A phenomenology of news: Understanding news in digital culture

Abstract

Digital media transform news. First, we see this in changing use patterns. Young people today show a decline in interest in traditional news formats and practices, such as watching the evening news on TV or reading a daily newspaper. But digital media also transform production and distribution of news, leading to new ways to conceptualise and understand news. In the light of these profound transformations in audience behaviour many have started to question the concept of news in news research. In the light of such altered production and distribution contexts which are likely to fundamentally impact on audiences’ definitions and perceptions, this article sets out to explore alternative ways to understand and conceptualise news, beyond traditional news research. What is news today, and how can we study it from the perspective of news audiences, without resorting to preconceived notions? We propose a theoretical approach based in classic phenomenology which, we argue, will open up for further reconsideration of the concept as well as providing a potentially fruitful basis for research on digital news consumption. Phenomenology takes human existence as its vantage point and explores how human subjects exist and create meaning in their everyday lives in relation to basic categories such as time, space and (sociocultural) relevance. We argue phenomenology to be particularly relevant for exploring new meanings of news as the basic dimensions of phenomenology not only coincide with the basic dimensions of news consumption, but also of those of news values; time, space, and (sociocultural) relevance.

Doomscrolling, Monitoring and Avoiding: News Use in COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown

“…The digitalization of news allow for seemingly endless online information streams that potentially transform user experiences (Bengtsson and Johansson 2020;Meijer and Groot Kormelink 2021). Dynamics created between a surplus of information offerings and a scarcity of audience attention has intrigued scholars since long before the onslaught of digital media, but media scholars have argued that digitalization intensifies conditions in the "marketplace of attention" (Webster 2018).…”

What shapes the cultivation effects from infotaining content? Toward a theoretical foundation for journalism studies

“…These to some extent novel characteristics imply that institutionalized news outlets compete with sources from non-mainstream news – such as individuals on social media or alternative news portals – for the impact on the public agenda (Fletcher and Park, 2017). This trend is noticeable in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2018) as well as in other countries (Bengtsson and Johansson, 2020) where social media sites have started to outpace the print newspaper as a news source. On the communicator side, these emerging actors are shaped by underlying algorithms which apply predefined and programmable criteria to influence the process of channeling and redistributing information following strategic interests (Wallace, 2018); on the recipient side, the use of the news and the attitudes they form about it radically shifts (Thorson, 2008).…”

“Be Less of a Slave to the News”: A Texto-Material Perspective on News Avoidance among Young Adults

“…While digital technologies promote information seeking by offering novel ways to consume news, a wide-choice media environment reinforces selective exposure (Flaxman, Goel, and Rao 2016), so that users with little interest in politics may avoid news altogether (Ksiazek, Malthouse, and Webster 2010;Prior 2005;Strömbäck, Djerf-Pierre, and Shehata 2013). The millennial generation in particular exhibits a shift from traditional to online journalism (Edgerly 2017;Kligler-Vilenchik and Thorson 2016), along with a significant reduction in the volume and quality of consumed news (Antunovic, Parsons, and Cooke 2018;Bengtsson and Johansson 2020;Lee and Chyi 2014;Poindexter 2012).…”

“…Far from being solely a form of information acquisition, consuming the news occurs as part of the routinized consumption of journalistic objects (Bengtsson and Johansson 2020;Boczkowski, Mitchelstein, and Suenzo 2020). Avoiding the news therefore signifies both bypassing journalistic contents as well as circumventing news-related platforms and technologies, though the two literatures are rarely considered side-by-side.…”