{"id":6419,"date":"2025-07-01T11:45:43","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T09:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/?post_type=hbi-publications&#038;p=6419"},"modified":"2025-09-01T11:19:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T09:19:43","slug":"personal-preferences-when-searching-for-political-information","status":"publish","type":"hbi-publications","link":"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/en\/hbi-publications\/personal-preferences-when-searching-for-political-information\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Preferences When Searching for Political Information"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/en\/employee\/lisa-merten\/\">Lisa Merten<\/a> and five co-authors researched how personality traits and attitudes affect the search for political information. Their article has now been published open access in the journal New Media &amp; Society.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6011 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/New-Media-and-Society_Merten-300x193.jpg\" alt=\"Cover of the journal New Media &amp; Society\" width=\"300\" height=\"193\" srcset=\"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/New-Media-and-Society_Merten-300x193.jpg 300w, https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/New-Media-and-Society_Merten-768x494.jpg 768w, https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/New-Media-and-Society_Merten.jpg 840w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><span style=\"font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400;\">Puschmann, C., Rauxloh, H., Merten, L., Stier, S., Weller, K., &amp; Kulshrestha, J. (2025). <span lang=\"en\">How Affect Shapes Online Information Seeking about Political Actors. <\/span><i style=\"font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400;\">New Media &amp; Society<\/i>,\u00a0<i style=\"font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400;\">0<\/i>(0).\u00a0<a style=\"font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400;\" href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/14614448251346199\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/14614448251346199<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Abstract<\/h2>\n<p>Search engines are both frequently used and widely trusted sources of current political information. While research has examined the different stages of information seeking via search, the question of how political preferences and sociodemographic factors impact political online search has received less attention. In particular, the way in which attitudinal factors, such as sentiment toward a politician or interest in their personal life motivate information seeking have not been widely studied. We present findings from a panel study that combines browser tracking data with survey results for 1863 German participants. Our results suggest that both sympathy and antipathy toward a selection of popular politicians is predictive of searching for them. Queries also vary in their composition, with searches for female politicians highlighting their personal lives and physical attributes somewhat more often than for males. We conclude that the role of \u201csoft\u201d factors in motivating information seeking on political actors remains underexplored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":681,"template":"","tags":[],"class_list":["post-6419","hbi-publications","type-hbi-publications","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Personal Preferences When Searching for Political Information - Leibniz Institut f\u00fcr Medienforschung | Leibniz Institute for Media Research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/en\/hbi-publications\/personal-preferences-when-searching-for-political-information\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Personal Preferences When Searching for Political Information\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lisa Merten and five co-authors researched how personality traits and attitudes affect the search for political information. Their article has now been published open access in the journal New Media &amp; Society. Puschmann, C., Rauxloh, H., Merten, L., Stier, S., Weller, K., &amp; Kulshrestha, J. (2025). How Affect Shapes Online Information Seeking about Political Actors. 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