Information Behavior and Political Preferences
Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät
This article shows that citizens consider policy positions for the formation of their political preferences when they actively seek and find high-quality information, while they dismiss passively acquired and low-quality information. The study develops an extended theory of information and political preferences that incorporates the process of information acquisition and its connection with information quality. A novel experimental design separates the effects on political preferences due to information behavior as an activity from those due to selective exposure to information. The study applies this design in a laboratory experiment with a diverse group of participants using the example of issue voting and European integration in the context of the 2014 European Parliament elections.
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This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.