Abstract
The profusion of information about current events in digital media makes it likely that individuals are exposed to news through the course of everyday life, even when they are not motivated to do so. Yet, such incidental news exposure and its consequences depend on a multitude of characteristics that are unique to individuals and the social and information environments they inhabit. This complexity makes it difficult to evaluate the broader democratic implications of incidental exposure. To address this challenge, we propose an ecological model that offers a more comprehensive framework for theorizing and studying incidental news exposure in digital media environments. The model organizes factors influencing incidental exposure into six ecological levels that span individual and environmental domains. It further distinguishes state-like factors (i.e. malleable, context-dependent) and trait-like factors (i.e. stable, context-independent). We demonstrate how the model can (1) better define types of incidental exposure, (2) theorize how factors can interact across levels to shape exposure and its consequences, and (3) identify promising areas for future research.
Keywords
Digital media have fundamentally changed the way citizens receive and engage with news. People are now situated within digital information environments that allow them vast opportunities to customize their news diets, while at the same time exposing them to flows of news that are curated by a host of external actors, including journalists, politicians, algorithms, social networks, advertisers, bots, and political operatives (Hermida, 2010; Thorson and Wells, 2016). Given the abundance of news and socially shared information in digital media, it is increasingly likely that individuals will be unintentionally or accidentally exposed to news while engaging in other activities. This incidental exposure can create ample opportunities for audiences to encounter, learn, and make meaning from news through the course of using technology in their everyday lives (Boczkowski et al., 2018; Schrøder, 2019).
Yet, the broader democratic value of incidental exposure to news remains unclear (Prior, 2007). On the one hand, incidental exposure may lower barriers to consuming diverse news and information for less interested or motivated individuals, thus narrowing well-documented knowledge and participation gaps. On the other hand, existing inequalities in news exposure and engagement may influence incidental exposure, preventing some people from being unintentionally exposed in the first place. There are also questions about the nature of the information to which people are incidentally exposed. Ideally, incidental exposure may facilitate encounters with quality news and information that allows people to become more knowledgeable and engaged citizens. More pessimistically, people may also be incidentally exposed to more harmful content like propaganda, misinformation, or hate-speech that widen social divides and contribute to polarization.
However, such binary characterizations of incidental exposure as either overwhelmingly positive or negative fail to account for the highly contingent nature of such exposure in the contemporary digital media environment. It is unlikely that incidental exposure or its consequences are universal. Rather, as people increasingly exist in highly networked, heavily curated flows of news and information (Castells, 2010; Klinger and Svensson, 2015; Thorson and Wells, 2016), incidental exposure and its influence will depend on a multitude of factors that are unique to individuals and the social, cultural, and information environments they inhabit. The highly conditional nature of incidental exposure introduces challenges to understanding its role in the news ecosystem and requires a more comprehensive theoretical model that identifies, (1) when incidental exposure is more or less likely to occur, (2) what types of information people incidentally encounter, and (3) when, why, and for whom it is likely to be impactful.
In this article, we propose an ecological model of incidental exposure to news to provide the necessary architecture for understanding incidental exposure and its implications. Ecological models, which originated in biological sciences, are often applied to human behavior and can model how a given behavior is affected by both characteristics of individual people (individual factors) and the environment in which they exist (environmental factors). An ecological perspective is conducive to studying incidental exposure because it accounts for its highly contextual nature. Our model identifies a total of six interacting levels of influence on incidental exposure and its consequences across individual and environmental domains (Figure 1). Factors at each level may also be defined as state- or trait-like, an important distinction for understanding incidental exposure in different situations. State-like factors, such as the physical presentation of specific news stories, are malleable and can shift depending on the particular individual or context. Trait-like factors, such as an individual’s general interest in news, are more stable or inherent and depend less on the context.
Ecological model of incidental exposure.
In what follows, we explicate our ecological model of incidental exposure. We begin by highlighting why incidental exposure is a particularly important phenomenon within digital media environments. This allows us to more precisely define incidental exposure, a term that has been broadly used to describe any exposure to news or information that happens outside active, effortful, or intentional information-seeking behavior. We then describe the ecological model and explain how individuals, social networks, and media systems should theoretically interact to shape incidental exposure. We conclude by discussing how researchers from different disciplinary, theoretical, or methodological approaches can use the model to better understand how individual and environmental domains simultaneous shape incidental exposure. Ultimately, our model serves to more clearly theorize incidental exposure to news in digital media environments and offers a useful foundation for future study.
