Small Word Change, Large Effect on News Users? How the Use of Gender-Inclusive Language in News Articles Influences News Selection and News Engagement

Gender-inclusive language (GIL) has been increasingly used in recent years (e.g., in journalistic news), but the effects are largely unexplored.We conducted two preregistered studies with samples representative of the German adult population to explore how GIL (i.e., gender star and pair forms in German) influences the selection of and engagement with news articles compared to the use of the masculine-only form.Study 1 (N = 1,040) showed that people with positive attitudes toward GIL are more likely to select news headlines with GIL, while those with negative attitudes tend to avoid them.Study 2 (N = 812) revealed that women did not experience more ostracism when reading articles that use the masculine-only form, but men felt more ostracism when reading the gender star.Experienced ostracism was associated with a lower intention to use the news source again.Furthermore, experienced inclusion, but not experienced ostracism, was significantly related to news engagement intentions.The findings offer practical insights for media professionals and extend research on selective exposure and ostracism by considering language as a key factor in news selection and engagement.Although gender-inclusive language (GIL) has been increasingly used in recent years (e.g., in journalistic news; Jones et al., 2023), the effects on recipients are largely unexplored.GIL is used as a replacement for the masculine-only form, that is, instead of using grammatically masculine forms (e.g., he) for all persons regardless of their gender identity.A prominent example of GIL is using both feminine and masculine forms (e.g., he or she).GIL involves a minimal change in content -for example, within German news articles, less than one percent of the words are changed when switching to GIL (Mller-