Engaging and Disengaging with Political News

TY - ABST

T1 - Engaging and Disengaging with Political News

AU - Ørmen, Jacob

AU - Linaa Jensen, Jakob

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - The possibilities of accessing and engaging with news are bigger than ever, due to developments in the media markets (e.g. the increase of commercial broadcasters) and technological innovations (e.g. the advent of smartphones and tablets) among other things. At the same time, studies have shown (most notably by Prior, 2007; Stromback, Djerf-Pierre, & Shehata, 2012) that this development also can lead to an increase in the number of people who utilize this enhanced media choice to skip news altogether. One area that merits special attention in this context is political news. Critical engagement with political news if often portrayed as both a requirement for a well-functioning democracy (Walsh, 2004) and as a source of increased civic participation (Norris, 2012). Furthermore, the consumption and discussion of political news can be seen as an essential part of the ongoing opinion formation (Gamson, 1992) and 'performance of identity' (Madianou, 2009) that take place throughout people's everyday life. To further understand these processes it is important to attend to how users engage – or disengage – with political news. To do this we present a typology of news users based on an exploratory cluster analysis of a survey of the adult Danish population (n = 1205). The typology encompasses archetypical ways user can consume (e.g. watching news on TV, reading news in print as well as digital versions, encountering news on social networks and in face-to-face situations) and discuss political news. The results of the cluster analysis suggest that this typology is interesting on at least three levels of user engagement. The primary level consists of the fundamental gap between users that access political news ("the engaged") and users that avoid politics altogether ("the disengaged"). On the secondary level, we further investigate the differences between users that only consume political news and users that also talk about politics with others. And on the tertiary level, we identify the most widespread communicative practices (e.g. sharing content on social network sites, writing comments on blogs and conversing face-to-face) that users engage in for political discussion, and compare these across demographics as well as relevant media use patterns. The findings from the survey will be supplemented by results from a series of qualitative interviews that shed light on the motivations users have for engaging with the news through various media platforms and the reasons non-users provide for skipping news.

AB - The possibilities of accessing and engaging with news are bigger than ever, due to developments in the media markets (e.g. the increase of commercial broadcasters) and technological innovations (e.g. the advent of smartphones and tablets) among other things. At the same time, studies have shown (most notably by Prior, 2007; Stromback, Djerf-Pierre, & Shehata, 2012) that this development also can lead to an increase in the number of people who utilize this enhanced media choice to skip news altogether. One area that merits special attention in this context is political news. Critical engagement with political news if often portrayed as both a requirement for a well-functioning democracy (Walsh, 2004) and as a source of increased civic participation (Norris, 2012). Furthermore, the consumption and discussion of political news can be seen as an essential part of the ongoing opinion formation (Gamson, 1992) and 'performance of identity' (Madianou, 2009) that take place throughout people's everyday life. To further understand these processes it is important to attend to how users engage – or disengage – with political news. To do this we present a typology of news users based on an exploratory cluster analysis of a survey of the adult Danish population (n = 1205). The typology encompasses archetypical ways user can consume (e.g. watching news on TV, reading news in print as well as digital versions, encountering news on social networks and in face-to-face situations) and discuss political news. The results of the cluster analysis suggest that this typology is interesting on at least three levels of user engagement. The primary level consists of the fundamental gap between users that access political news ("the engaged") and users that avoid politics altogether ("the disengaged"). On the secondary level, we further investigate the differences between users that only consume political news and users that also talk about politics with others. And on the tertiary level, we identify the most widespread communicative practices (e.g. sharing content on social network sites, writing comments on blogs and conversing face-to-face) that users engage in for political discussion, and compare these across demographics as well as relevant media use patterns. The findings from the survey will be supplemented by results from a series of qualitative interviews that shed light on the motivations users have for engaging with the news through various media platforms and the reasons non-users provide for skipping news.

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

T2 - ECREA

Y2 - 12 November 2014 through 15 November 2014

ER -