Breaking the News Barrier: Towards Understanding News Consumption Practices among BVI Individuals in India

Alternative media are more recently discussed as anti-democratic threats rather than hopeful alternatives to established mainstream positions. Despite the growing attention to anti-system alternative media in communication research, knowledge about the users of these media is still limited. In this article, a qualitative approach is used to explore alternative media users’ motives and practices as well as the role these media play in their overall news consumption. An empirical study involving 35 guided interviews with users of digital alternative media was conducted to categorize the users based on how they selected, sorted, and curated their personal blend of media and the role alternative media played in their repertoire. In the analysis, a typology of alternative media users was developed, resulting in five different user types of (1) the awakened infowarrior, (2) the critical curator, (3) the completist, (4) the reconnaissance user, and (5) the community seeker.

Recent global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts in Ukraine, and elections have significantly transformed news engagement, often leading to information overload and pushing many individuals to disengage from traditional news channels in favor of algorithm-driven social media platforms. Understanding these shifts is important because of their implications for informed citizenry and its association with democracy. Given the context, the current study explores age-related differences in news consumption patterns among Romanian audiences using focus group discussions. The sample includes two age cohorts: younger adults (aged 20–30), or digital natives, and older adults (aged 55 and above), whose media habits were shaped before the digital era. Thematic analysis and natural language processing techniques revealed clear age-group distinctions. Main findings suggest that younger participants tend to consume news via social media platforms, favoring algorithmically curated, emotionally engaging, short-form content. They strategically avoid distressing or repetitive news content. On the other hand, older adults still rely on traditional media like television, emphasizing source credibility, comprehensive coverage, and civic responsibility. When asked about what a healthy media diet is, there are further generational contrasts. Younger individuals viewed media consumption as an individual responsibility. By contrast, older adults emphasized the collective responsibility of educational and institutional systems to guide news consumption practices. These findings highlight the profound impact of digital platforms on generational news consumption behaviors, emphasizing the need for tailored media literacy initiatives, journalism practices, and policy frameworks to address age-group divides and contribute to the emergence of a healthier information ecosystem.

This study investigates how news consumption and sharing in the digital environment are related to news characteristics and support for right-wing authoritarianism, particularly during moments of crisis fueled by violent riots linked to authoritarian movements. Based on the argument that right-wing political values impact the consumption and spread of (dis)information and that this content imitates news formats, we focus on four perceived news attributes (appearance, confirmability, credibility, and newsworthiness) in shaping intentions to consume and share news. Using a survey (n = 1225) conducted in Brazil one week after violent riots on January 8, 2023, by Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil’s capital, results highlight the need to disaggregate how different characteristics of news operate to shape the behavior of different groups of people. Support for right-wing authoritarianism is correlated with valuing news credibility, newsworthiness and especially appearance, but checking for correctness is irrelevant for this group. Evidence underscores how authoritarianism disrupted consumption and secondary gatekeeping practices (sharing), distancing authoritarian supporters from legacy media users and professional news reporters.

The rise of political disinformation poses a substantial threat to democratic societies, with the potential to erode well-informed decision-making and hinder effective policy formulation. While existing research typically concentrates on experimental exposures to fact-checking, a significant research gap remains regarding how the integration of fact-checking into daily news consumption routines contributes to self-perceived levels of disinformation identification. This study addresses this gap by examining the role of various media consumption platforms in facilitating fact-checking practices and their potential to mitigate misperceptions. Findings from a two-wave panel survey in Spain (N = 570) suggest that news consumption alone does not directly improve self-perceived levels of disinformation identification. Instead, it indirectly facilitates recognition by encouraging the adoption of fact-checking practices. The study concludes that citizens’ self-perceived ability to identify disinformation is enhanced when news consumption across platforms is complemented by fact-checking practices.

Relying on the 2013 and 2016 rounds of individual questionnaires from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), we use multiple correspondence analysis to map Swiss media consumption practices while making use of the longitudinal character of panel data in an innovative way. Our results show that individual practices can be distinguished along two main dimensions: on the one hand, the reliance on new media, which is explained mainly by the age cohort, and on the other hand, the consumption of news, which is explained mainly by changes in political interest as well as by gender.

