Understanding Partisan news use in election campaigns: A Motivational Approach

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

On the basis of motivated reasoning theory(Kunda, 1990), this article investigates how need to evaluate, and explain the relationship between psychological motivation and partisan media use during presidential campaigns. The analysis of ANES 2016 indicates that respondents show different media consumption patterns based on their level of the need to evaluate. The need to evaluate is positively related to pro-attitudinal media use, but it is not significantly related to counter-attitudinal media use. Also, people with a higher need to evaluate tend to consume a greater volume of partisan media sources than people with low need to evaluate. Finally, the increased need to evaluate is significantly associated with consuming pro-attitudinal news more than counter-attitudinal news. The findings provide nuanced explanations for variations in media diets in election campaigns.