Relevance as a Mechanism in Evaluating News-Ness among American Teens and Adults

Abstract

Definitions of news are increasingly fraught in today’s media environment, making audience assessments of news-ness – the degree to which something is considered news – particularly important. Drawing from literature on representation in news and news-ness, we explore how seeing news that features a similar age group affects ratings of news-ness. We also argue that relevance offers as a psychological mechanism to explain how audiences make assessments about news-ness. Using two experiments among teens and adults in the United States, our results confirm that proximity (in terms of age) of the groups represented in news affects audience evaluations of news-ness, with relevance acting as a mediator to linking proximity and news-ness. These results are replicated across issues and among American teens and adults. We discuss the importance of representation and relevance as strategic initiatives to involve people in news.