Replication Data for: "Partisan Enclaves and Information Bazaars: Mapping Selective Exposure to Online News"

Many now attribute increased political polarization to an increasingly segregated market for online news. Indeed, experimental studies in political science and psychology seem to confirm that partisans are more interested in reading attitude-reinforcing information. Yet, observational studies of web browsing behavior have consistently downplayed the differences between the online news diets of Democrats and Republicans. In this paper, we present two new pieces of evidence showing how partisans selectively approach congenial news online. First, using a descriptive analysis of observational web browsing data from the 2016 U.S. general election (Aug.-Nov. 2016), we show that Democrats and Republicans split their news consumption between left- and right-leaning sources, respectively, and moderate/mainstream sources. The lion's share of partisan convergence that we observe occurs at portal sites --- such as Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL --- that primarily deliver non-news and non-political content. Second, using high profile scandals during the 2016 election (Access Hollywood and the Comey Letter), we show that partisans consume more news when an event benefits their preferred candidate, but consume no less when their preferred candidate was the subject of the scandal.