Ideology and Online News

Abstract

News consumption is moving online. If this move fundamentally changes how news is produced and consumed it will have important ramifications for politics. In this chapter we formulate a model of the supply and demand of news online that is motivated by descriptive features of online news consumption. We estimate the demand model using a combination of microdata and aggregate moments from a panel of Internet users. We evaluate the fit of the model to key features of the data and use it to compute the predictions of the supply model. We discuss how such a model can inform debates about the effects of the Internet on political polarization and other outcomes of interest.