http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0456-6661
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ABSTRACT
This article presents a secondary analysis of two multi-national cross-sectional surveys conducted in 2015 (11 countries, N = 10,570) and 2017 (4 countries, N = 2165) to examine the relationship between populist attitudes and media use. The results indicate that populist citizens are more likely to consume news than non-populist citizens. Specifically, populist citizens exhibit a preference for commercial television (TV) news, as well as a tendency to read tabloid newspapers. While they use fewer quality newspapers, public TV news are not systematically avoided. Regarding the online news environment, populist citizens prefer Facebook over Twitter as a source of political information. This selective pattern will be discussed in light of the debates on news audience polarization and political polarization.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank her PhD supervisor Prof. Dr Werner Wirth for his invaluable scientific advice and his constant encouragement.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Anne Schulz (M.A.), is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media Psychology and Effects Division at the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. In her dissertation, she focuses on the interplay of populist attitudes, media bias perceptions, public opinion perceptions, and media use. She is interested in political communication and media effects research.
ORCID
Anne Schulz http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0456-6661
Notes
1 In an additional analysis, income was included as a further control to all models (see Table A14 online for a measurement report). This did not change the results with regard to populist attitudes. Income itself related positively to different media use variables (i.e., sum and frequency of quality press use, sum and frequency of tabloid press use, and sum of public TV news use). However, for this analysis, 10 percent of the participants had to be excluded due to missing values on this variable. Therefore, income was not used within the hypothesis testing.
2 The influence of income was tested in an additional analysis. No changes occurred regarding the role of populist attitudes. Income was positively related to the sum and frequency of quality press use, to the sum of tabloid press outlets used as well as negatively related to news avoidance. The measurement for income is reported in Table A15 online.