Abstract
The transition from low- to high-choice media environments has had far-reaching implications for citizens’ media use and its relationship with political knowledge. However, there is still a lack of comparative research on how citizens combine the usage of different media and how that is related to political knowledge. To fill this void, we use a unique cross-national survey about the online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individuals in 17 European countries. Our aim is to (i) profile different types of news consumers and (ii) understand how each user profile is linked to political knowledge acquisition. Our results show that five user profiles – news minimalists, social media news users, traditionalists, online news seekers, and hyper news consumers – can be identified, although the prevalence of these profiles varies across countries. Findings further show that both traditional and online-based news diets are correlated with higher political knowledge. However, online-based news use is more widespread in Southern Europe, where it is associated with lower levels of political knowledge than in Northern Europe. By focusing on news audiences, this study provides a comprehensive and fine-grained analysis of how contemporary European political information environments perform and contribute to an informed citizenry.
Highlights
A fundamental prerequisite for well-functioning democracies is that their citizens are at least reasonably informed about politics and current affairs (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996)
A basic assumption is that the wider the supply of verified and trustworthy news about politics and current affairs that political information environments provide, and the more individuals are exposed to such news, the higher the likelihood that citizens will learn about politics and society (Aalberg and Curran 2012)
Our results indicate that both traditional and some online-based news user profiles are associated with higher political knowledge
Summary
A fundamental prerequisite for well-functioning democracies is that their citizens are at least reasonably informed about politics and current affairs (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). By applying an audience-oriented perspective to the study of political information environments, the purpose of this paper is to (1) explore and map what news user profiles can be found across European countries and (2) examine the relationship between different news user profiles and citizens’ knowledge about politics and current affairs To this end, we build on a unique cross-national survey tapping online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individuals across seventeen European countries. Implications of these and other findings for comparative research and the conditions of informed democracy are discussed in the conclusion
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