Exposure to Political Content in Newspapers: The Impact of Cognitive Dissonance on Readers' Selectivity

The concepts of selective exposure and cognitive dissonance have contributed to the paradigm of weak media effects which dominated communications research for about a quarter of a century. However, despite numerous studies in psychology and communications, empirical results have been mixed and the actual role of selectivity as a `protective shield' against persuasive messages has remained unclear. This study combines a survey including copy-tests of the readers of four German dailies with a quantitative content analysis of the articles printed in three consecutive issues of the same newspapers. The results indicate that consonance and dissonance between messages and readers' predispositions have a statistically significant but rather limited impact on exposure.