News personalization, narcissism, & the third-person effect: examining support for restrictions on audience data collection

ABSTRACT

An online survey (N = 561) tested perceptions of the personalization of online political news. A third-person effect emerged: respondents believed others would be more affected by political news personalization than themselves. Those who thought others would be more affected were also more likely to support restrictions on websites’ use of audience data to personalize news. Narcissism was a significant moderator of the relationship between the third person differential and support for restrictions on data collection.

Disclosure statement

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Ithaca College. The author does not have any relevant financial or non-financial competing interests in this research. A previous version of this article has been presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Virtual Conference 2021.