The Relationship Between Incidental News Exposure and Political Participation: A Cross-Country, Multilevel Analysis

In the modern, networked information environment, incidental exposure (IE) to political news is often theorized to benefit democracy, particularly by fueling political participation. Using cross-national survey data with more than 28,000 respondents from seventeen countries, we distinguished between first-level IE (i.e., the mere scanning of incidentally encountered information) and second-level IE (i.e., effortful processing of incidentally encountered information). We found that first-level IE was negatively related to political participation carried out through social media, while second-level IE was positively associated to both social media-based and offline participation. Furthermore, we found that the association between first-level IE and offline participation turned significantly positive for the healthiest democracies. Overall, findings suggest that the participatory role of first-level IE depend on the current quality state of a democracy.