Selective Exposure. Selective exposure research emphasizes that news readers will likely
engage in news that is consistent with their own preferences.11 The primary mechanism of
selectively choosing information to attend to and process, cited widely in selective exposure
research, comes from Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory.12 This theory posits people are
likely to attend to information that is attitude-consistent rather than attitude-dissonant. Dissonant
information increases uncertainty and psychological discomfort, while attitude-consistent
information leads to reinforced confidence in pre-existing attitudes. Therefore, people are likely
to choose messages that conform to their personal preferences while filtering out inconsistent
messages.