Abstract
The changes in the global mediascape have had a tremendous impact on societal news flows. Using data from the Social Survey Austria 2018 and a quantitative application of the media repertoire approach, the article illustrates how information behavior and news seeking relate to social status, political orientation and sociodemographics. The results confirm that the developments in Austria—often referred to as a representative of a traditional media landscape—are mostly in line with international trends, as new media have been added to the media repertoires of approximately two-thirds of the sample. Effects tied to social inequality generally match previous assumptions: Higher educational achievements and income lead to more diversified news repertoires. Additionally, the overall structure of the data indicates that the online-only users are still a small minority, consisting of younger individuals who are less likely to work and more likely to vote for left-wing parties.
Highlights
Zusammenfassung Die Veränderungen in der globalen Medienlandschaft haben einen enormen Einfluss auf den Nachrichtenfluss in Gesellschaften gehabt
We include an empirical analysis of the effects of social position and networks and political orientation on the media repertoires of individuals to consider all these factors
As the results reported by Trilling and Schönbach (2013) conflict with the statement from Esser et al (2017, p. 375), Kalogeropoulos et al (2017, p. 9) and Lindell and Hovden (2018, p. 652) that individuals who identify with the far-right of the political spectrum are prone to cut out traditional mainstream media, we will test this assumption as well
Summary
The last 25 years have changed the global mediascape substantially. While the late 20th century media environments included broadcasting, newspapers and media organizations’ websites, the early 21st century has been defined by the rise of social media (Fletcher and Nielsen 2017). Whereas those who are educated and have access to financial and social resources may profit from a diversified media environment—gaining access to information and news not available previously—those already deprived do not profit to the same extent (Kalogeropoulos and Nieslon 2018; Lindell 2018; Prior 2005). Traditional cleavages that have long shaped news diets, such as political orientation and social integration, are still known to have a large influence on how individuals stay informed about society (Dilliplane 2011; Trilling and Schönbach 2013) Building upon these statements, we use data from the Austrian Social Survey of 2018 (Sozialer Survey Österreich, SSÖ; Hadler, Höllinger, and Muckenhuber 2019) to test if and how news seeking—and, an uneven distribution of information—relates to social inequality.
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