ABSTRACT
How do people navigate the many, many media choices they have at their disposal? More specifically, which sources do we choose when looking for news and information about public affairs? And what are the effects of all of these choices? This chapter explores what we know-and what we don’t knowabout our media selections and their consequences. A media environment with so many choices not only facilitates our ability to choose whatever we preferit requires us to choose. If you have a cable television package, it isn’t possible to flip through all of your available television channels without dedicating a good bit of time. And the Internet requires us to actively select the content that we see. So how do we choose? Why do some gravitate toward Fox News and others toward MSNBC? This chapter explores the extent to which our political beliefs govern our choices, a behavior known as selective exposure. We examine whether selective exposure occurs and why we might prefer like-minded information. We then turn to the consequences of using like-minded news. The final section of this chapter describes other factors that influence which sources garner our time and attention, including negativity, issue interests, and entertainment preferences.
