The Effects of Ideological News Use on Societal Belief Gaps in Sweden

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Dennis Andersson, whose interest is in the effect of ideological news use in Sweden. The observation that people hold diametrically opposed beliefs about where society is heading is not new, and predates online and social media use; education and other socioeconomic factors, as well as news media use, are often seen as factors in influencing citizens’ belief structures. Increasingly, sociocultural dimensions – such as attitudes on environmental, gender equality, and migration policies – are also recognised as important dimensions here, however.

These may be reflected in ideological news media consumption patterns. Dennis studied this through a six-wave panel study between March 2020 and November 2022, testing for attitudes towards the development of the country, socioeconomic and sociocultural ideologies, and ideological news diets. This enables the testing of the relationships between ideology and societal beliefs, as moderated by news use.

Across different waves, both socioeconomic and sociocultural ideologies were shown to predict societal beliefs, though this was not consistent across all waves. News use also affected societal beliefs; but the pattern was different across different waves and for left- and right-leaning citizens. Overall, though, ideological news use reinforces societal belief gaps between groups, and these gaps appear to be widening over time.