The Degree of Homogeneity Versus Heterogeneity in Individuals’ Political News Consumption
A Replication and Extension in Two Independent Samples
Abstract
Abstract: This work investigated the prevalence of filter bubble or echo chamber-related phenomena, psychological factors rendering individuals resilient or vulnerable to them, and their associations to political views focusing on extremity and polarization. For this, a cross-cultural replication of a study by Sindermann et al. (2021) was conducted. As an extension, multiple political views variables were assessed to examine whether the application of different conceptualizations of political views explains heterogeneous findings across previous studies. Two samples were recruited: 390 (n = 135 males) US college students and a quota sample of 489 (n = 243 males) US adults. Participants completed personality scales and measures on political news consumption homogeneity versus heterogeneity and political views. Consistent with previous research, results revealed few individuals consume political news absolutely homogeneously. Openness was negatively related to the degree of political news consumption homogeneity, and the relationship between political news consumption homogeneity and political views yielded inconsistent, often statistically nonsignificant, results. These findings challenge the prevailing notion of filter bubbles and echo chambers as widespread phenomena and indicate that relationships between political news consumption homogeneity and political views are not necessarily deleterious with respect to extremization and polarization. As such, the results suggest that these phenomena might not be as significant for the general population as previously thought. Nonetheless, certain individuals might still find themselves in filter bubbles or echo chambers and suffer from accompanying consequences. In this regard, the present work replicates findings underscoring that individuals with lower Openness exhibit greater political news consumption homogeneity.
References
2021). ANES 2020 Time Series Study: Pre-election and post-election survey questionnaires. https://electionstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/anes_timeseries_2020_questionnaire_20210719.pdf
. (2020). Generational gaps in political media use and civic engagement: From Baby Boomers to Generation Z. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003111498
(2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), 9216–9221. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804840115
(2020).
(Social media, echo chambers, and political polarization . In J. A. TuckerN. PersilyEds., Social media and democracy: The state of the field, prospects for reform (pp. 34–55). Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/social-media-and-democracy/social-media-echo-chambers-and-political-polarization/333A5B4DE1B67EFF7876261118CCFE192015). Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an echo chamber? Psychological Science, 26(10), 1531–1542. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615594620
(2016). Personality traits and echo chambers on Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 65, 319–324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.08.016
(2015). Social media use and participation: A meta-analysis of current research. Information, Communication & Society, 18(5), 524–538. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1008542
(2015). Left-Right Self-Placement (ALLBUS). ZIS – The Collection of Items and Scales for the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.6102/ZIS83
(2020). Echo chambers exist! (But they’re full of opposing views). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2001.11461
(2021). Personality factors and self-reported political news consumption predict susceptibility to political fake news. Personality and Individual Differences, 174, Article
(110666 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.1106662021). A critical review of filter bubbles and a comparison with selective exposure. Nordicom Review, 42(1), 15–33. https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2021-0002
(1990). Personality structure: Emergence of the five-factor model. Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 417–440. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.41.020190.002221
(2018). The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political interest and diverse media. Information, Communication & Society, 21(5), 729–745. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656
(2017).
(Ideological cognitive dissonance . In A. DussoEd., Personality and the challenges of democratic governance: How unconscious thought influences political understanding (pp. 39–65). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53603-3_22021).
(Disentangling polarisation and civic empowerment in the digital age: The role of filter bubbles and echo chambers in the rise of populism . In H. TumberS. WaisbordEds., The Routledge companion to media disinformation and populism (1st ed., pp. 420–434). Routlege. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003004431-44/disentangling-polarisation-civic-empowerment-digital-age-william-dutton-craig-robertson?context=ubx&refId=3156a1a1-9927-4801-9e2d-bf79e871ded82008). Is character fate, or is there hope to change my personality yet? Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 399–413. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00037.x
(2015). American public opinion: Its origins, content and impact. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351034746
(2022). Germany. https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/country-profiles/germany_en
. (2017). Personality traits and political ideology: A first global assessment. Political Psychology, 38(5), 881–899. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12347
(2014). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology, 35(3), 337–358. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12055
(1949). Consistency of the factorial structures of personality ratings from different sources. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44(3), 329–344. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0057198
(2021). How many people live in politically partisan online news echo chambers in different countries? Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 1. https://doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2021.020
(2021). Loopholes in the echo chambers: How the echo chamber metaphor oversimplifies the effects of information gateways on opinion expression. Digital Journalism, 9(5), 660–686. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1873811
(2018). Social media and populism: An elective affinity? Media, Culture & Society, 40(5), 745–753. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718772192
(2010). Personality and political attitudes: Relationships across issue domains and political contexts. American Political Science Review, 104(1), 111–133. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055410000031
(2019). The triple-filter bubble: Using agent-based modelling to test a meta-theoretical framework for the emergence of filter bubbles and echo chambers. British Journal of Social Psychology, 58(1), 129–149. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12286
(1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The Big-Five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(6), 1216–1229. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.6.1216
(2022). World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017–2022) cross-national data-set (4.0.0) [dataset]. World Values Survey Association. https://doi.org/10.14281/18241.16
(2017). Filtering out the other side? Cross-cutting and like-minded discussions on social networking sites. New Media & Society, 19(8), 1271–1289. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816634677
(2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature, 466, Article
(29 . https://doi.org/10.1038/466029a2008). Echo chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative media establishment. Oxford University Press.
