How Choice Sets Influence Overall and Cross-Cutting News Exposure: Evidence from Two Experiments in the United States

Zhu, Yijia ; Leiner, Dominik J. ; Neuendorf, Nathalie L. und Scherr, Sebastian (2025): How Choice Sets Influence Overall and Cross-Cutting News Exposure: Evidence from Two Experiments in the United States. 75th Annual ICA Conference, Denver, Colorado, USA, 12.-16. Juni 2025.

Abstract

In times of diverse media choices, it is essential to consider the context in which choices are made as an influencing factor on news exposure and its subsequent effects. We conducted two online experiments in the U.S. (N1 = 739; N2 = 398) to examine how the size of a choice set (the number of news articles) and its composition (the ratio of supportive “pro” to opposed “anti” articles) affect news exposure, individual attitudes, and intentions to donate personal medical data for AI training. Our findings show that smaller choice sets led to the selection of fewer news articles overall and fewer cross-cutting articles that challenged participants’ preexisting attitudes. Notably, cross-cutting news selection increased in choice sets only containing anti-data donation articles but decreased in those with only pro-data donation articles. However, neither choice set size nor composition systematically influenced participants’ attitudes or behavioral intentions in our short-term exposure experiments.

• Dokumententyp: Konferenzbeitrag (Vortrag)
• Keywords: news exposure; choice sets; digital media environments; attitudes; behavioral intentions; experiment; Konferenz ICA 2025
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung (IfKW)
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 380 Handel, Kommunikation, Verkehr
• Sprache: Englisch