Tuning out the World of News and Current Affairs--An Empirical Study of Europe's Disconnected Citizens

Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

“…Along similar lines, Blekesaune et al (2012) show that the group of news-avoiders increased across Europe between 2002 and 2008, and that the probability of tuning out is a function both of individual traits of the citizen and the supply of news in particular media systems. More specifically, they find that it is mainly citizens with low levels of social capital that avoid the news.…”

“…The core of the concern is that increasing media choice will lead to increasing inequalities in the extent to which people make use of the news media, and that this will result in increasing inequalities in knowledge about politics and current affairs among different groups in society Blekesaune et al, 2012;Eveland & Scheufele, 2000;Gaziano, 2010;Hwang & Jeong, 2009;Ksiazek et al, 2010;Strömbäck et al, 2013;Wei & Hindman, 2011). Thus, the concern is rooted in how changes in the supply of news and other political information influence the demand and, subsequently, learning about politics and current affairs.…”

Are News Audiences Increasingly Fragmented? A Cross-National Comparative Analysis of Cross-Platform News Audience Fragmentation and Duplication

“…With this in mind, we can formulate a series of hypotheses and research questions. Though the underlying move from a low‐choice media environment to a high‐choice media environment is a structural transformation that has played out in different ways from country to country, even within the relatively similar world of high income democracies (see e.g., Levy & Nielsen, ; Nielsen, ), and despite the fact that previous analysis has established that media system differences shape media use in significant ways (Blekesaune, Elvestad, & Aalberg, ; Perusko, Vozab, & Čuvalo, ; Shehata & Strömbäck, ), analysis of audience fragmentation and audience duplication has primarily been pursued in single‐country case studies, predominantly of the United States. Moreover, although early pioneers in comparative media research argued that one of the most important dimensions along which different media systems should be compared are differences in “audience orientation to political communication” (Blumler & Gurevitch, , p. 5), comparative media research has primarily been focused on differences in media markets, media policy, journalistic professionalism, and news content; not audience behavior (see e.g., Brüggemann et al, ; Hallin & Mancini, ).…”

Media Choice Proliferation and Shifting Orientations Towards News in the United States and Norway, 1995–2012

“…Instead, we offer a research question: Finally, how might individual characteristics relate to changing patterns of news orientation? Recent research shows that younger individuals and women are less oriented to news than older people and men (Blekesaune, Elvestad, and Aalberg 2012;Wonneberger, Schoenbach, and Meurs 2013). In addition, women identify with their communities and prefer local news to international news -a divergence from the preferences of men (Morley 1992).…”

“…Clearly, audience members today can tailor their media exposure to include more, less or different kinds of news. Thus far, scholars studying the relationship between the modern media environment and news audiences in Europe (Blekesaune, Elvestad, & Aalberg 2012) and the US (Prior 2007) have primarily focused on the development of exposure to news in general or to national news. This research has shown an increase in news avoiders and a greater gap in political knowledge between news avoiders and news junkies.…”