Political news diets and political attitudes in the 2019 EU elections in Italy

This study investigates Italian citizens’ news diets during the 2019 European election and examines the relationship between these diets and citizens’ attitudes to three central political issues: trust in the EU, prejudice towards migrants and populist attitudes. Combining a self-report survey with passive data recording real news consumption, the study identified three main user profiles. It verified that News Avoiders (meagre news diets) associate with distrust in the EU, anti-immigrant positions and populist attitudes; News Seekers (cross-media and in-depth information) align with open-minded attitudes towards Europe and immigration; the TV-News Centric (almost single-channel news) identify with moderate political attitudes.