How affect shapes online information seeking about political actors

Abstract

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 “soft” factors in motivating information seeking on political actors remains underexplored.