Abstract In this paper, we examine the behavior of subjects in a mock financial investment experiment to investigate the effects of “skin in the game” and ego utility on hedonic information acquisition decisions. We observe how often subjects “check” their portfolios after given general market returns, and whether conditions impact the existence and magnitude of the ostrich effect – the tendency to avoid information expected to be negative. When considering these experiment conditions as well as subject sex, risk aversion, curiosity, financial literacy and investing experience, we do not find an ostrich effect. We do find that females check their portfolios more often on average than males. Finally, we find that risk-averse people will check their portfolios more often, regardless of market returns or sex.

This research aims to fill a research gap by examining WeChat to explore whether changes of social context would exert any influence on the information disclosure of social networking site (SNS) users. Selective Exposure Theory and Uses and Gratification Theory were used as the theoretical foundation for this study. Four-hundred Chinese college students in China and the U.S. who have a WeChat App and have logged in to use it within the last 30 days from the day administered were asked to participate in a survey about their motivations and consequences when using WeChat. Results from MANOVA showed that the motivations and consequences of female participants’ self-disclosure were significantly higher than were male participants on WeChat. Moreover, the social context of Chinese students studying in the U.S. is perceived to be more individualized than the traditionally collective context that is perceived by Chinese students studying in China.

The purpose of this study is: 1) to explore the ways in which the Internet may affect individuals’ political diversity in different strengths of social relationships; 2) to identify which of strong-tie diversity and weak-tie diversity contributes more to political tolerance; and 3) to investigate the extent to which tolerant people are different from the less tolerant in their participation decisions when exposed to political diversity. In order to examine the contribution of Internet news use to political heterogeneity, the current study examines the moderation of the negative influence of politically selective exposure on the Internet on political diversity in social networks by Internet news use. To identify the better contributor to tolerance, the two diversities are compared. To assess the consequence of exposure to political difference for political participation for tolerant and less tolerant people, the present study examines any moderating effect of tolerance between political network heterogeneity and participation. It also observes the moderating effect in different tie strengths. This study utilizes data obtained from the U.S. Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy (CID) survey conducted by a collaboration of Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University and the European Social Survey. The sample is 1,001 adults aged 18 and over and representative of the contiguous United States. The dataset contains items concerning Internet use, informal social networks, the composition and diversity of ties and associations, democratic values and tolerance under the primary themes of democracy, social capital and civic engagement. The data are analyzed by hierarchical and OLS regression. According to the findings, Internet news use contributes to individuals’ overall political diversity by reducing the negative influence of the selective exposure occurring from online interaction with homogeneous people. When examined in different strengths of interpersonal relationships, selective exposure discourages strong-tie diversity while encouraging weak-tie diversity. Internet news use positively affects strong-tie diversity but had no influence on weak-tie diversity. Weak-tie diversity is found to be a better contributor to political tolerance. Politically tolerant individuals tend to be discouraged for political participation when exposed to difference in their social relationships. Therefore, while political tolerance may increase overall political diversity, it may as well threaten the balance between deliberation and participation. Closer interpersonal associations are not found to reduce the demobilizing effect of exposure to difference for tolerant individuals. / text

Online public fora based on social media facilitate social interaction and synchronous online discussion. Social-media-based public fora resemble real-life political talks, and induce a larger number of and a wider variety of participants than blogs or Usenet newsgroups. By investigating two online groups centered on political discussions on Twitter, this study explores how information and influence flow, how diverse the actual discourse is, and to what extent the online groups communicate with the government. Using network analysis and content analysis/co-word analysis, this study has the findings as follows: In terms of the structural qualities, online public fora are relatively inclusive, but are centralized on a few participants and do not have a statistically significant indication of being equitable in discussion. The two-step flow of communication operates along with the presence of opinion leaders who turn out to be influentials but not content creators. Interestingly, the flow of influence is likely to be less centralized than the flow of information, which implies the importance of the reliability of a given message rather than that of the author. In terms of the actual discourse, participants turn to like-minded fellow citizens’ remarks. Discourses are more emotional than cognitive and exhibits more anger than anxiety. Influential discourses are those with negative emotion more so than with positive emotion and those that are cognitive rather than emotional. Among cognitive components, assertive and strong discourses have greater social influence than analytical discourses. In terms of the interaction with the e-government outlet, the distance between public authorities and private citizens is continuously present despite the decline of temporal and physical distance via the Internet. Based on the results, this study suggests a reconsideration of the Habermasian public sphere in online public fora. It contributes to the literature by empirically confirming the presence of the two-step flow of communication in online public fora and testing the difference between the flow of information and the flow of influence. In addition, it broadens the realm of research on political communication by exploring not only sources/ideological perspectives but also emotional/cognitive aspects in discussions. Methodologically, structure/context, multi-level, and quantitative/qualitative analyses allow this study to have a comprehensive account of online public fora. Practically, this study proposes to improve the interactivity with citizens as the next stage of e-government development. / text

