The Politics of Personalized News Aggregation

TL;DR

This paper examines how personalized news aggregation influences policy polarization and voter behavior, revealing that extreme voters can drive polarization even when candidates are motivated by office-seeking, with implications for regulation.

Contribution

It introduces a model of rationally inattentive voters and personalized news aggregation, highlighting their role in policy polarization and the importance of extreme voters' signals.

Findings

Personalized news aggregation can increase policy polarization.

Extreme voters' signals are crucial for sustaining polarization.

Regulating infomediaries has significant welfare implications.

Abstract

We study how personalized news aggregation for rationally inattentive voters (NARI) affects policy polarization and public opinion. In a two-candidate electoral competition model, an attention-maximizing infomediary aggregates source data about candidates' valence into easy-to-digest news. Voters decide whether to consume news, trading off the expected gain from improved expressive voting against the attention cost. NARI generates policy polarization even if candidates are office-motivated. Personalized news aggregation makes extreme voters the disciplining entity of policy polarization, and the skewness of their signals is crucial for sustaining a high degree of policy polarization in equilibrium. Analysis of disciplining voters yields insights into the equilibrium and welfare consequences of regulating infomediaries.