What is new about incidental exposure in digital media?
It is important to first consider what, if anything, is ‘new’ about incidental exposure in digital media environments. After all, the phenomenon of incidental or passive news exposure has been a subject of research for over 60 years (Downs, 1957). We argue that there are several distinct changes in the media environment that necessitate a fresh theoretical perspective.
Incidental exposure in the mass media era was often understood in contrast to active, effortful news consumption, which was costly in terms of money or time. In one early formulation of this dichotomy, Downs (1957) noted that while some people get news by purchasing and reading the newspaper, others are ‘incidentally’ exposed to current affairs through their consumption of other media. Downs described how a movie audience that goes to the theater seeking entertainment incidentally encounters news in the newsreel that precedes the feature film. Research in the following decades explored whether incidental exposure through television, newspapers, radio, or entertainment content could result in civic learning and perhaps diminish interest-based gaps in political knowledge (Baum, 2002; Neuman et al., 1992; Zukin and Snyder, 1984).
In many ways, contemporary research on incidental exposure in digital media is motivated by the same desire to explore the possibility that the news people stumble upon might help address informational and political inequalities. Yet, we argue there are four ways in which the forms of incidental exposure that occur in modern media environments are distinct from those in previous eras. These distinctions constitute our rationale for a new theoretical approach to studying incidental news exposure in digital media.
From exposure to flows
First, in one-to-many mass media, where content is linear, segmented, and created by large media corporations, ‘exposure’ is a useful theoretical unit of analysis. For example, when reading a newspaper, an individual may intentionally expose themselves to an entertainment story, and thereby, be incidentally exposed to a news story located on the same page. However, the very notion of ‘exposure’, in which audiences encounter discrete messages or programs is ill-suited to studying the digital media environment. Instead, Thorson and Wells (2016) argued that in many-to-many digital media, content is encountered in non-linear ‘flows’. These flows of information within digital media are shaped by the curatorial behavior of a range of actors (e.g. social networks, journalists, algorithms). Taking this logic a step further, we argue that it makes little sense to regard exposure to messages in digital media as something exclusively influenced by individual motivation or agency. For example, if a Facebook user is navigating his Facebook feed and sees a friend post a news story, have they been incidentally exposed? This encounter with news is likely a result of a complex interplay of curatorial forces and is best understood within a curated flows framework. We, therefore, argue the study of incidental exposure in digital media must move away from an episodic understanding of exposure to discrete messages, toward a more complex conceptualization of information exposure as occurring within curated flows.
From a mass media to a network media logic
Relatedly, the mass media era was governed by a media logic in which news was created and disseminated by large media corporations and consumed by individual citizens. In contrast, many digital and social media rely on a ‘network media logic’, in which the individual user becomes the locus of production and distribution (Klinger and Svensson, 2015). Media use, therefore, occurs within the structure of horizontal, interactive networks of communication that integrate mass and interpersonal communication by allowing users to post and share personally relevant news and information. This networked nature of political communication in digital media necessitates a rethinking of who exerts influence over information and discourse (Castells, 2010). If incidental exposure occurs within a network media logic, social networks and their attendant social psychological and relational dynamics must be central to any theoretical account.
From acquisition cost to opportunity cost
Third, scholars have argued that incidental exposure is unique because it makes news relatively costless (Downs, 1957). Clearly, much of the interest in incidental exposure comes from the perception that the Internet, much like the newsreel before it, has further reduced the cost of obtaining information. Digital media have made it easier to learn about news and public affairs in important ways. However, this new technology may have simply shifted the nature of information cost. News is costly not just because we spend time finding it, but also because audiences must choose to consume or attend to it instead of some other type of information (Couldry et al., 2010; Prior, 2007; Ytre-Arne and Moe, 2018). In high-choice media environments, the opportunity cost of choosing news over, say, entertainment, may be more consequential than the actual cost of acquiring that news. A crucial distinction here is that obtaining news through digital media is not costless. The abundance of information and degree of curatorial tools available to digital media users make opportunity cost the key type of information cost to consider in theorizing incidental exposure.