(1991). The Big-Five Inventory – version 4a and 54. Berkeley Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California.
(2009). Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60(1), 307–337. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163600
(2022). The complex link between filter bubbles and opinion polarization. Data Science, 5(2), 139–166. https://doi.org/10.3233/DS-220054
(2018). Personality basis for partisan news media use: Openness to experience and consumption of liberal news media. Mass Communication and Society, 21(6), 814–833. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2018.1506035
(2014). Social media, network heterogeneity, and opinion polarization. Journal of Communication, 64(4), 702–722. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12077
(2013). Why do partisan media polarize viewers? American Journal of Political Science, 57(3), 611–623. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12008
(2021). Social media, news consumption, and polarization: Evidence from a field experiment. American Economic Review, 111(3), 831–870. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20191777
(2021). Personal echo chambers: Openness-to-experience is linked to higher levels of psychological interest diversity in large-scale behavioral data. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(6), 1284–1300. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000324
(2008). Measuring personality constructs: The advantages and disadvantages of self-reports, informant reports and behavioural assessments. Enquire, 1(1), 75–94.
(2018). Replication and reproducibility in cross-cultural psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(5), 735–750. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022117744892
(2008). A framework for the study of personality and political behaviour. British Journal of Political Science, 38(2), 335–362. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123408000173
(2018). Cross-cultural research projects as an effective solution for the replication crisis in psychology and psychiatry. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 38, 31–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2018.10.003
(2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x
(2022). Quantifying partisan news diets in Web and TV audiences. Science Advances, 8(28), Article
(eabn0083 . https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn00832019). Populist communication and media environments. Sociology Compass, 13(8), Article
(e12718 . https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.127182017). Reuters institute digital news report 2017. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://www.reutersagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/digital-news-report-2017.pdf
(2022). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022
(2023). Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing. Nature, 620, 137–144. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06297-w
(2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. Penguin UK.
(2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/
. (2008). Personality trait change in adulthood. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(1), 31–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00543.x
(2022). Echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation: A literature review. https://doi.org/10.60625/risj-etxj-7k60
(2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02
(2020). RStudio: Integrated development for R. RStudio, PBC. http://www.rstudio.com/
. (2013). At what sample size do correlations stabilize? Journal of Research in Personality, 47(5), 609–612. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.05.009
(2018). Measuring populist attitudes on three dimensions. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 30(2), 316–326. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edw037
(2018). Social media outpaces print newspapers in the US as a news source. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/social-media-outpaces-print-newspapers-in-the-u-s-as-a-news-source/
(2020). Age, gender, personality, ideological attitudes and individual differences in a person’s news spectrum: How many and who might be prone to “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” online? Heliyon, 6(1), Article
(e03214 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e032142021). The degree of heterogeneity of news consumption in Germany – Descriptive statistics and relations with individual differences in personality, ideological attitudes, and voting intentions. New Media & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211061729
(2023a, November 13). Personal predispositions, (problematic) social media use, news consumption, and political attitudes – two research projects on an American sample [Data, Sample 1]. https://osf.io/krmaq
(2023b, November 13). Personal predispositions, (problematic) social media use, news consumption, and political attitudes–two research projects on an American sample [Data, Sample 2]. https://osf.io/anbzq
(2021). The impact of news consumption on anti-immigration attitudes and populist party support in a changing media ecology. Political Communication, 38(5), 539–560. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1820647
(2002). The law of group polarization. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10(2), 175–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9760.00148
(2004). Democracy & filtering. Communication to the ACM, 47(12), 57–59. https://doi.org/10.1145/1035134.1035166
(2018). #Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv8xnhtd
(2006). Personality plasticity after age 30. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(8), 999–1009. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206288599
(2020). Personality factors differentiating selective approach, selective avoidance, and the belief in the importance of silencing others: Further evidence for discriminant validity. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 32(3), 488–509. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edz031
(2022). The polarized mind in context: Interdisciplinary approaches to the psychology of political polarization. American Psychologist, 77(3), 394–408. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000814
(