TY - JOUR
T1 - Unfriending and Muting During Elections
T2 - The Antecedents and Consequences of Selective Avoidance on Social Media
AU - Kim, Dam Hee
AU - Jones-Jang, S. Mo
AU - Kenski, Kate
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Although selective avoidance, commonly practiced as unfriending and muting on social media, has been assumed to be at odds with the democratic ideal of deliberation, academic literature says little about its antecedents and consequences. Drawing from the framework of psychological needs for information processing, we examine whether need for cognition and need to evaluate interact to predict selective avoidance, which then facilitates political expression on social media. Analyses of a two-wave survey collected before and after the 2018 midterm election in the U.S. suggest that individuals with low need for cognition but high need to evaluate were relatively unlikely to engage in selective avoidance. However, the supposedly ideal type of citizens high on both needs tended to engage in selective avoidance intensively to further engage in political expression on social media.
AB - Although selective avoidance, commonly practiced as unfriending and muting on social media, has been assumed to be at odds with the democratic ideal of deliberation, academic literature says little about its antecedents and consequences. Drawing from the framework of psychological needs for information processing, we examine whether need for cognition and need to evaluate interact to predict selective avoidance, which then facilitates political expression on social media. Analyses of a two-wave survey collected before and after the 2018 midterm election in the U.S. suggest that individuals with low need for cognition but high need to evaluate were relatively unlikely to engage in selective avoidance. However, the supposedly ideal type of citizens high on both needs tended to engage in selective avoidance intensively to further engage in political expression on social media.
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U2 - 10.1080/15205436.2021.1942494
DO - 10.1080/15205436.2021.1942494
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85109964569
SN - 1520-5436
VL - 25
SP - 161
EP - 184
JO - Mass Communication and Society
JF - Mass Communication and Society
IS - 2
ER -