The Knowledge Leveling Effect of Portal Sites

Tetsuro Kobayashi · Kazunori Inamasu

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Media Studies and Communication Social Media and Politics Media Influence and Politics

Abstract

The new high-choice media environment has allowed entertainment-oriented people to avoid political news, resulting in a wider gap in political knowledge between entertainment- and news-oriented citizens. On the Internet, however, users tend to be concentrated into a handful of portal sites that offer a mixed information environment in which both news and entertainment are readily available. The simultaneous presentation of news and entertainment headlines on portal sites exposes entertainment-oriented people to the news, which may in turn narrow the knowledge gap between them and news-oriented people. To test this hypothesis, we examined the effects of exposure to major portal sites in Japan, where Yahoo! JAPAN attracts a large majority of Internet users. Two studies using self-reported exposure to portal sites ( n = 838) and web browsing histories ( n = 1,000) demonstrated that even entertainment-oriented people can acquire political knowledge, and thus portal sites can serve as knowledge levelers.

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1992The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion 1993The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.1997What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters 1960An Economic Theory of Democracy 1996What Americans know about politics and why it matters 2001Social Implications of the Internet 2015Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015 2007Post-Broadcast Democracy

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2019How Polarized Are Online and Offline News Audiences? A Comparative Analysis of Twelve Countries 2021Does news help us become knowledgeable or think we are knowledgeable? Examining a linkage of traditional and social media use with political knowledge 2020A Bigger Pie: The Effects of High-Speed Internet on Political Behavior 2020Now We’re Talking? Understanding the Interplay Between Online Selective and Incidental Exposure and Their Influence on Online Cross-Cutting Political Discussion 2018News audience fragmentation in the Japanese Twittersphere 2022

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