Demand for Slant: How Abstention Shapes Voters' Choice of News Media
Santiago Oliveros, Felix Vardy*
Date: 2012-05-04 4:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Last modified: 2012-04-17
Abstract
Binary decision theory predicts that voters prefer information sources whose biases conform to their own. We argue that voting is not a binary decision problem and that introducing abstention generates "cross-over" in news consumption (i.e., conservative voters consulting liberal media- and vice versa). SpeciÂ…cally, the option to abstain induces voters with considerable leanings towards a particular candidate to demand information that is less biased towards that candidate than voters who are less leaning towards that candidate. Moreover, non-monotonicity in the demand for slant makes voters' ideologies non-recoverable from their choice of news media and generates disproportionate demand for media outlets that are either centrist or only moderately biased.