In online news, do mouse clicks speak louder than words?

Partisan media might deepen political polarization, but we should measure people's media habits more carefully before drawing conclusions, researchers say. In a polarized country, how much does the media influence people's political views? A new study co-authored by MIT scholars finds the answer depends on people's media preferences - and, crucially, how these preferences are measured. The researchers combined a large online survey experiment with web-tracking data that recorded all of the news sites participants visited in the month before the study. They found that the media preferences individuals reported in the survey generally mirrored their real-world news consumption, but important differences stood out. First, there was substantial variation in the actual news consumption habits of participants who reported identical media preferences, suggesting that survey-based measures may not fully capture the variance in individuals' experiences. Additionally, people with divergent media preferences in the survey often visited similar online news outlets. These findings challenge common assumptions about the polarized nature of Americans' media habits and raise The study was motivated by a split within some academic research.