Abstract
Social media platforms have been argued to facilitate polarization processes, as they allow people to
cocoon themselves with like-minded messages, thereby creating echo chambers in which exposure to
attitude-incongruent information is minimal and existing attitudes tend to be reinforced. At the same
time, however, the abundance of news and user-generated content on social media makes it
increasingly likely that individuals incidentally encounter information without actively searching for it.
Such incidental exposure (IE) may operate as an antecedent to more cross-cutting media diets and
can create opportunities for initially uninterested audiences to encounter and engage with news,
potentially diminishing existing knowledge and engagement gaps. The idea that social media can
facilitate cross-cutting exposure and mobilize issue-engagement among uninterested users runs
counter to the idea that social media facilitate and contribute to polarization. To date, no scholarly
consensus exists as to whether IE can increase ideological diversity and in doing so contribute to
depolarized audiences. Therefore, the current project aims to a/ distinguish different types of IE and
explore conditions under which they result in attitude-discrepant vs. congruent exposure and
b/examine whether incidentally encountered attitude-discrepant/congruent content results in
polarizing or depolarizing outcomes, paying specific attention to the mediating role of cognitive
response states.
Researcher(s)
Research team(s)
Project type(s)