Rejection of cross-cutting news depends on content, sources, and cultural contexts: evidence from online trace data

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We examine the conditions in which people reject cross-cutting news in naturalistic settings of online comments. Theoretically, we account for article content and source to test whether commenters’ rejection and its intensity depend on whether cross-cutting news (a) is hostile to their in-group or favorable to the out-group and (b) is “unexpected” (from in-group sources) or “expected” (from out-group sources). Methodologically, we use online traces from news aggregators in South Korea (SK; 7,607 comments) and the United States (116,308 comments). We find that most commenters (79% in SK and 64% in the United States) reject cross-cutting news, with left-leaning commenters expressing stronger rejection than right-leaning commenters. Regarding article content, the SK commenters more strongly rejected in-group hostility, while the U.S. commenters rejected out-group favoritism more. Regarding article source, SK commenters more strongly rejected unexpected cross-cutting news from in-group sources than expected cross-cutting news from out-group sources. We discuss the implications of these findings.