Expanding news utility
Finally, previous work on incidental exposure often relied on rational choice theory, which theorizes acquisition, attention, and processing of political information as a rational calculation related to vote choice (Downs, 1957). As Downs noted, it is rational for citizens to expend as few resources as possible obtaining the political information they need to figure out who to vote for. Relying on incidental exposure is, therefore, often a rational response to media environments where news is more ‘freely’ available. However, inquiries into how audiences use digital technologies indicate the utility of news extends far beyond a rational calculation related to electoral choice. As social media become integrated into people’s everyday lives, digital news exposure – including incidental exposure – is an increasingly social practice that helps audiences make meaning and sense of their political and social worlds (Boczkowski et al., 2018; Costera Meijer, 2007; Heikkilä and Ahva, 2015 ; Schrøder, 2019; Swart et al., 2019). As digital media environments have expanded the modes of political voice and influence, it is vital to account for the heterogeneity in the utility individuals receive from news content.
To summarize, the study of incidental exposure in previous eras was defined by exposure to discrete news messages within a mass media logic, where information was costly to acquire and citizens were believed to be primarily motivated by a rational drive to expend as few resources as possible to become informed voters. In contrast, we suggest that incidental exposure in digital media is defined by flows of news within a network media logic, where the opportunity to attend to information is costly and citizens are driven by a range of political, social, and identity related goals. With these fundamental distinctions in mind, we next offer a more comprehensive framework for theorizing incidental news exposure in digital media.
An ecological model of incidental exposure to news in digital media
Due to the outlined complexities in the modern media system, we adopt an ecological approach to theorizing incidental news exposure. Ecology is a term from biology that refers to the interactions between organisms and their environments. Social researchers have applied this biological paradigm to study human behavior (Stokols, 1996), often using ecological models to study health behaviors (Sallis and Owen, 2015). The field of media studies has long employed the media ecology metaphor to understand interactions between humans, their environments, and media (Scolari, 2012). Human behavioral ecological models are driven by a few core tenets, which are directly applicable to the nature of modern incidental exposure to news.
First, ecological models assume human behavior is influenced by characteristics of the individual, including their genetic make-up, psychological perceptions, and prior behavior. The process of incidental exposure in digital media is similarly shaped by diverse personal motivations and the degree to which individuals can customize their own information environments. Second, ecological models assume behavior is also influenced by the social, political, cultural, and physical environments in which people exist (Stokols, 1996). This relates to our contention that incidental exposure is shaped by multiple curatorial forces outside the individual and a network media logic that emphasizes the social nature of news production and consumption.
Ultimately, ecological models are driven by the idea that humans are simultaneously influenced by factors within both individual and environmental domains. They, therefore, provide a more holistic framework for the study of human behavior, allowing for the comprehensive integration of multiple concepts and theories from different disciplines. Examples from other domains of behavioral research are instructive. For instance, cigarette smoking is in part determined by characteristics unique to the individual (e.g. socio-economic status, perceptions of smoking risk) and their environment (e.g. other smokers in their social network, cigarette taxes). An ecological approach to smoking behavior can examine the interplay between these factors. Similarly, the proposed ecological model allows researchers to theorize how factors interact across individual and environmental domains to influence experiences and behaviors related to incidental news exposure.
Our ecological model is not a theory, as it does not directly predict the nature of relationships between variables. Rather, it serves as a heuristic that can drive research across multiple levels of influence (Sallis and Owen, 2015). As outlined in Figure 1, the model organizes factors related to incidental exposure across two dimensions. First, factors are organized by whether they are characteristics of the individual (the innermost circles) or the environment (the outermost circles). Second, factors on the left side of the model are considered trait-like factors (stable, context-independent), while those on the right are considered state-like factors (malleable, context-dependent). This distinction helps identify how incidental exposure plays out under different circumstances. Crucially, the model assumes factors interact across dimensions to shape how people experience incidental exposure. For example, the occurrence and influence of incidental exposure might depend on both individual characteristics, like the receiver’s political party affiliation (identity/demographic level) and environmental characteristics, like who shared the specific news article (social networks level).
The basic structure of the ecological model helps accomplish the following three important goals: (1) to more precisely define incidental exposure in digital media, (2) to map the factors that determine the causes, experiences, and consequences of such incidental exposure, and (3) to offer suggestions for how future research might examine the interplay between factors across levels.
