Repositioning news and public connection in everyday life: a user-oriented perspective on inclusiveness, engagement, relevance, and constructiveness

Abstract

News has traditionally served as a common ground, enabling people to connect to others and engage with the public issues they encounter in everyday life. This article revisits these theoretical debates about mediated public connection within the context of a digitalized news media landscape. While academic discussions surrounding these shifts are often explored in terms of normative ideals ascribed to political systems or civic cultures, we propose to reposition the debate by departing from the practices and preferences of the news user instead. Therefore, we deconstruct and translate the concept of public connection into four dimensions that emphasize people’s lived experiences: inclusiveness, engagement, relevance, and constructiveness. Situating these in an everyday life framework, this article advances a user-based perspective that considers the role of news for people in digital societies. Accordingly, it offers a conceptual framework that aims to encapsulate how news becomes meaningful, rather than why it should be.

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

“…Such a public space can be political (citizens of a nation state) or civic (volunteers for a charity), but also of a social (a sports team) or cultural nature (speakers of a certain language). We thus define public connection here as the shared frames of reference that enable individuals to engage and participate in cultural, social, civic and political networks in everyday life (see also Swart, Peters, & Broersma 2016a). This is not to say that the news is uniquely suited to this task.…”

“…Numerous other avenues -from schools and universities to the workplace and from religious institutions to non-governmental organizations -can also facilitate forms of public connection. 1 This is reflected in the fact that public connection is inherent to many other scholarly concepts that are not necessarily invoked in direct relation to news or journalism, from cultural citizenship, social cohesion and community to civic participation, social capital and models of democracy (see Bakardjieva 2003, Barnhurst 2003, Baym 2010, Bennett Bennett, Wells and Freelon 2011, Boulianne 2009, Shah, Kwak and Holbert 2001. However, unlike many other alternative means for public connection, news is not bound to any specific period in life, nor is it dependent on any place or form.…”

Shedding light on the dark social: The connective role of news and journalism in social media communities

“…Conversely, many teachers considered the news boring, yet they would frequently share public issues on social media. Thus, as other studies have found (Andersen and Kristensen, 2006;Swart et al, 2016), interest in public issues and news use did not necessarily relate. Moreover, group dynamics evidently shaped the perceived appropriateness of engaging with news in those contexts.…”

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).…”