Political Communication in Russian Social Media: Selective Exposure Effects

Discussion about how media influence politics and public opinion is one of the most active in contemporary social sciences. "Cyberoptimism" of the beginning of the century was replaced by a more skeptical and realistic attitude to the political potential of social media, and one of the reasons for this is the various media effects that operate in the online space. The selective exposure theory is one that has the potential to explain how social media facilitates the clash of different political opinions in the online environment and contributes to the development of the public sphere. This paper explores how Russians, active users of social media, are affected by the selective exposure, which is operationalized as a preference for compelling political sources in the online space. The results show that in social media respondents are more likely to find themselves in closed like-minded spaces.