There is a strong consensus in the literature that political sophistication is associated with ‘correct voting’, i.e., the ability to identify the political party that is closest to one’s own political preferences (Lau & Redlawsk, 2006). Since the theory was first formulated two decades ago, however, patterns of news consumption have changed dramatically. Not only is there a massive transfer from print to online formats, but a growing an increasing part of the population has adopted a pattern of ‘news avoidance’. This increasingly prevalent phenomenon leads to a reconsideration of the traditional relation between political interest, political knowledge, news consumption, and the ability to cast an ideologically congruent vote. One of the key elements of news avoidance is the assessment that traditional news is no longer considered as relevant or salient by a substantial number of citizens. What is not yet clear is to what extent this attitude is related to electoral outcomes. Our analysis is based on the results of the BelREP panel survey that was conducted to coincide with the June 2024 elections in Belgium. More specifically we investigated to what extent news avoidance limits ideologically congruent voting, controlling for conventional indicators of political sophistication. The results indicate that news avoidance has a detrimental effect on congruent voting, especially among respondents with low levels of political knowledge.

There is a longstanding belief amongst scholars of psychophysiology that activation is positively associated with attention. However, recent work on news avoidance suggests that activation from negative content is linked to decreased attention. The current study seeks to investigate these different expectations and suggests that both increased and decreased activation can be linked to both attention and avoidance. Using an experiment that employs skin conductance levels and heart rate to evaluate subjects’ media selection choices, the author finds that even as deactivation is most likely to precede the decision to turn away from content, roughly 30% of the time activation precedes turning away. These findings confirm prior conclusions from the psychophysiological communications literature, and in the news avoidance literature, but it also highlights the need for more nuanced expectations where activation and media selection are concerned.