This study tests the associations between news media use and perceived political polarization, conceptualized as citizens' beliefs about partisan divides among major political parties. Relying on representative surveys in Canada, Colombia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we test whether perceived polarization is related to the use of television news, newspaper, radio news, and online news media. Data show that online news consumption is systematically and consistently related to perceived polarization, but not to attitude polarization, understood as individual attitude extremity. In contrast, the relationships between traditional media use and perceived and attitude polarization is mostly country dependent. An explanation of these findings based on exemplification is proposed and tested in an experimental design.

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This article investigates the volume of foreign news provided by public service and commercial TV channels in countries with different media systems, and how this corresponds to the public's interest in and knowledge of foreign affairs. We use content analyses of television newscasts and public opinion surveys in 11 countries across five continents to provide new insight into the supply and demand for international television news. We find that (1) more market-oriented media systems and broadcasters are less devoted to international news, and (2) the international news offered by these commercial broadcasters more often focuses on soft rather than hard news. Furthermore, our results suggest that the foreign news offered by the main TV channels is quite limited in scope, and mainly driven by a combination of national interest and geographic proximity. In sum, our study demonstrates some limitations of foreign news coverage, but results also point to its importance: there is a positive relationship between the amount of hard international news coverage and citizens' level of foreign affairs knowledge.

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