I Read the News Today, but Why? Media Consumption, Socialization, and Autocracy

Abstract

Dominant models of news consumption in political science treat citizens as rational individuals, gathering information to make materially or politically consequential choices. This assumption, developed largely in democratic contexts, risks obscuring other incentives that may be equally or more influential—particularly in authoritarian regimes, where the informational value of news is often constrained. This article advances the concept of social rationality: the incentive to consume news to sustain conversations, reinforce social bonds, and participate in communities of shared meaning. Drawing on original survey data from Belarus and Russia—two highly authoritarian states with divergent approaches to media control—the analysis shows that social motivations are powerful predictors of both the intensity and breadth of media consumption, while decision-rational considerations also help to explain breadth. Divergent interactions between social motivations and intrinsic prosocial orientations in the two cases further complicate theories of “informational autocracy.” These findings challenge classical models and underscore the need to place social incentives at the center of explanations of media use.