Does the Information Source Matter? Newspaper Readership, Political Preferences and Attitudes Towards the EU in the UK, France and the Netherlands

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that political radicals and cynics tend to obtain information from like-minded media sources. In this study, we relate media use to political preferences by utilising a cross-national large-N data set collected during the European elections in 2014 through an online opt-in sample and the European Election Studies (EES), in order to test whether individuals who are negatively opinionated towards the EU and the political elite get informed via media that have a similar attitude towards the EU and politics. Our findings indicate that Eurosceptic voters differ considerably from moderate and pro-European voters in terms of their daily media use. In addition, we find that getting informed via a left-wing- or a right-wing-oriented mainstream media matters, when explaining voter’s policy preferences.

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