March 20, 2024
Populist Radical-Right Attitudes, Political Involvement and Selective Information Consumption: Who Tunes Out and Who Prefers Attitude-Consonant Information
This study seeks to understand how populist radical-right (PRR) attitudes and political involvement relate to individuals’ political information consumption and selective exposure to ideological content.
Abstract
The study approaches political information selection as a two-step phenomenon: first, individuals use different amounts of political information, and second, they rely on attitude-consonant information to different degrees. Results from a combination of survey measures, implicit association tests and automated text analysis of large-scale online tracking data collected in Germany and Switzerland in 2020 showed that first, political information consumption was related to political involvement but also to PRR attitudes—in different ways—in both countries. Second, our analyses revealed country variations regarding attitude-consonant online PRR exposure. Third, implicit PRR attitudes were not relevant in explaining the use of PRR content online. We discuss the relevance of moving beyond analyses of traditional news toward the breadth of political information consumption, country contexts, and naturalistic research designs.
To continue reading please visit: https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2024.2310156
This open access article was published in Mass Communication and Society on 20 March 2024.
Maier, M., Adam, S., Gil Lopez, T., Makhortykh, M., Bromme, L., Christner, C., … Urman, A. (2025). Populist Radical-Right Attitudes, Political Involvement and Selective Information Consumption: Who Tunes Out and Who Prefers Attitude-Consonant Information. Mass Communication and Society, 28(1), 101–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2024.2310156
Keywords: Political involvement, Populist Radical-Right Attitudes
Author
See also
Personality and political news consumption online: A comparison between self-reports and webtracking data
By Ernesto de León • May 31, 2024
AI and Political Communication
By Claes de Vreese • May 15, 2023
Panning for gold: Comparative analysis of cross-platform approaches for automated detection of political content in textual data
By Ernesto de León • November 18, 2024
More results /
The 2026 Stevin Prize: Claes de Vreese and his academic journey
By Claes de Vreese • October 07, 2026
By Ernesto de León • Claes de Vreese • September 17, 2026
By Natali Helberger • June 16, 2026
Onderzoekers waarschuwen: AI-gebruik kan ‘rechterlijke blik’ vertroebelen
By Iris van Domselaar • Isabella Banks • October 01, 2026
By Iris van Domselaar • Isabella Banks • September 23, 2026
By Tynke Schepers • July 09, 2026
Fairy Tales That Make Life Harder: AI, and the social and ethical costs of believing in it
By Martijn Logtenberg • September 28, 2026
By Martijn Logtenberg • March 13, 2026
By Martijn Logtenberg • November 20, 2025
The Label Paradox: Can AI transparency create more distrust?
By Natali Helberger • September 21, 2026
By Jin Wan • Theo Araujo • Natali Helberger • Claes de Vreese • September 17, 2026
By João Pedro Quintais • September 03, 2026
