Are you always ignoring attitude-challenging messages? Eye-tracking selective exposure on Chinese’ lowly involved news consumption

Abstract

This study employs a pre-post-test design to investigate the selective exposure behaviors while consuming news with low involvement. The experiment incorporates eye-tracking and self-report measures to explore participants’ preferences for attitude-consistent and attitude-inconsistent information. The results of the study indicate that attitude consistency does not serve as the primary determinant of selective exposure; instead, participants demonstrate a stronger inclination towards engaging with a smaller number of posts from a particular perspective. Following their exposure to the news feed, participants display a heightened tendency to read articles with neutral attitudes. In addition, individuals who initially held a particular attitude tend to shift towards a neutral standpoint, particularly when exposed to a mostly-consistent opinion climate. Notably, participants’ attitudes do not tend to become radicalized under any opinion climate. The study acknowledges its limitations and proceeds to discuss the implications of these findings.

Keywords

• selective exposure
• eye-tracking measurement
• social media
• attitude change
• opinion climate