Defining incidental exposure
In research on digital media, incidental exposure has been used to describe exposure to news that happens outside active, effortful, or intentional information-seeking. Yet, scholars have variously stressed the motivation, effort, and unexpectedness involved in such exposure. This definitional fuzziness is an understandable consequence of a complex phenomenon that can occur in a number of ways. Our model offers two general insights into how incidental exposure can be defined. First, as we have argued, incidental exposure is essentially a function of the interaction between an individual and their environment. As reflected in Figure 1, the model conceptualizes individual and environmental domains interfacing at the level of motivation (level 4). In other words, what makes exposure to news ‘incidental’ is whether or not individuals are motivated to seek it from their environment. As an example, imagine a news story about a bill before the US congress that is circulating widely on social media. An avid news consumer may go online and actively seek and be exposed to this news story in order to satisfy their goal of staying informed. In this case, news exposure is motivated. A different user may be exposed to the same story through social media or a web portal like Yahoo!, while looking at friends’ posts or checking the weather online. In this latter instance, the user was not motivated to seek news, but was nonetheless incidentally exposed. Thus, the distinction between these exposure experiences is motivational.
Accordingly, our model contends that the demographic, cognitive, attitudinal, and perceptual characteristics of each individual shape their motivation to seek news, which in turn determines whether the actual flows of news in their digital media environment are experienced ‘incidentally’. Furthermore, the model highlights that motivations can occur at both the trait and state level. For example, individuals can be, in general, motivated to seek political information (i.e. avid news consumers) or become temporarily motivated to seek political information when an event, issue, or concern creates an information-seeking goal. Ultimately, this distinction between state and trait motivations suggests the following two distinct types of incidental exposure: (1) state unmotivated exposure and (2) trait unmotivated exposure.
Individual and environmental factors of incidental exposure to news
Our ecological model identifies six levels containing factors that should influence incidental news exposure and individuals’ experiences with it. The core of the model represents the most micro level and each subsequent level is more macro. Four levels within the individual domain capture the following: (1) cognitive factors, (2) demographics and identity characteristics, (3) perceptions of the information environment, and (4) individual motivations. The fifth and sixth levels fall within the environmental domain: (5) the social networks in which individuals exist, and (6) characteristics of the larger media systems. The model also distinguishes between state and trait level influences within each level. By accounting for multiple levels of influence, the model offers a framework for investigating incidental exposure across a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches.
In outlining the model, we map important concepts, variables, and theories onto the various levels. In many cases, these concepts are based on previously published work on incidental exposure. In other cases, the model identifies relatively unexamined concepts that could be addressed in future work. Assignment of a concept or variable to a particular level was based on our qualitative and subjective assessment of what level was most appropriate. This raises an important caveat about concept placements. While the levels are discussed in discrete terms, we acknowledge that lines between the various levels are at times blurred and porous. In practical terms, it means that some concepts or variables may exist on the boundary between levels or may even fluctuate between levels depending on the context. For instance, a concept like political interest, which we placed in the motivation level, could also relate to one’s identity and self-concept. Another broader concept – culture – certainly has influence at each level of the model and could reasonably be placed (and investigated) at all levels. Ultimately, the purpose of the model is more about providing a broad organizing framework for understanding incidental exposure than it is about definitive placement of any particular concept. In the following sections, we outline the six levels of the model, starting with the individual domain and concluding with the environmental domain.
Individual factors 1: Cognitive level
The innermost level of the model includes factors related to individuals’ ability to cognitively process information and prior knowledge about news content. Trait factors (left side) include relatively stable cognitive factors such as individuals’ innate cognitive abilities or technological skills. For example, individuals with high levels of technological competence may be more likely to be exposed and attend to incidental information (Boczkowski et al., 2018). Other skills like media literacy may impact the degree to which people attend to or are affected by incidental exposure to news content (Toff and Nielsen, 2018). State factors (right side) include cognitive factors that are likely to fluctuate depending on context. People with higher levels of prior knowledge about a particular topic should be more likely to engage news they encounter incidentally (Karnowski et al., 2017). While incidental exposure to news can lead to learning (e.g. Tewksbury et al., 2001), it remains to be seen whether this link is dependent on what people already know at the time of exposure. One’s cognitive load at the moment of exposure should also affect attention to incidental information. If cognitive loads are high during exposure due to multi-tasking or other distractions, people may not process, elaborate, or be influenced by incidental information (Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018).
