Political social identity and selective exposure

Politics is not merely concerned with beliefs and ideology; it also encapsulates components of social identity. This study examines the consumption of partisan media, via the prism of social-identity theory. Strength of political identity is proposed as an explanation for selective exposure. Additionally, the study suggests that by creating a conflict between orthogonal social identities, selective exposure can be reduced. Two survey experiments were conducted (N = 300), each experiment focusing on one element of media: the identity of the writer, or the identity of the persona at the center of the news story. Both experiments demonstrated that political social identity influences media selection.