THE SELECTIVE AVOIDANCE OF NEWS: AN INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT AT THE INDIVIDUAL, GLOBAL, AND MACRO-SOCIAL LEVELS

Abstract

Selective avoidance has been conceptualized and most often analyzed as a mirror image of selective exposure since the origins of political communication research (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1948). However, recent studies have served to differentiate selective avoidance from selective exposure (Garrett, 2009a, 2009b; Garrett & Stroud, 2014; Song, 2017; Tsfati, 2016), and the current project explores the selective avoidance phenomenon at the individual, global, and macro-social levels. Secondary analyses were conducted on three reputable global-level data sets (i.e., World Values Survey [1981-2020, N = 174,450], European Values Studies [1981-2020, N = 114,983] and Digital News Report [2019, N = 75,749]) using a wide range of univariate and multivariate procedures. Results show that politically interested people are less likely to avoid news and people on the extreme ranges of political ideology tend to avoid news across the globe. Macro-level cultural values did not serve as a moderator, but other factors (e.g., Freedom House Index, Internet penetration rate, and Urbanization rate) moderated the relationship between political interest and extremity and selective news avoidance in a series of post-hoc tests. Individuals’ affective reaction to the news (i.e., being worn out by news) significantly predicts selective news avoidance. Stepping away from a consistency-based theoretical foundation, the current study has introduced affect as a new theoretical avenue that can direct future research on selective avoidance.