Individual factors 2: Demographic/identity level
The next level includes demographic and identity-related characteristics. Trait demographic factors like age, gender, and education can influence whether people are incidentally exposed to news online (Ahmadi and Wohn, 2018; Boczkowski et al., 2018; Lu and Lee, 2019). Similarly, social identities such as race, gender, religion, class, political affiliation, and ideology may shape incidental exposure because people tend to focus on, engage with, and be affected by media content that reflects their identity (Slater, 2007). For example, people who strongly identify with a political party are more likely to engage with incidentally encountered news stories (Weeks et al., 2017). Incidental exposure may similarly reinforce attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors of those with strong identities, while those with weak identities may not be affected by incidental exposure to the same content (Slater, 2007). For instance, incidental exposure to inaccurate political information may be more believable if it is consistent with existing ideologies or worldviews or encountered in like-minded media outlets (Garrett et al., 2016).
A similar process may occur among state identity-related factors. Certain news topics or stories may momentarily heighten identity salience or receive more attention from individuals who care about particular issues. Incidentally encountered news stories of personal interest are more likely to be read and motivate further information searching (Karnowski et al., 2017). For example, someone may not consider healthcare reform to be part of their personal identity, but stories about the issue may momentarily trigger a more generalized political identity that drives attention to the article. In health contexts, people who are affected by diseases or illnesses at the time of incidental exposure may attend and react to health news on these topics, whereas those without an association with the illness are less likely to be affected by this news (Niederdeppe et al., 2007).
Individual factors 3: Perceptions of information environment level
Moving out another level are factors relating to how individuals perceive the information environment. Trait-like factors here relate to people’s general expectations about how they will encounter news in digital media. Although news is often ubiquitous and ambient on social media (Hermida, 2010), people vary in the extent to which they perceive these platforms as news sources. Some users see social media as places to keep up with current events and expect to be exposed to news content from their social connections and preferred news sources (Pentina and Tarafdar, 2014). However, many people do not see digital media as a place to become well informed, but rather a social space in which they occasionally encounter news as a by-product of more social uses (Boczkowski et al., 2018). Audience perceptions of platforms as social news spaces matter because they can shape how people collectively engage and make sense of news content (Costera Meijer, 2007; Heikkilä and Ahva, 2015; Schrøder, 2019; Swart et al., 2019). To some, the amount of news on social media is perceived as highly overwhelming, which leads them to adopt strategies to avoid unexpectedly encountering news on the platforms (Pentina and Tarafdar, 2014). Similarly, others do not see digital media as platforms to regularly encounter news, but believe that if a news story is important enough, it will nevertheless find them because others online will share it (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2017; Toff and Nielsen, 2018). These perceptions of digital environments as places for news can influence whether people attend to and learn from incidental information. If the environment is perceived as a place to consume information, people may pay closer attention to incidental news (Erdelez, 1999), whereas information environments in which people perceive information can reach them anytime may lead to brief and fragmented attention to incidental news (Boczkowski et al., 2018). Likewise, individuals who hold the ‘news finds me’ perception are less likely to actively seek news, which can limit what they know about current affairs (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2017).
Perceptions of information environments can also be state-like, shifting in response to breaking news or events. In fact, it can be difficult to avoid news on social media, particularly when major stories break or following significant events like an election or a national crisis. While some people might not pay attention to news in general, social media can at times be perceived as offering information that helps them process and make sense of extreme events or crises (Stieglitz et al., 2018). At the same time, others actively avoid accidental encounters with news during breaking events because they perceive social media environments to be either highly political, overwhelming, or non-credible and filled with misinformation and rumors (Pentina and Tarafdar, 2014).
Individual factors 4: Motivation level
The final level within the individual domain contains factors related to motivation. In the context of news, motivations can include whether people are driven to recognize, attend to, understand, evaluate, or engage with content they encounter (Eveland, 2002). As our definition indicates, incidental exposure can occur when people lack motivation to seek news in general or lack motivation in a particular context. Trait-like motivations may be particularly determinative of whether people incidentally encounter news, engage with it, or learn from such content. For example, individuals with high levels of interest in news or politics may be more likely stumble upon or engage with news on social media as part of their news habits (Kim et al., 2013; LaRose, 2010; Prior, 2007). Similarly, audiences who engage news for more social purposes or to make better sense of the world around them may attend more carefully to incidentally encountered news (Schrøder, 2019; Swart et al., 2019). However, it may be that those who consistently lack motivation to seek news benefit the most from incidental exposure on social media. Social media create unique opportunities for those who lack interest in the news or prefer other types of content to be incidentally exposed (Boczkowski et al., 2018; Bode, 2016; Fletcher and Nielsen, 2018; Yadamsuren and Erdelez, 2010). Such incidental exposure can help low-interest individuals learn about or engage in politics (Baum, 2002; Kobayashi et al., 2017; Neuman et al., 1992; Valeriani and Vaccari, 2016). Incidental exposure to news may also allow audiences who are less motivated to routinely seek information a chance to monitor and attend to their political and social worlds through their everyday activities (Couldry et al., 2010; Ytre-Arne and Moe, 2018).
