«I Feel Informed?»: Encountering News on Social Media, News-Finds-Me Perception and Perceived Political Knowledge

Abstract

We distinguish subjective political knowledge (a metacognitive self-assessment of feeling informed) from objective political knowledge (quiz-based factual accuracy). Drawing upon an online panel survey (W1 = 2,058, W2 = 1,264) of South Korean Internet users in 2022 and 2023, we find that incidental news exposure on social media has a positive link to the news-finds-me perception and subjective political knowledge, while it does not relate to objective political knowledge. The news-finds-me perception bridges the association between incidental news exposure and subjective political knowledge. That is, the increase of incidental news exposure on social media is associated with a stronger belief that news will find me and, in turn, with a feeling of being informed. The findings suggest that incidental news exposure creates an illusion of knowing.