Which came first: The opinion or the news? A study of the influence of online news on diversity perspectives in The Netherlands

The ongoing debates in societies all over the world about the influence of fast circulating and personalized online news about patriotic ideas and negativities concerning cultural diversity in society serve as the basis for this study. A theoretical research of the influence of news on people’s - perspectives on society generally begins with two assumptions about its potential: the news has to imply bias to a certain degree, and the to-be-influenced people and opinions have to be triggered by this bias. Therefore, this thesis looks at a possible new contributing factor to the influence of news on people’s perspectives, namely the online news environment in which its closed information system is accused of having a narrowing, polarizing and attitude reinforcing effect on people’s diversity perspectives. The experimental research model provides insight into the full online news media process in which possibilities for selective exposure, as well as the effects of closed information systems online, are explained. Experiment 1 tested the selective exposure theory online along people’s diversity perspectives and Experiment 2 tested the influence of unilateral biased news on these perspectives. To measure the diversity perspective variable a validated questionnaire was used to measure people’s diversity perspectives, respectively ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘colorblindness’, as two separate constructs. To measure people’s usage of online news in Experiment 1, a fictive news website was built containing news articles with multicultural and colorblind news articles. To measure the influence of unilateral biased news on people’s diversity perspective for Experiment 2, three fictive news websites were built containing news articles containing either a multicultural or colorblind bias, or had no cultural bias. Both were online experiments. This study is motivated by the reignited interest of the selective exposure theory in an online environment and the ability of online mechanisms to narrow rather than widen people’s perspectives on diversity. Contradicting these theories, this study finds that people are not motivated to search for online news that confirms their diversity perspective and their diversity perspective is also not amplified by biased online news. Concluded is that only spending more time reading multicultural news reinforces the multicultural- as well as the colorblind perspective, which can be ascribed to the agenda-setting function of multicultural news in the online environment.