Voter's polarization and news consumption in election campaigns

The polarization of voters has been a great concern of scholars for years as it arguably has a direct impact on the quality of democracies. Yet, we still know very little on the roots of this phenomenon. A widespread perspective is that the abundance of online news and related patterns of selective exposure could influence the polarization of individual voters. As of today, evidence of the influence of online news consumption on voters' polarization is still limited. This paper aims to contribute to this literature by studying how polarization of voters during election campaigns is influenced by the type of media and digital media they consume during election campaigns as well as the selective online exposure that results from this media consumption. With a two waves panel survey in Switzerland, this paper is able to (1) identify polarization of individual voters based on the evolution of their vote intention between survey waves and (2) link this polarization to the consumption of information during the campaign. Results indicate that indeed online news consumption carries the potential to lead to more polarization, albeith not for everybody.