ABSTRACT

The distinct media repertoire of young adults in the digital age, especially their increasing ability to bypass the news media, inspires a wealth of research. While previous studies have focused on social- and content-related motivations to avoid the news, we have yet to fully understand the interplay of such motivations with material, technology-related considerations. Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with Israeli young adults, this paper explores the varied motivations of young audiences to avoid the news through a texto-material conceptualization of news avoidance as directed at both contents and objects. An inductive-qualitative analysis of young adults' media consumption narratives identified three main dimensions: content, medium, and user-oriented news avoidance. The study demonstrates the material aspects of both deliberate and unintentional news avoidance, and how they relate to content-oriented considerations. Furthermore, the Israeli socio-political context reveals that in times of crisis, these motivations are shared by both heavy and light news consumers. Taken together, the different avoidance motivations and practices identified in this study provide an analytical framework to further understand news avoidance and design differentiated strategies to address young adults' disengagement from news.

摘要

数字时代的年轻人独特的媒体资源，尤其是他们绕过新闻媒体的能力不断增强，激发了大量的研究。尽管先前的研究集中于避免新闻的与社会和内容相关的动机，但我们仍未完全理解此类动机与与材料，技术相关的考虑因素之间的相互作用。本文通过对以色列年轻人的36次深入采访，通过针对内容和对象的新闻回避的文本材料概念化，探索了青年观众回避新闻的各种动机。对年轻人的媒体消费叙事的归纳定性分析确定了三个主要方面：内容，媒介和面向用户的新闻回避。该研究证明了故意和无意的新闻回避的实质性方面，以及它们与面向内容的注意事项之间的关系。此外，以色列的社会政治背景表明，在危机时期，沉重的新闻消费者和轻新闻的消费者都共享这些动机。综上所述，本研究中确定的不同回避动机和实践为进一步理解新闻回避和设计差异化策略以解决年轻人与新闻的分离提供了一个分析框架。