The aim of this dissertation is to examine selective exposure theory on Twitter among student users at Kuwait University, and to revisit selective exposure theory’s assumptions in the social media era. Two studies for this dissertation have been conducted among a total of 1391 participants to examine the selective exposure theory among student Twitter users. In both studies, the researcher conducted an online experiment by developing simulated Twitter interface pages and a simulated news app to study selective exposure theory among Kuwait University students. The first study aimed to examine whether the students at Kuwait University tend to be exposed to politicians in Kuwait’s parliament who share the same political ideologies. The second study aimed to examine to what extent student users selectively expose themselves to specific content on Twitter, or more specifically to their like-minded group, and what drives them to do so. Moreover, the effect of Twitter’s social endorsement features on users' news selection has been examined. Each study sample has been drawn from different classes of students at Kuwait University. This study also looked at the role of incidental exposure as a means of encouraging cross-ideological exposure. One noticeable trend in the two experiments conducted for this dissertation is that partisan selective exposure was clear among students participating in both studies, but at different levels. Also, data showed that there was no clear role for the social endorsements on Twitter among students in this experiment to reduce selectivity. Moreover, a person's political leaning is more likely to surpass the impact of the social endorsements when users are browsing Twitter on a daily basis. Results showed that students in the second study read tweets from accounts they did not follow in real life and they asserted that they experienced that on a high basis. Implications of these two online experiment studies are discussed.

This thesis reviews the role of emotions in one’s choice of information, information processing, and political attitudes. Theoretical and empirical endeavors to date have focused primarily on how emotions influence attitudes and information processing, leaving the actual processes guiding these outcomes in the margins. Specifically, it has been largely unexplored how emotions influence individuals’ information search behavior and then attitudes and information processing. Noting that the purposeful selection of likeminded information, often referred to as selective exposure, is commonly enacted when an individual first initiates information processing, and is also likely influenced by emotions, this study explores how emotions may affect people’s tendency to seek out congruent information. In addition, this study examines how the relationship between emotions and selective exposure in turn may affect aspects of information processing and attitudes. By designing an online experiment, I first tested how certain negative emotions (anger/fear) affected one’s pursuit of certain types of information (consistent/inconsistent) and second, I investigated how these emotions and information selections influenced subsequent information processing and attitudes. Results showed that while anger motivated more likeminded exposure for Republicans than fear, fear promoted more likeminded exposure for Democrats than anger. Further, anger prompted people to process messages more closely and to develop more polarized attitudes compared to fear. In addition, pro-attitudinal exposure produced more message-relevant thoughts for Republicans than counter-attitudinal message exposure, while it was counter-attitudinal exposure that yielded more message-relevant thoughts for Democrats. No such effect, however, was shown for attitudinal polarization. / text

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In general, people prefer information that makes them look and feel good. This is information that is consistent with, or supportive of, their desires, beliefs, and behaviors. Much research has been devoted to examining biases in how we selectively seek some information and avoid other information as well as different factors that can mitigate or intensify these tendencies. The present project explored the impact of feeling powerful—a psychological experience shown to influence cognitions and behavior—on decisions about what information people choose to consume in a health context. Specifically, this was investigated in two different domains of health information consumption—selective exposure (Studies 1 & 2) and information avoidance (Studies 3 & 4). The first two studies investigated if feeling powerful affects selection of, or interest in, information known to be consistent or inconsistent with beliefs and behaviors. It was predicted that power would increase interest in belief-consistent (i.e., non-threatening) information. The final two studies examined how power impacts decisions about whether to receive or avoid an uncertain piece of health information that is potentially threatening. Contrary to selective exposure hypotheses, it was predicted that power would increase interest in this uncertain (i.e., threatening) information. All four studies revealed null largely effects of power, suggesting that feeling powerful may not influence how people chose to consume potentially threatening health information. A discussion of the potential limitations of these studies and the scope of this conclusion are included.

Motivations for entertainment consumption are complex, involving moods, wants, anticipations, and several other factors. Typically, attempts at a theoretical understanding of motivations for media selection have centered on enjoyment, or hedonic, pleasure-seeking motivations. Recently eudaimonic, or truth-seeking, motivations have also been given much attention. Most investigations into hedonic and eudaimonic motivations for media consumption have conceptualized these motivations as traits, rather than as states. Recent research has used survey methods to determine that those with hedonic motivations tend to seek out entertainment that is hedonic in nature and feel more fun affect while watching, while those with eudaimonic motivations for consuming entertainment tend to seek out media that is eudaimonic and nature and experience more meaningful affect during viewing. This experiment successfully manipulated hedonic and eudaimonic states using clips with either hedonic or eudemonic tone from three different television shows, with hedonic or eudaimonic tone in clips significantly affecting participants\' reports of hedonic and eudaimonic states as well as meaningful and fun affect. The effects of clips with hedonic or eudaimonic tone on these responses were not moderated by typical hedonic and eudaimonic trait preferences. The experiment also examined the effect that clips with hedonic or eudaimonic tone might have on subsequent program selection by allowing participants to rank hedonic or eudaimonic clips for subsequent viewing. The hedonic or eudaimonic tone of the clips only predicted participants\' subsequent  preference for eudaimonic or hedonic clips in the case of one of the three shows in the study; this effect on subsequent clip preference was found with the show that generally elicted the strongest responses from viewers in other study measures. Implications for our understanding of television consumption motivations are discussed. / Master of Arts

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Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communication / Curtis Matthews / The objective of this study is to shed light on the interaction between the theory of selective exposure and social identity theory. Both of these theories describe aspects regarding how individuals expose themselves to information. However, the driving question of the study was to investigate the behavior of individuals whom experience cognitive dissonance from an inconsistent political message, but are receiving that message from a member of their perceived in-group. The expectation was that moderating variables, such as strength of identification with an ideology as well as the level of knowledge would impact who would engage in selective exposure and choose to disregard in-group cues, or choose inconsistent messages to stay true to in-group pressures. In a Qualtrics experiment, participants (n=189) were divided into different groups, attitude consistent and attitude inconsistent and were exposed to a series of tweets. Each tweet was politically charged, with the attitude-consistent group presenting consistent messages paired with in-group cues, and in the attitude-inconsistent group presenting a dissonant message was paired with the in-group cue, and visa versa. Two factors revealed themselves to impact results and message choice — knowledge and strength of identification. Results revealed that individuals who had a high level of knowledge chose the consistent message more often than those with low knowledge. The strength of ideology variable influenced differences in both the speed in which they made decisions on which tweet to select, as well as how quickly they identified with an ideology level. This result revealed that those who are strongly identified with an ideology make decisions regarding political messages and ideology faster than those who are weakly identified. The current study contributes to the plethora of literature regarding these two theories and the political science area of study by supporting knowledge as a moderating variable between cognitive dissonance and social identity pressures. It also provides insight into the trends and patterns that can arise when time/speed are utilized as a variable to shed light on group identification differences. The insights with the variables of time, strength of ideology, level of knowledge, could lead to numerous future studies.