Selective attention in the news feed: An eye-tracking study on the perception and selection of polit...

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
Beteiligte: Sülflow, Michael, Schäfer, Svenja, Winter, Stephan
In: New Media & Society, 21, 2019, 1, S. 168-190
veröffentlicht:
SAGE Publications
Medientyp: Artikel, E-Artikel

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Umfang: 168-190
ISSN: 1461-4448
1461-7315
DOI: 10.1177/1461444818791520
veröffentlicht in: New Media & Society
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagwörter:
Kollektion: SAGE Publications (CrossRef)
Inhaltsangabe

<jats:p>Social networking sites such as Facebook are becoming increasingly important as a source for news. However, few studies have investigated what drives attention to content within the news feed and what influences the selection of news posts. We hypothesized that attitude consistency, the credibility of a source, and comments of other users raise interest in a news post in the news feed and influence the selection decision. A 2 × 2 × 2 laboratory experiment ( N = 103) using eye-tracking measurement showed that attitude consistency did not influence attention distribution in the news feed, but users preferred to select news posts with content reinforcing their attitudes. Participants spent more time with news posts from sources with high credibility and selected them more frequently. Comments were not relevant for selection but were for attention within the news feed: If the news post and the comment did not share the same opinion, readers spent more time reading the content.</jats:p>