HEARING THE OPPOSITION: IT STARTS AT THE TOP

In Hearing the Other Side, Diana Mutz poses a conundrum: The more one is exposed to political disagreement, the more likely one is to withdraw from political engagement. This behavior may result in part from the political polarization of recent decades, but it may also be due to the traditional media, which tend to magnify political competition and portray it as a bitter conflict. The rise of the Internet and social media offered hope that people might more readily encounter the arguments of the other side. Recent research suggests, however, that people thus far tend to consume political information online just as they do offline: selectively.