News “Attraction” and Digital Inequalities: Incidental News Exposure and the Equalization or Stratification of Political Information

Understanding the impact of digital media on news inequalities is critical for democracy. The literature on incidental exposure challenges the idea that major platforms shrink information gaps, and research has turned to the identification of variables that explain how those gaps widen or persist. We use Latent Class Analysis to operationalize the metaphor of “attracting the news” and investigate incidental exposure as both an individual trait and temporal state. We link the top stories on Facebook during an election cycle with incidental exposure measures to explore news attraction, incidental exposure, and news engagement. We find some evidence incidental exposure may close information gaps, but that it does not close engagement gaps. Results contribute to theory about how digital media shape inequalities in news consumption and engagement.