 1970s meant that television had a leveling effect on the distribution of information. The news reached not only those motivated to tune in, but also people with generally low levels of political interest, thus allowing the latter group to “catch up” with their more attentive counterparts. Today, however, television audiences are fragmented. No single network or newscast has a dominant market share. There is a much wider range of media choices on offer, providing greater variability in the content of available information. The availability of choice has allowed people with limited interest in politics to gravitate to subject matter they find more compelling; it is no longer necessary to sit through the news to be entertained. Thus, the audience for news is increasingly limited to the attentive public. The increasingly self-selected audience for news has clear implications for the acquisition of public affairs information. The information rich will get richer, the poor poorer. Recent cross-national research (based on a sample of some fifteen industrialized nations) demonstrates unequivocally that Americans, on average, are significantly, indeed spectacularly less informed about current affairs than residents of other industrialized democracies. The differences in knowledge are limited to hard news; on questions of soft news, Americans are not under-informed. More to the point, the cross-national differences in knowledge are concentrated among people with low levels of political interest, precisely the group that in the days of the inadvertent audience were exposed to some news coverage on a daily basis. Obviously, the presence of a significant body of voters with limited political awareness creates opportunities for elites and other opinion leaders to shape public opinion. In the context of never-ending campaigns, candidates have strong incentives to misinform and manipulate poorly informed voters. Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines A second selection bias in the composition of news audiences reflects partisanship. In the more fragmented news market of today, it is possible to avoid exposure to dissonant information. Strong partisans on the right can tune in to Fox, thus confirming their priors on a daily basis. The Fox ratings indicate that in the world of cable news, slant is a competitive edge. For those on the left, MSNBC, a host of blogs (and, according to some, the venerable the New York Times) provide the same, comforting “echo chamber” environment. Assuming that consumers will continue to sort themselves into news audiences, and increasing numbers of news providers respond to the demand for news with a slant, we can envision a society in which the acquisition of public affairs information and analysis is driven primarily by partisan or ideological orientation. The effects of exposure to a one-sided flow of information are well known, namely, reinforcement and polarization. A growing body of evidence documents the effects of selective exposure to news on polarized beliefs about the political world. Democrats and Republicans appear to possess sharply diverging facts about a variety of events and issues ranging from the discovery of WMD in Iraq to whether Saddam Hussein was “personally involved” in attacks on the World Trade Center, to the number of American casualties incurred during the Iraq War, to whether the healthcare reform bill included provisions for “death panels,” and to the question of President Obama’s religion. Partisans even offer significantly diverging assessments of economic conditions. Increasing inequality in the distribution of political knowledge and the intensification of conflict across party lines both represent strains on the democratic process. Unless there are strong countervailing pressures, it is hard to be optimistic about “post-Internet” politics.
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