Mobile News Consumption and Its Relation to Young Adults’ Knowledge About and Participation in Referendums

Abstract

The news media are among the most important sources of information about political events, such as referendums. For young adults, the smartphone has become the main device for accessing news. However, we know little about the factors influencing mobile news consumption and how this consumption is related to political knowledge and political participation. This study investigates the antecedents of young individuals’ smartphone news consumption and how it is correlated with their knowledge about and participation in two referendums in Switzerland. We record the mobile internet usage of 309 young adults and link their digital trace data to survey data. We show that trust in news media and the use of broadcast media are positively correlated with the duration of mobile news consumption. The use of social media leads to more news source diversity. However, we find that the duration of mobile news consumption and news source diversity are not correlated with political knowledge about or participation in the referendum. As interest in politics is also positively correlated with the diversity of news sources used by individual participants, our study supports the idea that attentive audiences use a broader range of news sources to inform themselves about referendums.

Unlocking young people’s engagement with online news: affective or cognitive?

“…The terms 'use' and 'consumption' are likely to be employed interchangeably. Most studies define consumption as the level of exposure to news (Yang & Patwardhan, 2004), while others describe it as news-use habits (Van Dijk, 2006) (Matthews, 2022;Su et al, 2022;Vogler et al, 2023). The literature showed that individuals' engagement with social media news differs from other types of news consumption because it can take various forms, with some being more active than others (Dvir-Gvirsman, 2022; Gajardo & Costera Meijer, 2022).…”

Referendum Campaigns in the Digital Age: Towards (More) Comparative Analyses in Hybrid Media Systems

“…In a tracking study combined with a survey, Vogler et al (2023) analyzed news consumption patterns of young adults in Switzerland in the run-up to a referendum, showing that the use of media content from traditional news media (on smartphones) and the use of social media have distinct effects on the duration and diversity of news consumption.…”