Characterizing Political News Consumers and Their Civic Potential: Comparing Engaged and Problematic Political News Consumers

Using a two-wave, longitudinal survey, this study examined the civic potential of news consumers, moving beyond consideration of how closely they follow political news to also consider the nature of their news consumption. Specifically, we conducted latent profile analysis and compared the emerging political news consumer profiles in their levels of civic engagement. We found that problematic political news consumers stand apart from most other political news consumer profiles in their levels of online political expression, political participation, and civic participation. This work contributes to our understanding of the “monitorial citizen” and its implications for democracy.