In the new article “Understanding Trump Supporters’ News Use: Beyond the Fox News Bubble” in the journal The Forum, the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR) group finds that many Trump supporters’ media consumption tends to be more omnivorous than solely Fox News.
Abstract
Since the 2016 election, the relationship between Trump supporters and Fox News has gained considerable attention. Drawing on interviews with more than 200 people and a representative survey conducted in the state of Wisconsin, we dive deeper into the media habits of Trump supporters using a mixed methods analytical approach. While we do not refute the importance of Fox News in the conservative media ecology, we find that characterizing Trump supporters as isolated in Fox News bubbles obscures the fact that many are news omnivores, or people who consume a wide variety of news. In fact, we find that Trump supporters may have more politically heterogeneous consumption habits than Trump non-supporters. We find that 17% of our survey respondents who support Trump in Wisconsin are regularly exposed to ideologically heterogeneous news media. We also find that like other voters, Trump supporters are disenchanted with the divisive nature of contemporary media and politics. Finally, we analyze the media use of young Trump supporters and find an especially high level of news omnivorousness among them.
Full citation: “Understanding Trump Supporters’ News Use: Beyond the Fox News Bubble,” Sadie Dempsey, Jiyoun Suk, Katherine J. Cramer, Lewis A. Friedland, Michael W. Wagner, and Dhavan V. Shah, The Forum, 18 (3):319-346. DOI: 10.1515/for-2020-2012 .
Access the article: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/for-2020-2012/html