Selective Exposure to Campaign Communication: The Role of Anticipated Agreement and Issue Public Membership

This article explores two hypotheses about how voters encounter information during campaigns. According to the anticipated agreement hypothesis, people prefer to hear about candidates with whom they expect to agree. The ‘‘issue publics’ ’ hypothesis posits that voters choose to encounter information on issues they consider most important personally. We tested both hypotheses by distributing a multimedia CD offering extensive information about George W. Bush and Al Gore to a representative sample of registered voters with personal computers and home Internet connections during the closing weeks of the 2000 campaign. Exposure to information was measured by tracking individuals ’ use of the CD. The evidence provided strong support for the issue public hypothesis and partial support for the anticipated agreement hypothesis. Republicans and conservatives preferred to access information about George Bush, but Democrats and liberals did not prefer information about Vice President Gore. No interactions appeared between these two forms of selective exposure. Classical theories of democracy presume that citizensarereasonablywellinformedaboutpublic affairs. Revisionist accounts, while acknowledging that most citizens fall short of the democratic ideal, still presume some minimal level of exposure to political information. The question of just how much exposure occurs is relevant to a wide range of scholarship exploring everything from the impact of campaigns on voters ’ level of knowledge about the candidates (see, for