A new study published in Communication Research has uncovered striking differences in how people from different countries interact with political news. In the United States, individuals overwhelmingly choose news that aligns with their partisan views, reinforcing political divides. However, this pattern is far less pronounced in Hong Kong and nearly absent in Japan, raising questions about the cultural and political factors that influence selective news consumption.
The rise of polarized media and the ease of customizing news consumption have raised concerns about the widening divide in political attitudes, particularly in the United States. Partisan selective exposure, where individuals prefer news that aligns with their views, has been linked to political polarization as it reinforces existing biases.
However, much of the research in this area has been conducted in the United States, where a unique two-party system, partisan media environment, and high levels of political polarization prevail. Researchers aimed to determine whether this behavior is a universal human tendency or a phenomenon shaped by specific cultural and political conditions.
“Research on selective exposure, often considered a contributing factor to political polarization, has been predominantly led by scholars in the United States,” explained study author Tetsuro Kobayashi, a professor of political science and economics at Waseda University.
“While partisan selective exposure is robustly observed in the U.S., I suspected that this phenomenon might not be as pronounced in Asia. Despite this, discussions in Japan and other Asian contexts often took the findings from U.S.-based studies for granted. This prompted me to conduct comparative research to uncover cross-national differences rather than simply assuming the universality of U.S.-centric findings.”
The research consisted of two studies.
In Study 1, Kobayashi and his colleagues aimed to measure partisan selective exposure—the tendency to choose news that aligns with one’s political preferences—across the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong. They used a controlled design involving mock news websites to observe participants’ browsing behavior.
These websites displayed eight headlines, with four political and four non-political stories. The political headlines focused on each region’s political leader: Donald Trump in the United States, Shinzo Abe in Japan, and Carrie Lam in Hong Kong. Among the political headlines, two were positive and two were negative about the leader, allowing participants the option to select either pro-attitudinal or counter-attitudinal content.
Participants were given 90 seconds to explore the site, during which their headline clicks and time spent reading articles were unobtrusively recorded. This time constraint ensured participants could not read all articles, compelling them to make choices that reflected their preferences.
The sample included over 600 participants from each region, recruited through online platforms to ensure diverse and comparable demographic representation. Each participant’s approval or disapproval of their region’s leader was measured beforehand, enabling researchers to categorize clicks and reading times as either pro- or counter-attitudinal.
The results of Study 1 revealed stark differences in media selection behavior across the three regions. Participants in the United States showed a strong preference for pro-attitudinal headlines, clicking on and spending more time with content that aligned with their political views. This behavior was consistent with the concept of partisan selective exposure.
In contrast, Japanese participants showed almost no preference, selecting pro- and counter-attitudinal headlines in nearly equal measure. Participants from Hong Kong exhibited an intermediate level of selective exposure, with a modest preference for pro-attitudinal content but not to the same extent as their U.S. counterparts.
“I anticipated that partisan selective exposure in Japan would be weaker than in the United States, but I did not expect it to be so minimal as to be nearly non-existent,” Kobayashi told PsyPost. “Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was one of the rare political leaders in Japan who elicited polarized evaluations, leading me to expect some degree of partisan selective exposure. However, this did not materialize in the data.”
These findings highlighted cross-national differences in the strength of partisan selective exposure, with the United States standing out as a unique case. However, while Study 1 confirmed that selective exposure was more pronounced in the United States, it did not explore the factors driving these differences. This limitation led the researchers to design Study 2 to better understand the underlying mechanisms behind the observed patterns.
Study 2 built on the findings of the first study and sought to investigate potential explanations for the cross-national differences in partisan selective exposure. Kobayashi and his colleagues hypothesized that affective polarization might contribute to these differences. They also examined the potential roles of perceived media credibility and cultural factors, such as the tendency to reconcile opposing viewpoints.
This time, participants’ emotional polarization was assessed through a survey measuring their feelings toward political in-groups and out-groups. For example, U.S. participants rated their feelings toward supporters of the Democratic and Republican parties, while Japanese participants rated their feelings toward those who approved or disapproved of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Media trust was measured through questions about the fairness, accuracy, and trustworthiness of the media in each region. Cultural attitudes toward accepting contradictions were assessed using a standardized questionnaire on dialectical thinking, which evaluates individuals’ willingness to reconcile seemingly opposing perspectives.
The findings from Study 2 revealed that affective polarization partly explained the observed cross-national differences in selective exposure. U.S. participants, who exhibited the strongest selective exposure, also displayed the highest levels of affective polarization.
Japanese participants, on the other hand, showed the lowest levels of polarization and the weakest selective exposure. Hong Kong participants, with moderate levels of polarization, fell between the two. This pattern suggested that strong emotional biases against political opponents might drive individuals to avoid counter-attitudinal content.
“The proliferation of the internet and social media does not deterministically amplify partisan selective exposure,” Kobayashi explained. “Instead, the intensification of selective exposure occurs primarily in politically polarized contexts. In the United States, polarization stems from various causes and has been a longstanding trend predating the advent of the internet. It is reasonable to consider a bidirectional causal relationship between partisan selective exposure and political polarization.”
Interestingly, the researchers found that perceived media credibility and cultural attitudes toward contradictions did not significantly explain the cross-national differences in selective exposure. While previous studies have linked low trust in media to biased information consumption, this relationship was not evident in this study. Similarly, the cultural tendency of East Asians to reconcile contradictions did not appear to suppress selective exposure in Japan or Hong Kong.
“A significant portion of the cross-country differences remains unexplained,” Kobayashi told PsyPost. “The inability to fully identify these unexplained differences is one of the key limitations of this study.”
The findings also underscore the need for cross-national research to develop a more nuanced understanding of political communication and polarization.
“Many theories and models in political communication research are grounded in the U.S. political system,” Kobayashi said. “However, as this study demonstrates, phenomena robustly observed in the U.S. may not manifest in the same way in Asia. My long-term goal is to develop theories and models of political communication that are firmly rooted in the realities of Asian political systems.”
The study, “Is Partisan Selective Exposure an American Peculiarity? A Comparative Study of News Browsing Behaviors in the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong,” was authored by Tetsuro Kobayashi, Zhifan Zhang, and Ling Liu.
