Exposure to news grows less fragmented with an increase in mobile access

In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Abstract

Significance Access to diverse news strengthens democratic citizenship. Whether digital technologies have narrowed or widened news diets fosters contentious debates. Previous research shows the abundance of digital news sources might be leading to more fragmented audiences, ideological segregation, and echo chambers. Our study resorts to an unprecedented combination of data to show that the increase in mobile access to news actually leads to higher exposure to diverse content and that ideological self-selection explains only a small percentage of co-exposure to news. We also find that more than half of Internet users in the United States do not use online news. Future research should avoid generalizations from desktop-only data and pay attention to the increasing divide between informed citizens and news avoiders.