‘We are a neeeew generation’: Early adolescents’ views on news and news literacy

Abstract

To function as well-informed citizens in democracy, early adolescents (12–16 years old) should become news literate news consumers. In this time of fragmented media use and evolving conceptions of (the importance and relevance of) news, this is not easy. Therefore, this focus group study investigated news consumption and news literacy through the eyes of early adolescents. Results showed that early adolescents have broad definitions of news. Their news consumption is predominantly passive, possibly due to a lack of intrinsic motivation. They see news as important, but often as boring, repetitive and negative, and disconnected from youth. Participants had knowledge of news content and effects, and stressed the importance of reliable news. However, for the majority, this did not translate into critical evaluation of news. For early adolescents, the key factor in becoming more news literate news consumers is motivation. Moving forward, motivation should be better incorporated in both research and practice.

Does Journalism Still Matter? The Role of Journalistic and non-Journalistic Sources in Young Peoples’ News Related Practices

“…Teenage participants also discussed the verification of online content found through Google, with one participant saying that they ‘check the byline and see who has written an article’ (Lena-16). Others reported that they used “content-specific strategies” (Tamboer et al 2020: 12) which includes checking sources or links as well as the writing style of a news item. In general, the young people from the focus groups placed importance on a range of features when determining which content is reliable, most of which relates to the strategies identified by Swart and Broersma (2021: 9).…”

“…Studies among teenagers and young adults point to a change in the understanding of journalism as a professional news source. Qualitative work suggests that teenagers have broad definitions referring to important and relevant topics (Tamboer et al 2020) whereas young adults’ idea of news is characterised by traditional genre conventions (Kümpel 2020). Besides, discrepancies between news definitions and the use practices of young people persist (Craft et al 2016).…”

“…New platforms enhance this diverging understanding of news; as Sveningsson (2015: 9) found, young people do not see the news they receive through social media as “real news”. Contradictory findings in regard to news definitions and practices among teenagers and young adults tend to emerge as well as a great “variety in responses” (Tamboer et al 2020: 13) when evaluating news which suggests that there is a need for further research into these two age groups.…”

“…Growing up in today's media environment, younger generations have developed news-related practices that lie in stark contrast to those of older generations. Young people tend to consume less news (Hölig and Hasebrink 2020) and in more passive ways (Antunovic et al 2018; Tamboer et al 2020), mostly through online media and social networking platforms (Craft et al 2016; Gottfried and Shearer 2017). Through these platforms, users engage with a juxtaposition of entertaining, personal, and informative content from both professional journalists and non-professional content producers (Domingo and Le Cam 2014).…”

Discourses of fact-checking in Swedish news media

“…Fallis, 2015; Søe, 2017, 2021), as well as on, for example, automatic recognition of false information. Other closely related topics of interest are those of news (Ireland, 2018; Tamboer et al , 2020), media (Jones-Jang et al , 2021; Stamps, 2020) and information (Gibson and Jacobson, 2018; Jacobson and Mackey, 2013) literacy. Although fact-checking, false information and literacy research are related topics, this study focuses explicitly on fact-checking as a human practice rather than on what constitutes a fact, or mis- and disinformation.…”