High-choice media environments

High-choice media environments (HCMEs) are defined as the growing supply of media outlets, platforms, devices and genres competing for audience attention. Scholars studying HCMEs from a political communication perspective have traditionally blamed media fragmentation for increased information gaps among citizens with differing levels of political interest, or diverging partisan alignments (Prior, 2005). More recent studies posit that distributed discovery (social media, news aggregators, search engines and messaging apps) and recommendation systems might be causing further information divides by reducing news attention, increasing knowledge resistance and decreasing awareness of others’ perspectives among certain online populations. Future studies should bring a more nuanced understanding of the development and implications of HCMEs by building on (a) news user repertoires (Strömbäck et al., 2018) or profiles research showing how a mix of news uses can contribute political learning, and also (b) systemic-equalizing approaches (Nir, 2012) that identify country-level factors favoring a more pervasive use of high-quality news.