Taking a Break from News: A Five-nation Study of News Avoidance in the Digital Era

TLDR

This article comparatively examines news avoidance in a rapidly changing media environment. We aim to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the drivers, practices, and patterns of news avoidance as they occur in and are shaped by a variety of national contexts. The study analyzes 488 in-depth interviews from Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the US, distinguishing two drivers of intentional news avoidance—cognitive and emotional. News avoidance is shaped by individual characteristics, specific time frames, and socio‑cultural factors, with cognitive drivers amplified by country‑level contexts and emotional drivers common across nations.

Abstract

This article comparatively examines news avoidance in a rapidly changing media environment. We utilize findings from a large dataset of 488 in-depth interviews with media consumers, conducted in Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the US. We aim to make a contribution to the study of news avoidance by providing a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the drivers, practices, and patterns of news avoidance as they occur in and are shaped by a variety of national contexts. We argue that news avoidance is shaped not only by individual characteristics, but is also manifested and performed as part of specific time frames and socio-cultural factors. We distinguish two drivers of intentional news avoidance: cognitive and emotional. The cognitive drivers are accentuated by distinct country-level contextual factors, whereas the emotional drivers for news avoidance are shared across diverse national contexts.