Abstract
Previous research has indicated that political radicals and cynics tend to obtain information from like-minded media sources. In this study, we relate media use to political preferences by utilising a cross-national large-N data set collected during the European elections in 2014 through an online opt-in sample and the European Election Studies (EES), in order to test whether individuals who are negatively opinionated towards the EU and the political elite get informed via media that have a similar attitude towards the EU and politics. Our findings indicate that Eurosceptic voters differ considerably from moderate and pro-European voters in terms of their daily media use. In addition, we find that getting informed via a left-wing- or a right-wing-oriented mainstream media matters, when explaining voter’s policy preferences.
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Leruth, B., Kutiyski, Y., Krouwel, A., Startin, N.J. (2017). Does the Information Source Matter? Newspaper Readership, Political Preferences and Attitudes Towards the EU in the UK, France and the Netherlands. In: Caiani, M., Guerra, S. (eds) Euroscepticism, Democracy and the Media. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59643-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59643-7_5
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