This paper examines the consumption of online news at the place of work and during work hours, which are relatively new temporal and spatial coordinates of news consumption for large segments of the population. This novel phenomenon is analysed to make descriptive and conceptual contributions to scholarship on news consumption, in particular, and technology and society, in general. Descriptively, the analysis reveals the emergence of discontinuous features of online consumption ‘at work’ within the context of continuity in some elements of news consumption in print and broadcast media. Conceptually, the analysis underscores the continued relevance of the notions of routines, space, time, and sociability to make sense of news consumption. But, it also shows the need to renew the understanding of how each of these conceptual tools matter when the media change from print and broadcast to digital and the practices of consumption coincide with those of work. The paper also suggests revisiting the boundaries between work and home and between the instrumental and leisure purposes of consuming communication technologies.

It has become increasingly clear that news avoidance is a multidimensional phenomenon consisting of both intentional news avoidance and low news use, yet knowledge about the longitudinal dynamics between these dimensions is still lacking. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies investigating the relationship between intentional news avoidance and specific news media repertoires. This article contributes to the literature on news avoidance by (a) including measures of both intentional news avoidance and news consumption as well as (b) using longitudinal panel data, to investigate the long-term dynamics between news media repertoires and intentional news avoidance. We rely on a four-wave panel survey conducted in Sweden (N = 7,283). The results show that intentional news avoidance and low news use are indeed distinct but intertwined dimensions. Intentional news avoidance is dynamic and influenced by different situational and media environmental factors and can be viewed as a function of (reconstructing) news consumption practices. At the same time, the results also show that people who report that they intentionally avoid the news are more likely to become low news users, implying that for some, temporary intentional avoidance might lead to habitual estrangement.

New Media, News Production and Consumption

Incidental consumption of news on social media has risen in recent years, particularly among young people. Previous studies have characterized what the main dimensions and effects of this phenomenon are. In this article, we complement that literature by looking at how this phenomenon unfolds. Inspired by practice theory, we aim to answer two questions: (1) what are the practices that subtend incidental news consumption on social media among young people? and (2) What are the social consequences of these practices? We draw upon 50 in-depth interviews with respondents aged 18–29 years from Argentina. Our findings show the existence of (1) strong connections between technology and content, “anywhere and anytime” coordinates, derivative information routines, and increasingly mediated sociability and (2) fragmentary reading patterns, loss of hierarchy of the news, and coexistence of editorial, algorithmic, and social filtering. We conclude by elaborating on the empirical and theoretical implications of these findings.

BackgroundDue to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Czech population experienced a second lockdown lasting for about half a year, restricting free movement and imposing social isolation. However, it is not known whether the impact of this long lockdown resulted in habituation to the adverse situation or in the traumatization of the Czech population, and whether the media and specific media use contributed to these effects.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to elucidate the effect of the long lockdown on the mental health of the Czech population, and the role of exposure to COVID-19 news reports and specific forms of media news use in mental health.MethodsWe conducted two consecutive surveys in the early (November 2020) and late (March/April 2021) phases of the nationwide lockdown on the same nationally representative group of Czech adults (N=1777) participating in a longitudinal panel study.ResultsOur findings showed that the self-reported symptoms of anxiety and depression increased in the second observation period, confirming the negative effect of the pandemic lockdown as it unfolded, suggesting that restrictive measures and continuous exposure to a collective stressor did not result in the strengthening of resilience but rather in ongoing traumatization. The results also suggest a negative role of the media’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in mental health during the early, and particularly late, phases of the lockdown. Furthermore, we found several risk and protective factors of specific media news use. The media practice in news consumption connected to social media use was the strongest predictor of exacerbated mental health symptoms, particularly in the late phase of the lockdown. Moreover, news media use characterized by internalization of information learned from the news, as well as negative attitudes toward media news, were associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression. Conversely, the use of infotainment, together with an in-depth and contextual style of reading news articles, were related to improvement of mental health.ConclusionsOur study showed that the long lockdown resulted in traumatization rather than habituation, and in more pronounced effects (both negative and positive) of media use in mental health.

In this article, the experiences of the users with regard to the development of new technologies (of telecommunication, internet and cellphones) in Turkey on the internet are analyzed. The objective is to demonstrate the effects of the new technologies on the practices of the internet users reaching the news via cellphone. The purpose is to observe the transformation of the daily practices on the Internet due to the evolution of the broadband, the development of the telecommunication market, the development of the adapted interface to the website ergonomics and the invention of the new technological devices such as smartphones. The aim of this study is to find out the new ways of searching news via mobile phones. We analyzed the relation between Turkish users and new information and communication technologies and the transformation of the habits of searching news and the role of social media platforms in this subject. According to our studies, the digitalization of the news, evolution of smartphones and the development of social media affect the habits and manners of reading, searching and sharing news. Nowadays, the practices of online news consumption are multiple. The interface ergonomics of websites and applications has a significant role on the media preferences of the users.

