The Polarized News Audience? A Longitudinal Study of News-Seekers and News-Avoiders in Europe

Elvestad, Eiri; Blekesaune, Arild; Aalberg, Toril

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2469713

Cited by 13 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…This shift towards digital news outlets and SNSs is especially evident among young people in large parts of the Western world (Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research 2015; Kohut et al 2012;Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2016). For this reason, this latter group's news consumption habits have been regarded as a challenge for news industries, journalism practice and democracy in total (Elvestad, Blekesaune, and Aalberg 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

News in Social Media

2018

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Social network sites are becoming essential to how people experience news. The social media feed is made up of a mixture of private and public postings, and news is intertwined with all sorts of activities. What people are exposed to partly depends on the behaviour of their fellow networkers. Drawing on theories of opinion leaders and the concept of incidental news consumption, this article examines news-gathering on social media using a combination of representative survey data and qualitative interviews with young people aged 16-19. Regression analysis of the survey data reveals the primary factor explaining use of news on social media is the habit of using online news services. Interest in news and age also contribute to this phenomenon. The qualitative study reveals that interviewees' news consumption through social networks is frequent. While incidental, they nonetheless seem to count on being informed through this medium. There is a widespread presence of opinion leaders in the respondents' social media feeds, bringing attention to news they otherwise would have missed, and just as important, delivering interpretation and context. The study also indicates that these opinion leaders are perceived as central or even crucial to the news-gathering process.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

News in Social Media

2018

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“…Social media are an important news source for younger adults (Medietilsynet, 2018), but older adults also supply their daily news intake with stories shared on social media (Sakariassen et al, 2017). Some see this as a trend that moves away from traditional news outlets, with many using media for entertainment rather than information (Elvestad et al, 2014;Ksiazek et al, 2010;Moe & Kleiven, 2016). News interest is to a large degree shaped by individual factors, among others social media activity, emotional arousal, a sharing attitude and motives for use (Kümpel et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality Filters for Online News Interest and Engagement

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Krumsvik

2019

Nordicom Review

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Our many online routines leave behind trails of data about our identities, habits, preferences and connections. These data serve as filters when we seek out information, yielding relevant results and content of interest. However, commercial and political parties can use the same data to personalize persuasive messages, and some even use psychological profiles to target individuals. With this revelation come concerns that news can be framed to appeal to individual personalities. This study investigates the relationship between personality and news engagement among predominantly young Norwegian adults across different news angles. It addresses the Big Five personality traits as well as rational and experiential information-processing styles. The results provide support for our hypothesis on the relation between neuroticism and lowered news engagement, although the effect sizes are small. When exploring isolated news stories, we find greater differentiation among the participants, suggesting that individuals’ news interest really does start at the headline.

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“…The more sources, the richer the repertoire and the better informed the particular individual (Hasebrink and Popp 2006). Current international research highlights the inherent difference between 'news seeker' and 'news avoider' (Elvestad et al 2014). While news seekers are understood as the part of the population that is actively searching for information, the avoiders are those who are not engaging with news media (Schneider and Eisenegger 2019; Strömbäck 2017) either intentionally, for example, because of news overload or low trust in news, or unintentionally, for example, individuals who prefer non-news media content (Fletcher and Nielsen 2017; Skovsgaard and Andersen 2020).…”

Section: News Seeking In High Choice Media Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite this limitation, researchers use the concept as a background for structuring data gained via such general population surveys (e.g. Elvestad et al 2014;Prandner 2019;Wolfsfeld et al 2016). While not including media titles, they often include information on the usage of media channels, for example, broadcasting, newspapers and online or social media.…”

Section: News Seeking In High Choice Media Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

News repertoires and information behavior in Austria—What is the role of social inequality?

Prandner

Glatz

2020

Österreich Z Soziol

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The changes in the global mediascape have had a tremendous impact on societal news flows. Using data from the Social Survey Austria 2018 and a quantitative application of the media repertoire approach, the article illustrates how information behavior and news seeking relate to social status, political orientation and sociodemographics. The results confirm that the developments in Austria—often referred to as a representative of a traditional media landscape—are mostly in line with international trends, as new media have been added to the media repertoires of approximately two-thirds of the sample. Effects tied to social inequality generally match previous assumptions: Higher educational achievements and income lead to more diversified news repertoires. Additionally, the overall structure of the data indicates that the online-only users are still a small minority, consisting of younger individuals who are less likely to work and more likely to vote for left-wing parties.

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The Polarized News Audience? A Longitudinal Study of News-Seekers and News-Avoiders in Europe

Cited by 13 publications

References 12 publications

News in Social Media

News in Social Media

Personality Filters for Online News Interest and Engagement

News repertoires and information behavior in Austria—What is the role of social inequality?

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