## 6 Discussion  
Although the categorization of specialists and generalists are theorized in the original issue publics literature, the concept has not been firmly grounded in empirical research. The dearth of evidence is partly because most research in the area has focused on whether specialists or generalists prevail in the society, without viewing the question as a matter of degree. Another reason is that the previous measure such as personal issue importance did not fully capture the theoretical concept of issue publics. As argued previously, with personal issue importance, we cannot distinguish a specialist from \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Variables**} & **Model 1** & **Model 2** \\ \hline \multirow{6}{*}{Control variables} & Age & \(-0.051\) * & \(-0.028\) \\ \cline{2-4}  & Gender (Male = 1) & \(0.043\)* & \(0.044\)* \\ \cline{2-4}  & Race (White = 1) & \(0.011\) & \(0.002\) \\ \cline{2-4}  & Education & \(0.031\) & \(0.029\) \\ \cline{2-4}  & Ideology & \(-0.009\) & \(-0.003\) \\ \cline{2-4}  & General political interest & \(-0.138\)** & \(-0.106\)** \\ \hline \multirow{6}{*}{Media variables} & Online & - & \(0.074\)** \\ \cline{2-4}  & Television & - & \(-0.051\)* \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-4}  & Newspaper & - & \(-0.042\)* \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-4}  & Radio & - & \(-0.060\)** \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-4}  & Total adjusted \(R^{2}\) & \(0.024\) & \(0.037\) \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-4}  & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} _Notes: Entries are standardized beta coefficients.*\(p<0.1\); *\(p<0.05\); **\(p<0.01\); ***\(p<0.001\)._  
\end{table} 
Table 1: Predicting standard deviation of personal issue importance (SDI) (\(N=2323\)). an attentive generalist. Although the notion of being indifferent to other general issues constitutes the essential feature of issue publics and specialists, it has been largely overlooked, especially in the course of operationalization. The current paper responded to these two limitations by assessing the possibilities of the alternative method that captures the individual's tendency to be a specialist. Our analyses suggested the standard deviation of personal issue importance serves as a valid measure that quantified the concept of specialists. Not only did the indicator touch on the core aspect of specialists theoretically, but it also established convergent and discriminant validity. Further, using this proposed measure, the study have found that specialist-type citizens are significantly associated with Internet use. The distinctive role of each medium depends on the technological efficiency through which audiences can gather what they want from the media [26]. By virtue of diverse media content and greater user controllability, individuals can arrive at information in the particular domain in which they want to specialize [33]. The positive relationship between specialists and Internet use is consistent with the trend of personalized politics. According to [PERSON] [34], we have recently witnessed more diverse mobilizations in which citizens are mobilized based on their personal lifestyle values, and this large-scale collective action is often organized through digital media. Selective information gathering leads members of latent issue publics to be activated in the areas that are personally relevant to them [32]. Although our findings highlight affordances of new media for selective exposure to issue-specific information, it should be noted that emerging media do not entirely preclude incidental exposure to general information entirely. Previous studies have suggested that Internet users also have ample opportunities for exposure to a wide range of information as a byproduct of their other information-seeking behaviors [35, 36, 37]. For example, users often stumble across information that they do not necessarily perceive to be important to them but that is related to what is happening in the world [38].