Correlates of and counterstrategies to news non-use: systematic review and prescriptive framework

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Abstract
News and politics constitute a small fraction of people’s information diets, and many individuals avoid news and public affairs information, a phenomenon that has a range of detrimental democratic consequences. Extensive research investigates the extent and the effects of news avoidance and news non-use. This article contributes to this scholarship in two ways. First, we conduct a systematic review of 125 studies, which empirically test the predictors of news avoidance and non-use to identify individual, social, and algorithmic/design factors associated with this phenomenon. We find that extant research focuses on individual over broader structural factors. Second, we propose a multi-actor framework for solutions to news avoidance and non-use. We outline strategies by news organizations, governments, and platforms, showing how each actor is suited to address distinct aspects of the phenomenon. As these are likely insufficient or uninterested in intervening, we also propose three additional sets of solutions: nudges, non-political content, and media literacy. We also show that the subfields proposing and testing the various strategies are largely disconnected from the scholarship on news avoidance and non-use. In doing so, we present a research agenda to clarify the correlates of news non-use and to understand what strategies might best address this problem.
Funding Information
  • European Research Council under Grant (101126218)
  • NEWSUSE
  • Center for Excellence in Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw
  • H2020 European Research Council

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