This dissertation seeks to improve our understanding of the process by which citizens' selective exposure contributes to attitudinal polarization and engagement in political activities. In this dissertation, I test two models that explicate the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization and participation. The knowledge model suggests that the effects of selective exposure on individuals' attitudinal polarization and political engagement are mediated by knowledge of candidate issue stances. The stereotype model proposes that selective exposure indirectly influences polarized attitudes and political participation via stereotypical perceptions of candidates (i.e., McCain's age and the prospect of a Black presidency). By posing issue knowledge and stereotypical perceptions as potential mediators, this study extends current literature to analyze why and how selective exposure leads to polarization and political participation. The results provide evidence that selective exposure influences individuals' stereotypical perceptions of the candidates' age and race, and these stereotypic perceptions influence attitudinal polarization and participation in campaign activities. There was no support for the knowledge model; selective exposure did not have a significant relationship with citizens' issue knowledge nor did it play a mediating role in the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization and participation. This dissertation thus challenges the argument that selective exposure is normatively desirable due to its contribution to citizens' greater levels of political participation. The findings of this study call into question such a contention because the results show that individuals who engage in selective exposure are motivated to participate in political activities by forming stereotypic perceptions of candidates rather than by gaining factual issue knowledge, which is in contrast to democratic theories' assumptions of informed citizenship. Turning to the role of exposure to dissonant media outlets, two contrasting roles were found. On one hand, results offer some evidence that dissonant media use contributes to gaining issue knowledge and inspiring citizen participation. On the other hand, some findings suggest that it reinforces, rather than attenuates, citizens' attitudinal polarization and stereotypical perceptions of candidates. Thus the findings from this study offer mixed support for encouraging citizen exposure to dissimilar viewpoints. / text

This study examines the effect of motivation on political selective exposure and selective perception using an online experiment. Studies have found that though people have a preference for like-minded political information over counter-attitudinal information, they do not avoid counter-attitudinal political information altogether (Garrett, 2009; Garrett, Carnahan, & Lynch, 2011; Stroud, 2008). This study examines under what conditions people are likely to expose themselves to more like-minded information than counter-attitudinal information and under what conditions people are likely to seek out more counter-attitudinal information than like-minded information. Based on the theory of motivated reasoning and Hart et al. (2009)'s model, I proposed a model that explained selective exposure and selective perception based on motivation. Defense motivation, the motivation to hold attitude-consistent cognitions with one's original attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors, was predicted to increase selective exposure and selective perception. Accuracy motivation, the motivation to arrive at the correct conclusion, was predicted to reduce selective exposure and selective perception. Finally, information utility motivation, the motivation to choose information that has the highest utility, was predicted to reduce selective exposure when counter-attitudinal information was equally useful as attitude-consistent information, but increase selective exposure when attitude-consistent information was more useful than counter-attitudinal information. In both cases, it was predicted that the selective perception pattern would not be changed. The study also tested the additive effect of the three motivations and examined which motivation can override other motivations in determining selective exposure and selective perception. Results showed that accuracy motivation was effective in reducing selective exposure for both strong partisans and those who were not strong partisans. Accuracy motivation can override defense motivation in affecting selective exposure. Information utility alone, defense motivation alone, and the combination of the three motivations produced mixed results. Accuracy motivation was effective in reducing selective perception for those who were not strong partisans. The link between selective exposure and selective perception was not found.

Group commitments such as partisanship and religion can bias the way individuals seek information and weigh evidence. This psychological process can lead to distorted views of reality and polarization between opposing social groups. Substantial research confirms the existence and persistence of numerous identity-driven divides in society, but means of attenuating them remain elusive. However, because identity-protective cognition is driven by a need to maintain global and not domain specific integrity, researchers have found that affirming an unrelated core aspect of the self can eliminate the need for ego defense and result in more evenhanded evaluation. This study proposes a competing intervention. Individuals possess numerous social identities that contextually vary in relative prominence; therefore a different means to unbiased cognition may be to make many social identities salient simultaneously, reducing influence of any potentially threatened identity. This may also reduce selective exposure to congenial information, which has not been found with affirmation. This study also advances research on the phenomenon of selective exposure by considering individuals’ interpersonal networks in information search. Because networks are not static, and are instead contextually activated, inducing a more complex representational structure of the self may broaden the set of contacts from whom individuals seek information. The bias-mitigative potential of self-affirmation and social identity complexity is examined here in a series of dispute contexts — two partisan, one religious — over a mining spill, an advanced biofuels mandate, and gene editing technology. Results from the three experiments (total N = 1,257) show modest support for social identity complexity reducing group-alignment of beliefs, behavior, and information search, while affirmation failed to reduce, and in some cases increased, group alignment.

