ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact of personalisation on the kind of news that individuals receive. It shows how citizens in four quite different media regimes are exposed to different media brands. Some citizens have always been better informed than those who, for example, might only have read a newspaper for the sports news or the crime. The new media environment, with greater news personalisation, doesn't only create more news avoiders who now can spend their time on entertainment. The two-step flow model seems to have particular relevance in social media where "influentials" have an important role in diffusing information through social networks. When social media start to replace mainstream media they are likely to create fissures between differing polarised groups and to produce news deserts in between. While it is reasonable to conclude that the "monolithic empires of mass media" have indeed been eroded by the viral system of the Internet, the effects on democracy have been mixed.