Media consumption studies differ because different researchers pay attention to specific characteristics of the media or consumption analysis. The problems of information noise, information hygiene, and the demand for certain genres have been observed, and there are statistics of certain media and content consumption which highlight the differences in groups by age and education. Within the framework of this article, the emphasis was placed on the practice of media consumption, taking into account the regularity of referring to the media. The value and importance of the information’s impact for a specific consumer of content were also emphasized. 20 focus group discussions were held in the cities of the Ural Federal District of Russia. Six strategies of news media consumption were distinguished based on these focus group discussions, and an attempt was made to combine age and behavioral models of news media consumption. The following six strategies were identified: casual occurrence, concernment, absorption, rituality, conservatism, and expertise. Strategies of casual occurrence in the perception of information noise were obvious. However, strategies of expertise were identified when a consumer checks information using different channels, which includes referring not only to Russian but also to foreign information sources (a contemporary city dweller is included in the global media scene).
 Keywords: media consumption, media, information hygiene, strategies of news consumption, global media scene

This article explores how audiences experience local news online. It discusses the findings of an empirical study that examined why audiences consumed local news online, what sources they were most likely to access, how important distributing platforms were in local news use, and what users understood by local news. The research had a qualitative design applying diaries as its main method collecting data in the South East of England in 2016 and 2017. The findings suggest that there is no shared understanding among audience members about what local news is in the digital environment. The study identified three predominant ways in which participants understood local news: as personally relevant or interesting information, as content produced by legacy local media brands, and as community engagement. The study also found that each of the different understandings of local news was linked to particular online news consumption and engagement patterns. The paper argues that audience perceptions of news should be studied alongside motivations for and practices of news engagement and consumption in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of audiences and news in the digital age.

News reporting of terrorism, in the form of security journalism, faces a set of challenges to the functions it serves as a result of both its own practices and the changing practices of news consumers. Security journalism performs some predictable functions, namely the regular delivery of representations of terrorist threats to a presumed national (and international) audience through coverage of Al-Qaeda leaders’ speeches, bomb attempts, criminal trials, and ‘radical’ protests in Britain, among others. Security journalism offers a consistent repackaging of jihadist media productions from one context and language to another. For example, in reducing jihadist texts to short clips of an angry gesticulating man security journalism is prohibiting public understanding of their persuasive potential by cutting any political, religious or sensual appeals. This article presents original data from interviews with British Muslims familiar with jihadist materials that suggest mainstream media reporting may contribute to radicalization in ways not sufficiently appreciated by journalists, policy-makers and the public. Interviewees report that any news depicting Muslim suffering activates and reinforces frustrations and grievances, whether the source is a mainstream media outlet or Al-Qaeda's media wing. Mainstream media may unintentionally contribute to a more enduring but diffused resentment a priori to the existence of jihadist media; as one participant says, ‘I am already convinced’

This article explores how mobile consumption practices afforded by new mobile media have transformed the spatialities and temporalities of news media through processes such as proliferation, participation, personalization, cross-platform flow, geolocation, and mapping. Expanding journalism studies to encompass digital social media and the interdisciplinary field of mobilities research, the approach taken here gives greater attention to the making and unmaking of materialities and infrastructure in order to show how the mobile production, dissemination, and consumption of news produces new spatial temporalities and scales. With the emergence of various mobile interfaces and personalized networks connected via mobile social media, news is not only constantly accessed “on demand” from miniature mobiles, but also tagged, curated, aggregated, and easily re-distributed, fostering “ambient journalism” (Hermida) and on-location “citizen witnessing” (Allan). Through a historical analysis of changes in the New York Times since the 1990s and a consideration of emerging modes of on-demand, on-location, participatory news production, it is argued that the redistribution of the places, spaces, and timing of news production and consumption has transformed not only the content, form, and style of news, but also the very temporality of news as an event. Through an analysis of the impact of these changes on the reporting of recent natural disasters, the article seeks to envision an enlivened terrain of mobile news that is live, active, immersive, pervasive, and constantly updating, yet also attentive to the implications of infrastructural disruption, data-mining, and surveillance.