The head and heart of news avoidance: How attitudes about the news media relate to levels of news consumption

Abstract

In today’s media environment, there are increased opportunities to consume news in various formats and styles. Why then, do some people say they consume little to no news? The focus of this study is to identify the factors related to extremely low levels of news consumption. Survey data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults is used to test different explanations for news avoidance. Results point to several factors that explain lower overall levels of news consumption. Extremely low news consumption is related to a disinterest in politics, perceptions of news lacking relevance, low news self-efficacy and a lack of knowledge about the news system. Perhaps surprisingly, the emotional toll of news (e.g. news fatigue, upset feelings) did not explain variation in overall levels of news consumption. Based on these findings, efforts to convert news avoiders into more regular consumers of news is discussed.

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

“…This study, as well as a few other contributions (e.g., Meijer and Groot Kormelink 2021) frame avoidance as part of broader practices of navigating news. Edgerly (2021) finds that emotional fatigue does not explain extremely low news use, but is a characteristic across different groups in an abundant digital news landscape, suggesting that some users find emotional relief in short breaks while maintaining engagement with news.…”

News Avoidance during the Covid-19 Crisis: Understanding Information Overload

“…If that would be the case-i.e., news avoidance positively affecting well-being-the question is whether these people would return to the news when their well-being is back on a higher level, and thus whether this results in a vicious circle of more/less news avoidance and better/worse mental well-being. Survey research seems to indicate that negative feelings do not relate to levels of news consumption in the American context (Edgerly 2021), but limited evidence is available for this relationship. Accordingly, we investigate the causality and direction of the relationship between these two variables using repeated measurements from a panel survey: RQ4: What is the relationship between news avoidance and well-being during the pandemic?…”

Change in News Access, Change in Expectations? How Young Social Media Users in Switzerland Evaluate the Functions and Quality of News

“…Perceptions of quality within the profession of journalism and from a user perspective are not necessarily congruent. Thus, research on media quality distinguishes between the quality of journalism and users’ experience of quality (Costera Meijer and Bijleveld 2016; Bachmann et al 2021). Whereas traditional news organizations see news as what “should be known” and apply quality criteria such as diversity or relevance (Bachmann et al 2021), young audiences see news more pragmatically as something that is useful, interesting, and fun to know (Galan et al 2019).…”

“…At the same time, news on social media is often consumed by chance, algorithmically distributed based on personal interests, or only read fragmentarily (Boczkowski et al 2018; Swart 2021a). The increased reliance on social media for news usage has also been identified as a determinant of sinking news consumption (Schneider and Eisenegger 2018) or even news avoidance (Edgerly, Vraga, et al 2018b; Skovsgaard and Andersen 2020; Edgerly 2021) among younger age groups.…”