The shadowy realm of news avoidance: Exploring public service news avoidance as negative social action

Demographic		Avoiders of public service news	Non-avoiders of public service news
Gender (%)	Men	53.4	49
Gender (%)	Women	46.6	51
Level of education (%)^***	Low	10.4	9.3
	Mid-low	42.3	28.9
	Mid-high	21.5	21.9
	High	25.8	39.9
Age (mean)^***		35	48
Yearly household income, SEK (%)^***	< 300,000	29.4	18.3
	300,001–700,000	39.8	40.7
	> 700,000	30.8	41
Favourite party: Sweden democrats (%)^***		21.4	11.9
Status on labour market (%)^***	Employed, parental leave, retired	84.2	93.7
Status on labour market (%)^***	Unemployed, on sick-leave, in work-place training	15.8	6.3

Comments: The statistical associations between the variable separating public service news avoiders from non-avoiders and demographic variables were tested with the Chi2 test for the binary variables gender, favouring the Sweden Democrats, and status on the labour market; Cramer's V for categorical and ordinal variables with more than two values (education and household income); and one-way ANOVA for the continuous variable age.

* p < 0.05,

** p < 0.01,

*** p < 0.001

TABLE 2

Avoiders and non-avoiders of public service news in negative social space (per cent)

Layer in negative lifeworld		Avoiders of public service news	Non-avoiders of public service news
Self	Complete dissatisfaction with own life***	3.7	1.1
Extended social group	Not spent time with friends in the last 12 months***	4.5	1.8
Extended social group	Not discussed politics in the last 12 months***	25.3	12.7
Society at large	Not visited restaurant/bar/pub in evening time during the last 12 months*	20.7	16.5
	Complete distrust towards other people***	8.7	1.7
	Complete avoidance of Aftonbladet online***	35.7	19
	Complete avoidance of Dagens Nyheter online***	77	44
	Complete avoidance of news on social media	19	21.8
	Complete avoidance of “ alternative” news online*	75	85.8

Comments: Share of group reporting not to engage in various activities and lacking life satisfaction and trust. The statistical associations between the variable separating news avoiders from non-avoiders and variables listed were tested with Chi2 tests.

* p < 0.05,

** p < 0.01,

*** p < 0.001

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2024-0021 | Journal eISSN: 2001-5119 | Journal ISSN: 1403-1108

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Language: English

Page range: 238 - 256

Published on: Oct 2, 2024

Published by: University of Gothenburg Nordicom

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

news avoidance,

negative social action,

non-use,

negative social space,

disconnection,

public service media

Related subjects:

Social sciences,

Communication science,

Mass communication,

Public and political communication

© 2024 Johan Lindell, Zofie Basta, Alexandra Brieger, Sayaka Fukada, Sarah Greiner, Marta Marcora, Christopher Mc Taggart, published by University of Gothenburg Nordicom
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Volume 45 (2024): Issue 2 (June 2024)