We are rapidly approaching a new presidential election in the US. What does evidence tell us on how audiences navigate news during elections? Based on observed digital data, Dr. Sílvia Majó-Vázquez will present the results of Reuters Institute studies on news audience behaviour during major political events like the elections in the US or more recently, the contested elections in India last year. Do audiences navigate the information ecosystem in a way that's consistent with echo-chambers? How do digital-born media compare to legacy media in the provision of information during elections? In this seminar, we will look at patterns of news navigation on the web and on social media, including Twitter and Facebook, drawing on digital traces that people leave behind when keeping up with current affairs and we will compare differences across countries and media systems. The presentation will include results from the latest elections in the US, India, UK, Spain and France. Watch the webinar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqh5jWITvR4&feature=emb_title

2. Contents

3. 2017 2018 20192016 2020
Spanish General Election
26 June
Brexit Referendum
23 June
US Presidential Election
8 November
French Presidential
Election
7 May
UK General
Election
8 June
German Federal
Election
24 September
Spanish General Election
28 Abril
Spanish
General Election
10 November
India Elections
29 May
Total Population

4. Questions

5. Do audiences of
specific media
outlets also consume
other news sources?

6. Is there evidence of
self-selection in how
audiences navigate the
rest of the news media
environment?

7. Is there evidence of
audience
fragmentation
online?

8. • The Internet fosters the end of the mass audiences and the unlimited
audience fragmentation (Pariser, 2011; Sunstein, 2009; Turow, 1998).
• Fragmentation of media providers does have the effect of
fragmenting the audiences (Napoli, 2008).
• The sheer number of news sources available on the web does not
determine the extend of the audience fragmentation (Ksiazek, 2011;
Ksiazek & Webster, 2012; Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017; Mukeerje et al.
2018).

9. News Supply
Audience Behavior
News Media Ecosystem

10. Why does news
audience
fragmentation matter?

11. • Online audience fragmentation has negative effects on citizens
involvement on public debate and the extend citizens share public
concerns (Chaffee & Metzger, 2001). Ultimately it can affect political
polarization.
• Audience fragmentation is related to limited exposure to diverse
perspectives and this has negative effects on forming valid opinions
and appreciating the perspective of others (Mutz & Martin, 2001).
• Overall, exposure to conflicting views is deemed central to maintain
a democratic citizenry (Mutz & Martin, 2001).

12. Method

13. Media Network
Audience Networks

14. Audience Overlap Measure
i j
Total Shared
audience

15. Audience Overlap Measure
NYT Fox
Total Shared
audience

16. Audience Overlap Network

17. Audience Network Fragmentation
Majó-Vázquez, S., Nielsen, R. K., & González-Bailón, S. (2018). The backbone structure of
audience networks: A new approach to comparing online news consumption across countries.
Political Communication, 36(2), 227–240.

18. US, UK, Spain
Majó-Vázquez, S., Nielsen, R. K., & González-Bailón, S. (2018). The backbone structure
of audience networks: a new approach to comparing online news consumption across
countries. Political Communication, 36(2), 227–240.

19. SPAIN
Panel size: 30k
US
Panel size: 210k
UK
Panel size: 67k
*ComScore Panel

20. Majó-Vázquez, S., Nielsen, R. K., & González-Bailón, S. (2018). The backbone structure of audience
networks: a new approach to comparing online news consumption across countries. Political
Communication, 36(2), 227–240.

21. Differences in the Network Modularity across
Countries and Ages
• US: The modularity is higher amongst the youngest groups
• Spain and the UK: No evidence of well-defined groups clustered around a few news
sites.

22. Differences in the Centrality of News Media Sites
• We interpret these centrality scores as proxies to inequality and diversity in audience
base.
• US: Digital-born are significantly more central than legacy media. They are attractive to a
wider range of the online population.
• Spain: Legacy media are more central and their audiences are more likely to navigate a
wide range of media sources.
• UK: The differences are not statistically significant.

23. Differences in the Network Centralization across Countries
and Age Groups
• US: Users consume news in a more distributed way than those in the UK
• UK: reproduce a structure more centralized around a hub
• Age groups do not show important variations

24. US
Yang, T., Majó-Vázquez, S., Nielsen, R. K., González-Bailón, S. , 2020. Exposure to
News Grows less Fragmented with Increase in Mobile Access. A multi-source and
multiplatform 5-years analysis of US news consumption.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3564826

25. Spain
Majó-Vázquez, S., González-Bailón, S., (2020). Digital News Media Diets and
Information Inequalities in Spain. Informe de la Democracia en España 2019. Fundación
Alternativas. (Forthcoming).

26. Spanish Audience Network
• Data Comscore
• January 2018 to December 2018
• Digital-born (green) vs Legacy Media (pink)
• Top sites by reach
• Modularity score close to 0, no evidence of
fragmentation. Significant result.
• Legacy media serve more diverse news
audience as measured by audience shared.

27. -1 1-0.2 0.2 0.6-0.6
Ideological scores assigned to news outlets based on
audience composition
Ideological Favorability Score News Media
RightLeft
Mean General Population
• Data Comscore and DNR 2019
• Top sites by reach
• Legacy media and top digital-born fall in
the mean of the ideology of the Spanish
general population
• Top legacy media attract homogeneous
audiences

28. France
Majó-Vázquez, S., Nurse, JRC., Zhao, J., Nielsen, R. K., 2018. ”Fragmentation
across media platforms: Mapping Audience behavior on the web, Facebook and
Twitter”.
Majó-Vázquez, S., Zhao, J., & Nielsen, R. K. (2017). The Digital-Born and Legacy
Media News Media on Twitter during the French Presidential Elections. Oxford,
UK. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/digital-born-and-
legacy-news-media-twitter-during-french-presidential-elections

29. Audience Overlap Measure
i j
4
%

30. Audience Overlap Measure
i j
4
%

31. Facebook Audience Network
• Shared engagement
•Data gathered:
•10,581 posts
•37 news media outlets
•4,648,473 user comments

32. Twitter Audience Network
• Shared engagement among media outlets
•Data gathered:
•130 Media outlets
•43 million tweets
•Engagement: RT, Reply, mention

33. India
Majó-Vázquez, S., Mukerjee, S., Neyazi, T. A., & Nielsen, R. K. (2019). Online Audience
Engagement with Legacy and Digital-Born News Media in the 2019 Indian Elections.
Oxford, UK.
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/online-audience-engagement-legacy-
and-digital-born-news-media-2019-indian-elections

34. India Election 2019

35. • India is an understudied media ecosystem.
• It is an ethnically, religiously, culturally and linguistically diverse country,
which affects the media ecosystem. (Mukerjee, 2020).
• It is a mobile-first and platform dominated media environment (Aneez
et al. 2019).
• Both legacy and digital-born outlets are enmeshed in a highly
politicsed media ecosystem and subject to attacks from both politicians
and activists.
India News Media Ecosystem

36. India Web and Twitter Audience Network

37. India Web and Twitter Audience Network
• TV & National Dailies more diverse
news audience base.
• Digital-born serve diverse
audiences on the Web and Twitter.
• No evidence of fragmentation.
•Data gathered:
•63 Million tweets
•101 top news media
•Web data Jan-March

38. Thanks For Your
Attention
Questions Welcome