New Rituals for Public Connection: Audiences’ Everyday Experiences of Digital Journalism, Civic Engagement, and Social Life

Abstract

This chapter explores how digitalization facilitates new patterns of using news to connect to larger social, cultural, civic and political frameworks. Employing in-depth interviews and Q-methodology with Dutch news users of mixed age, gender and educational level in three regions, it finds that news still provides a major frame of reference to public issues in users' everyday communications. Rather than a complete 'de-ritualization' of news practices, wherein no common trajectories for connecting to public life can be discerned anymore, we argue digitalization facilitates a 're-ritualization' of public connection in which traditional and new media logics interact. While the news still facilitates community, selfpresentation and security, the forms of public engagement people employ to satisfy these needs are increasingly centered around individuals, inextricably embedded in other activities, and more diverse in terms of content. Finally, we find that while news still remains central to people's public connection, journalism not necessarily is.

Experiencing Algorithms: How Young People Understand, Feel About, and Engage With Algorithmic News Selection on Social Media

“…However, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp formed the most important gateways to news and journalism. News was an integral part of their social media use, although consistent with previous research (Kümpel, 2019; Swart et al, 2018a), it was usually not followed on purpose. Interviewees mostly discovered news via their social connections.…”

Rural population and global citizenship: information, media and opinions on world problems

“…In recent years, the most important change in terms of sources of information has been the expansion of social media. Social media technologies have opened up many new ways of engaging with news beyond the scope of what has traditionally been regarded as journalism, ranging from liking Instagram photos to forming discussion groups on WhatsApp (Swart et al 2018). For some researchers, the main contribution of social media is that they enable audiences to participate in many different ways (Park et al 2011).…”

“…Some conclude that face-to-face communication remains important in rural areas and that citizens also obtain information from local newspapers and television (Miller et al 2012;Warburton et al 2014;Rumata and Sakinah 2020). Some talk about hybrid information and complementary communication (Perrin 2015;Núñez Ladevéze et al 2019;Villafañe et al 2020), while others conclude that the new media are completely changing communication and information supply (Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink 2014) in rural areas (Kavanaugh et al 2014;Carlsson and Nilsson 2016;Swart et al 2018).…”

“…For many small and rural communities in different parts of the world, information has shifted away from traditional sources such as local newspapers, radio and TV coverage of local issues to new online sources (Kavanaugh et al 2014). Swart et al (2018) observed declining subscription and viewing rates for traditional media; they found that attention to the public information spread by legacy news media institutions can no longer be assumed, and therefore that newspapers and broadcasters may become less valuable as shared frames of reference within society.…”

Beyond the Informed Citizen?

“…Several studies have revisited the concept of mediated public connection within the context of a digitalised news media landscape, and some have focused on news engagement more specifi cally. For instance, Swart, Peters and Broersma (2017a, 2017b, 2017c have examined how digitalisation aff ects the way that news users connect to society, navigate cross-media news use and create new rituals for public connection. Th ey argue, much in accordance with Couldry et al (2018), that people's need for public connection has not declined in the digitalised media landscape, that news is still central in this regard, and that "through social media news sharing, the continuous availability of news through smartphones and interpersonal conversations about current aff airs in a wide range of places, participants may be more connected than ever before" (Swart et al, 2017b).…”