abstract: The “filter bubble” has been a heated discussion topic since several years ago. In addition to possible algorithmic contribution to this phenomenon, people’s selective exposure tendency may be another primary cause of the “filter bubble” on social media. Prior research indicates that, under the influence of selective exposure tendency, people tend to perceive pro-attitudinal news as more credible than counter-attitudinal news, with strong partisans more likely to be affected. The proposed thesis seeks to examine whether the perceived credibility of a news source and story on social media is influenced by selective exposure and strength of partisanship. Through an experimental study via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, 468 participants chose or were assigned to read an ostensible news story from a social media feed with the news source and ideological slant varied between participants. The results showed that people reported higher perceived source and story credibility when the source and stories were pro-attitudinal (consistent with their political ideology) as opposed to counter-attitudinal, regardless of participants’ age, race, perceived credibility of news from social media, in general, and strength of partisanship. However, contrary to the hypotheses, selective exposure behavior (i.e., choosing a preferred news source before reading a news story) did not affect credibility perceptions when participants read counter-attitudinal news from a pro-attitudinal source. Last, strength of partisanship did not moderate the influence of selective exposure on credibility perceptions. In sum, this study suggests that although selective exposure tendency may affect people’s credibility perceptions and contribute to “filter bubbles,” the impact of selective exposure behavior may be overestimated in terms of perceived source and story credibility of news on social media. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Public Administration 2020

Previous research has demonstrated that the political ideology one adopts is strongly influenced by three social-cognitive motives: motives to reduce uncertainty, manage threats, and experience solidarity. The goal of the current studies was to examine the possibility that this relationship might also work in reverse, with political ideology influencing social-cognitive motives. To this end, four studies examined the impact of conservative cues on need for cognitive closure (NFCC), a measure of motivation to reduce uncertainty, and tested between three accounts of the impact of conservative cues on selective exposure (SE) to confirming information, the primary measure of NFCC in the current studies. Studies 1-3 examined how exposure to the American flag, a conservative cue, impacted SE (Studies 1 and 3) and the accessibility of NFCC (Study 2). Study 4 examined how exposure to partisan news sources impacted SE. Exposure to conservative cues may increase SE by making political group membership salient, resulting in the defensive engagement in SE to maintain a positive view of one's political in-group (social identity account), or by priming the political stereotype that conservatives are high in NFCC, which individuals (stereotype priming account) or only conservatives (active self-concept account) assimilate towards. The four studies produced mixed results, but overall, were most supportive of the stereotype priming account. Specifically, there was evidence that exposure to conservative cues increased SE (Studies 1 and 3) and made NFCC more accessible (Study 2). Additionally, these results were not moderated by political ideology, as predicted by the active self-concept account, and there was no evidence of increased affiliation with one's political in-group, as predicted by the social identity account. In Study 4, exposure to the conservative news source reduced SE compared to exposure to the moderate and liberal news sources, results inconsistent with all three accounts. Theoretical and practical implications, as well the complexities of the current studies' results, are discussed.

The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has been since its early beginnings accompanied by the spread of the so called 'infodemic' of misinformation and conspiracy theories about the virus in the media. This infodemic swiftly started to present a matter of significant concern especially in the dynamic landscape of digital media which due to an ease of sharing and content contribution allowed for Covid-19 conspiracy theories to continue to gain momentum. Because of the severe implications that the potential ill-informed actions of conspiracy theory believers could have on the public health, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of the conspiracy theory believers and the way that they spread Covid-19 conspiracy theories. With this in mind, this thesis through the use of qualitative interviews probed into the worldviews of Covid-19 conspiracy theory believers in the Czech Republic. The analytical scrutiny of the interviews through the lens of the theories of network society, context collapse and echo chambers provided important insights into how Czech Covid-19 conspiracy theory believers use digital media in order to learn about and disseminate Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Additionally, this thesis provides an understanding of how the way the conspiracy theory believers navigate context collapse on Facebook drives them to seek echo chambers on e-mail which strengthen their beliefs in Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Moreover, my thesis also sheds light onto how the echo chambers are instrumental in the individuals' distrust in traditional media.