Political Identity and News Media Choice: The Polarizing Logic of Selective Exposure During the Catalan Independence Conflict

Abstract

ABSTRACT Political communication scholars have explored selective exposure by focusing on the left-right cleavage, overlooking how other sources of political identity might guide news consumption, partly because of the U.S. dominance of the discipline. We address this gap by exploring how political attitudes on the national divide influence news choices for three news media types (television, radio, and newspapers) in Catalonia over a seven-year period (2010–2017) that covers the development of the Catalan independence conflict, including four regional elections, a controversial independence referendum, and the suppression of autonomy. Binomial logistic regressions applied to four post-electoral surveys indicate that support for independence and national identity are significant predictors of Catalans’ news media choices, and that support for independence becomes increasingly relevant as a driver of news choices for broadcast media as political polarization on Catalan independence grows. We discuss the implications for democracy of such audience segregation, and underscore how political context influences media choices.