At the state-level, motivations for using media in any particular moment can vary drastically and can affect what information people attend to and engage. Mere exposure to incidental news may momentarily motivate people – even those who lack trait-level motivations – to engage with the content (Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018). Highly emotional news content or news that is visually appealing can attract attention, which can increase short-term motivation to read or engage the content (Stroud, 2017). As with patterns of selective exposure, the source of the news that is encountered incidentally also affects whether people attend to it. News sources that are reflective of a person’s political identity are likely to motivate them to pay more attention following incidental exposure (Stroud, 2017).
Environmental factors 1: Social networks level
Moving beyond the individual domain, the first level of environmental factors relates to how social network environments shape incidental exposure. Among trait-like factors, the social make-up of an individual’s network is particularly meaningful. Users are able to curate their online networks (Thorson and Wells, 2016), making each individual’s network highly personal (Castells, 2010). Furthermore, audiences look to their social networks to help understand the news they encounter (Heikkilä and Ahva, 2015; Schrøder, 2019). The characteristics of network contacts and the content these contacts share can affect which political issues people are exposed to and what they believe is important (Anspach, 2017), particularly for those who are less interested in politics (Feezell, 2018). Online social networks can wield significant political influence (Bond et al., 2012), which means that online incidental exposure creates the potential for opinion leaders to have sway over what news their friends see and how they think about it (Bergström and Belfrage, 2018; Turcotte et al., 2015; Weeks et al., 2017). These opinion leaders can serve as gatekeepers for others in their networks, amplifying and spreading content to their less interested peers. Furthermore, individuals who exist in diverse social networks online may be more likely to incidentally encounter diverse information, including news (Lu and Lee, 2019). Of course, social media users can also block or hide posts from certain individuals, which can limit incidental exposure to disagreeable content.
There are also state-like factors related to how specific social network contexts can influence incidental exposure. For example, news stories posted to social media contain numerous cues, including who shared the news, the news source, the news topic, and engagement metrics that can affect whether someone reads or engages with the content (Kümpel, 2019). News is read more widely and carefully when it is shared by others that are either strong ties, highly trusted, or perceived to be knowledgeable (Anspach, 2017; Kaiser et al., 2018 Karnowski et al., 2017; Turcotte et al., 2015). This suggests news content shared by trusted others may be more influential than the same content shared by weaker social ties.
Environmental factors 2: Media systems level
The final set of environmental factors relate to the media systems in which news is produced, distributed, and consumed. Trait factors range from the cultural context in which media systems evolve to the technological infrastructure that make information distribution possible. While the mediatization of society is advancing rapidly, it is important to understand the lived experiences of audiences within the broader social context and culture (Livingstone, 2019; Schrøder, 2019). Unpacking how audiences make sense of incidentally encountered news in the course of their everyday lives better illustrates the social and cultural conditions under which a significant percentage of news is now encountered (Boczkowski et al., 2018). In addition, technical features of social media platforms, such as algorithms, can also determine the volume and type of political information users incidentally encounter. For example, Facebook’s algorithm influences incidental exposure to political content, often removing disagreeable political information from users’ feeds (Bakshy et al., 2015). Third-party institutions and organizations like political campaigns and news outlets increasingly work with technology companies to shape what content users incidentally encounter, yielding significant power in the process (Kreiss and McGregor, 2018; Nielsen and Ganter, 2018). In addition, the increasingly blurred line between news and entertainment (Baum, 2002) means that incidental exposure to political information can occur not only through news but also through media content designed to entertain rather than inform.
