News Avoidance

Valmora Gogo, University College Bedër, Albania
valmoragogo@gmail.com

News avoidance refers to the intentional or unintentional phenomenon, where intentional news avoidance is based on a specific distaste for news that drives an individual to deliberately steer clear of news exposure; and unintentional news avoidance is not based on a specific distaste for news, but rather stronger preferences for other types of media content.

Skovsgaard and Andersen stated that in addition to the distinction between the intentional or unintentional nature, three types of news avoidance can be identified in terms of their scope: consistent, occasional, and selective.

Palmer, Toff, and Nielsen argue that categorising news avoiders based on motivations risks misunderstanding the kind of news avoidance that matters most from a normative standpoint: that which is linked with low news consumption. Survey results show that most people who selectively avoid news consume almost as much news as those who do not, while interviews show that distinguishing types of news avoiders based solely on stated motivations poorly captures how media habits develop through a mix of deliberate choices and socially constructed preferences.

The term ‘news avoidance’ has thus spurred much debate, but also potential confusion, as it seems to build on foundations of ‘news’ as a distinct entity as something to know, and with some measure of deliberate intent, from which to shy away.

Keywords: constructive journalism, news avoidance, media trust

References:
Skovsgaard, M., & Andersen, K. (2022). News avoidance. In G. A. Borchard (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of journalism (Vol. 1, 1099-1103). SAGE. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544391199.n274
Andersen, K., Toff, B., & Ytre-Arne, B. (2024). Introduction: what we (don’t) know about news avoidance. Journalism Studies, 25(12), 1367–1384. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2024.2393131
Palmer, R., Toff, B., & Nielsen, R. K. (2023). Examining assumptions around how news avoidance gets defined: The importance of overall news consumption, intention, and structural inequalities. Journalism Studies, 24 (6): 697–714. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2183058