News Avoidance and the Crisis of Political Engagement

We know that by many indicators, people are less interested in news now than they’ve ever been before. They’re engaging with news less than they ever have before, and they’re avoiding news more than they ever have before. So the question is essentially why, in a world of abundant information where basically everyone can access news at any time, why is it and what does it mean that so many people are actively avoiding it?

The big problem for society is that there is a link that’s been demonstrated across many different kinds of studies between news consumption and political engagement. People who are more marginalized tend to avoid news more. Subsequently, politicians and news organizations are less likely to try to engage them or meet their needs because these are not people who buy news. These are not people who see advertising in news. And these are not people who vote. They may be less informed about the political world and less prepared to advocate for themselves in the political arena.

The other thing that’s happened in the political world is that people are more polarized, and we’ve seen a growth in what we call affective polarization. This is emotional polarization, where people don’t just believe that the other side is wrong, they actually hate them and believe that they’re bad people often. We know that who people are, so their identities, shape the way that they engage with news. We know that their ideologies, or the way they think about politics, also shapes the way that they engage with news. And we know that the infrastructures that they’re engaging with. So the pathways they’re using to access information, you can think of these three “Is”: the ideologies, the infrastructures and the identities as a kind of set of filters through which people are engaging with media.

There are a number of different kinds of news avoidance, but what we’re most interested in is consistent news avoidance. This is when people avoid news over a long period of time and avoid all news. And consistent news avoiders can be found in any segment of the population. But this behavior is more common among, as I said before, less privileged groups. People who are more marginalized tend to avoid news more so we know that women are more likely to consistently avoid news.

We know that young people are more likely to consistently avoid news. People of lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to consistently avoid news, and so are people who are not interested in politics. There are a number of reasons that people dislike news. One of the most common is that they find it too negative. They feel surrounded by news. It’s overwhelming and it’s overwhelmingly negative. News does tilt negative, there’s no question about that. There are many studies that find this. And, you know, there are a number of reasons for that.

There’s a negativity bias that as humans, we all have. And over time that’s been institutionalized. We have a general sense that it’s more important for people to know about negative things. It helps them avoid risk and so forth. We now have access to media all the time, and news organizations have to produce news all the time. So it’s very easy for people to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of it all. Another one is that they don’t trust it. They don’t feel they know which news outlets to trust, and they generally don’t trust news overall.

Another is that they find it difficult to understand. I didn’t know who any of the people were that were being reported on. I didn’t understand the terminology that was being used. The big sort of massive kind of trump card here is that they feel that it doesn’t affect them directly. They feel that news may affect other people, but mostly it seems like it’s about politicians fighting far away about things that have nothing to do with them. So that’s one narrative.

The second big reason people say they avoid news is because of themselves. This is the “it’s not news, it’s me” narrative. So some people say that they avoid news because they’re too anxious and they simply don’t have time for news, or their life circumstances make it difficult for them to engage with news.

This is one of the big questions for news organizations, right? Do they want to engage the people who are disengaged? It’s hard. It’s certainly an option for news organizations to decide that they are only interested in continuing to engage consumers who are already engaged. This is essentially the New York Times model that have plenty of fluff that’s aimed at economic elites.

Perhaps news should present at least some of its material, particularly that which really does affect people in such a way that people of a lower socioeconomic status, people who aren’t consistently consuming news, can also understand it. If you meet people where they are, that just automatically means dumbing down. But explaining why somebody should care about a particular political scandal is that dumbing it down? Explaining why something like Brexit will actually affect people, is that dumbing it down?

We do see news organizations experimenting with some of these things. El País now has, for example, this El País Express option where you can read six short stories just. And, you know, there are news organizations that are increasingly trying to come up with ways to make news happier, which is a challenge. It’s not clear why people would necessarily turn to news for happiness, when they can turn to videos of puppies. In a lot of cases, consistent news avoiders are never going to go directly to news outlets. They’re going to access news on the internet, on social media, and possibly offline in different ways.

The more that news organizations can kind of look around and try and ask themselves why? You know, why is it that Joe Rogan is so popular? Can we learn something from these formats, in these ways of speaking to people? Part of the problem is that a lot of news organizations do have a particular ideological bend. Is this an established professional news organization where they employ people who are gathering facts, verify facts, that report when they make mistakes? I believe news should be for everyone. Then they need to think about ways that they can meet people where they are.