Abstract
While increasing scholarly attention has been devoted to news avoidance, there are only few studies taking the distinction between intentional and unintentional news avoidance into consideration, and none that has investigated the linkage between the two types of news avoidance and knowledge about politics and society. To fill this void, this study explores this relationship while distinguishing between knowledge related to uncontested issues and knowledge related to issues that have been subject to public controversies (climate change, vaccination, genetically modified organisms, crime, and immigration). Relying on a large-scale survey among Swedish citizens conducted in 2020 ( N = 2,160), we find that the relationship with patterns of news use is substantially different across these types of beliefs. Among other things, the results suggest that knowledge of uncontested issue domains is positively related to news use, but knowledge of contested issue domains is not. The intentional avoidance of news is only negatively related to knowledge of contested issues. Taken together, the results suggest that the mechanisms driving beliefs related to uncontested versus contested issues are substantially different.
Highlights
In the context of a digitizing media environment in which the latest news is available anytime, anywhere, research has shown patterns of decreasing news consumption, despite the abundant supply
The overall purpose of this study is to investigate three hitherto unaddressed questions: (1) Which patterns of news use can be identified when distinguishing between intentional and unintentional news avoidance? (2) How are these patterns of news use and avoidance related to the presence of uncontested knowledge?, and (3) How are these patterns of news use and avoidance related to the accuracy of beliefs related to contested issue domains? Empirically, our analyses are based on a large-scale survey among Swedish citizens (N = 2,160) that was fielded in 2020, in which patterns of news use and avoidance as well as people’s beliefs related to uncontested and contested issue domains were measured
The results show that political interest and trust in information from the mainstream media have a positive bearing on levels of knowledge
Summary
In the context of a digitizing media environment in which the latest news is available anytime, anywhere, research has shown patterns of decreasing news consumption, despite the abundant supply. We examine this relationship while distinguishing between knowledge related to uncontested issue domains versus knowledge related to issues that have been subject to ongoing public controversies In the former case, we explore how news use and avoidance relate to the presence of knowledge; people can be informed or uninformed. We examine how news use and avoidance relate to the accuracy of people’s beliefs related to contested issue domains; people can be informed but can be misinformed as well (Flynn et al 2017; Kuklinski et al 2000) Against this background, the overall purpose of this study is to investigate three hitherto unaddressed questions: (1) Which patterns of news use can be identified when distinguishing between intentional and unintentional news avoidance? The focus is on five key societal issues: climate change, vaccines, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), crime, and immigration
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