Issue entropy in the Internet age

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the diffusion of the Internet on audience fragmentation in Germany. Fragmentation is defined in terms of a declining probability that an individual will find like-minded others who are concerned about the same issues as that individual. Accordingly, fragmentation increases if the number of issues the individual is concerned about (nominal issue diversity) declines and the entropy of issues at the level of society (issue entropy) increases. The paper provides a brief review of publications concerned with media, fragmentation, and issue entropy. It then picks up a recent study, which revealed no relevant changes in nominal issue diversity in Germany during the period of Internet diffusion. In a second step, survey data representative for the German population during the same time period is analyzed to test for an increase in issue entropy. The findings reveal a small but systematic trend of growing issue entropy. This trend could not be attributed to the diffusion of the Internet. First, it was not possible to do so because age groups that had different rates of Internet adoption demonstrated a lack of differences in issue entropy. Second, there are differences between the dynamics of issue entropy and the dynamics pertaining to the diffusion of the Internet as entropy decreased after 2000, whereas the diffusion of the Internet continued to increase rapidly. It is there- fore concluded that the diffusion of the Internet did not cause issue fragmentation during the sample period from 1994 to 2005.