Perfiles de audiencias de los medios de comunicación partidistas de izquierda y derecha en España

In countries with partisan media systems, previous literature on partisan selective exposure has confirmed the tendency to become informed with partisan media affine with one's own political predispositions. However, this theory is qualified and expanded through the analysis of a representative sample of the Spanish population (N”‰=”‰27,433) from the Study on audiences of social communication media of the Center for Sociological Research of Spain (CIS). According to Pearson's chi-square independence tests and the post hoc analysis of corrected typified residuals, political ideology is not the only factor associated with selective exposure and selective avoidance, but sociocultural, socioeconomic, and, in a smaller proportion, sociodemographic characteristics are also significantly associated, even in the three channels of diffusion: television, press, and radio. Furthermore, for the first time, the various social profiles that segment the audiences of partisan media are identified, specifically in the Spanish context: political ideologies of the extreme left and left versus the extreme right, right, and center; practicing and non-practicing Catholics versus agnostics and atheists; directors and managers, military personnel and police versus professionals, scientists, and intellectuals; salaried employees versus entrepreneurs or professionals with salaried employees; monthly household net incomes above 5,000 euros versus below; and upper and middle class versus working class, laboring class, or proletariat. The contributions of the study are provided, the importance of the findings is discussed in the context of polarization, and the opening of a line of research is proposed.