Are you always ignoring attitude-challenging messages? Eye-tracking selective exposure on Chinese’ lowly involved news consumption

This study employs a pre-post-test design to investigate the selective exposure behaviors while consuming news with low involvement. The experiment incorporates eye-tracking and self-report measures to explore participants’ preferences for attitude-consistent and attitude-inconsistent information. The results of the study indicate that attitude consistency does not serve as the primary determinant of selective exposure; instead, participants demonstrate a stronger inclination towards engaging with a smaller number of posts from a particular perspective. Following their exposure to the news feed, participants display a heightened tendency to read articles with neutral attitudes. In addition, individuals who initially held a particular attitude tend to shift towards a neutral standpoint, particularly when exposed to a mostly-consistent opinion climate. Notably, participants’ attitudes do not tend to become radicalized under any opinion climate. The study acknowledges its limitations and proceeds to discuss the implications of these findings.