Project
The quest for young eyes. Attention to news among young people in the Low Countries
This dissertation started off with the observation that attention for news among young people decreases. More precisely, previous survey studies outlined a triple shift in the current young generation’s use of news: from more to less news, from offline to online news, and from professional to non-professional news sources. Underlying these three trends, was the finding that news does not constitute a substantial part of the daily routines of young people. This finding is disturbing given news media’s crucial role in promoting social and political attitudes, skills, and values and processes that form the basis of a democratic society.
With this dissertation we aimed to, (a), contextualize the observed trends in young people’s news media use by examining whether and how news media repertoires of Flemish and Dutch young people (15 to 34 years) vary between national media systems, and between young people themselves; (b) understand young people’s news media use by explaining news consumption from the interacting functions different news platforms may or may not fulfill for young new users, and how news (media) use is shaped in the practices and routines of their daily lives; and (c) provide a constructive answer to the observed decreases in news attention, by suggesting a way to stimulate news attention. We have done this by means of a multi-methodological, cross-national research design, consisting of three research phases.
Using a cross-national survey, a first, macro-media-sociological phase showed that young Dutch and Flemish people are a diversified group of news users, distinguished by their differentiated cross-media use of news platforms. When zooming in on the composition of the different news media repertoires our analyses, secondly, pointed at the prominence of traditional media – in particular television news – within all news media repertoires. We showed that within each repertoire television news was one of the media on which most time was spent for news. In addition, we found that the news users that spent most time on news via online and mobile platforms also spent much time on news via offline media. Our analyses showed that offline and online news media were used in a complementary fashion: young people that spent time on online news sites were more likely to also spend time on watching television news, and vice versa. This finding indicates that few Dutch and Flemish young news users exclusively limit their news use to online platforms.
By means of ten homogeneous focus groups based on the types of Flemish and Dutch young news users we identified in the macro-media-sociological phase, the second, meso-qualitative phase found that there is no evidence for selective news exposure or fragmentation of public attention to news. At the contrary, the group discussions showed that young people use the internet primarily to complement the national news agenda with a range of different news topics and views, rather than to merely follow personal interests and like-minded opinions.
Notwithstanding this finding, our focus groups, secondly, revealed major differences in news uses and news attitudes between young people who mainly used traditional media for news, and those who went online for news. For example, those that also went online for news were characterized by a more active use of news, in which the Internet was used as a means to enrich the national mainstream news agenda with international news topics, various point of views, and background information. The young people in our traditional news groups, on the other hand, felt less engaged with the news and were, therefore, less inclined to actively follow news. Traditional news media which pointed out the major news events of the day to them and put them into context, were considered more accessible than online news platforms that required more active news strategies.
A third finding concerned the importance of news contextualization. Although almost all focus group participants explicitly stated that for them, news consumption was about getting facts about a news event, it were not the news facts in itself but the context which largely determined (a) if the news was understood, (b) if the news was perceived as objective, and (c) if the news was experienced as trustworthy by the young people in our focus groups.
Finally, our findings indicated that the news use of the young people in our focus groups was in large part driven by long-term news habits and contextual factors such as the accessibility of news platforms. Interestingly, we found that ensured access to news through mobile platforms, combined with a high interest in news, led to a twofold change in the news use of some young people: (a) a change in news consumption patterns, from consuming news at designated times in the day to the constant checking of news headlines and updates throughout the day; and (b) a change in how news is experienced, from the experience of news as isolated news events to the experience of news as chronological, evolving stories, in which new story elements and developments are continuously integrated.
Building on insights from the previous research phases, a last, micro-cognitive-psychological phase aimed to put our findings to the test by examining, in collaboration with Dutch and Flemish professional news producers, a concrete suggestion for enhancing young people’s attention to news. More specifically, we analyzed, by means of a multi-day eye-tracking experiment, a way to present news on a tablet platform so that it (a) stimulates attention to news, and (b) promotes recall and comprehension of news. We compared two news structures: a traditional print structure, which organized news articles in a linear fashion (e.g., print newspaper), and an, in this chapter newly introduced, associative news structure, which organized related news stories chronologically into so-called developing news stories. We found that the developing news story structure led to a significant increase in news comprehension: users of the developing news story structure were better in understanding how various bits of information were related to our target story, than users of the linear structure. This is an important finding, given that young people’s news attention is, in large part, determined by whether or not they understand the news.