On the state side, a range of factors relate to how media systems influence incidental news exposure depending on the news cycle, target issue, or specific communication technology used. While a shift toward a hybrid media system has changed how news is made, distributed, and received (Chadwick, 2017), professional journalists and media organizations continue to be important producers of news content and serve as an important curatorial force (Thorson and Wells, 2016). As a consequence, journalistic norms, routines, and agendas have the potential to change the amount and nature of news content people can stumble across in digital media (Shoemaker and Reese, 2013). For example, the way individual news stories are framed and promoted on social media has clear implications for whether people will attend to or engage with content.
Conclusion
The highly networked, social nature of digital media makes incidental exposure an important element of contemporary news practices and consumption. Yet, incidental exposure to news is a complex phenomenon that requires researchers to consider characteristics of both individuals and the larger social, cultural, and informational environments in which they exist. In this way, incidental exposure and its consequences are conditional and contextual; whether people are incidentally exposed, what types of content they encounter, and when, why, and for whom incidental exposure matters are questions that are highly dependent on factors unique to both people and their environments. This makes incidental exposure a difficult concept to study, and one that requires an organizing theoretical framework that accounts for these multiple factors.
To address this complexity, the ecological model we propose organizes factors into six levels that describe how characteristics of individuals (cognitive, demographic/identity, perceptions, motivations) and their environments (social networks, media systems) shape incidental news exposure. Importantly, the model stresses that examining these individual and environmental factors in isolation misses nuances in incidental news exposure. In order to understand the contextual nature of incidental exposure in the modern media environment, researchers must instead consider the theoretical interactions between levels.
What does an ecological approach to studying incidental news exposure look like in practice? A primary benefit of the model is that it serves as a foundation to help diverse groups of researchers theorize incidental exposure within and across individual and environmental levels. It can be used to identify topics of inquiry, generate questions about how factors at different levels might be influential (or interact), or create variables for studies. Importantly, aspects of the model can be studied using a range of methodologies. For researchers who approach the study of news from a more quantitative, social science perspective, this means identifying important independent and dependent variables that can be measured in surveys or manipulated in experimental research. For example, suppose a researcher is interested in how the effects of incidental exposure are influenced by the political ideology of the news source posting a particular story. The ideology of the news source could be manipulated such that it matched the receivers’ ideology or not. Such a study would incorporate variables from multiple factors and levels of the model (ideology of news source: environmental state factor, social networks level; receiver ideology: individual trait factor, identity/demographic level). This design would explicitly test the conditional and interactive nature of incidental exposure. Similar designs could be used to manipulate different state or trait factors at each level to test the effects of incidental exposure (e.g. engagement, learning, attitude change) under various contexts. On a practical level, researchers interested in knowing who is more likely to be incidentally exposed to news and where such exposure occurs can use the ecological model to select variables that assess who is exposed (demographics) and on what platforms (media systems). Likewise, computational researchers could pair self-reported survey data with behavioral trace data to understand what content certain individuals are exposed to incidentally. For example, to what extent do people who are less interested in politics rely on incidentally encountered news on social media? Such a study could measure self-reported interest in politics and match that with users’ frequency of clicking on external links to news articles on social media sites.
The model can also be used for studies using qualitative methodologies. Audience studies researchers could use the model to structure qualitative interviews with participants to understand how different audiences make cultural, social, or political meaning of incidental news encountered in their everyday lives (Schrøder, 2019). Such a study might use the model to not only design interview questions, but also to analyze and interpret the data, finding patterns or connections across levels of the model. Scholars from a cultural studies tradition, for example, could use the model heuristically to think about the intersections of technology, incidental news exposure, and power. Such, a critique could focus on the ethics of technologies like news algorithms that disrupt journalistic norms and make exposure decisions for users (Ananny, 2016). These illustrative examples are by no means exhaustive. Researchers can use the model to think creatively about important and relevant factors across levels. One benefit of the model is that it is compatible with different epistemological, theoretical, and methodological approaches to studying news.
Taken together, the model provides a foundation to better understand who will be incidentally exposed and under what social conditions, what types of information is encountered, and how people interact with and are affected by this incidental news. Importantly, it provides a framework that remains theoretically useful and relevant, even as technology and society shift. The various factors at each level of the model may change over time, but the primary structure is not altered. The notion that both individual and environmental factors are vital to understanding incidental news exposure remains constant, even if the specific medium or technology through which incidental news is encountered is fleeting. Ultimately, the ecological model of incidental exposure to news provides a strong theoretical foundation for understanding how individuals and their environments interact to shape the news people encounter in the contemporary media ecosystem.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.