Due to recent developments of new media, the idea that people tend to expose themselves to partisan media which in turn increases polarization (selective exposure theory) has drawn increased attention of political communication scholars. Especially around elections, when political information is omni-present, selective exposure combined with new media has the potential to divide the electorate. Innovating on previous research we investigate this idea in the multi-party system of the Netherlands. Furthermore, little is known on how the polarization mechanism takes place. The proposed paper therefore presents results of a large-scale online experiment in which the mediating role of (1) frame acceptance, (2) knowledge gain, and (3) perceived opinion climate is investigated within the selective exposure process. Results indicate that both perceived opinion climate and gained knowledge play an important role in attitude change, though they do not necessarily lead to increased polarization.
