While increasing scholarly attention has been devoted to news avoidance, there are only few studies taking the distinction between intentional and unintentional news avoidance into consideration, and none that has investigated the linkage between the two types of news avoidance and knowledge about politics and society. To fill this void, this study explores this relationship while distinguishing between knowledge related to uncontested issues and knowledge related to issues that have been subject to public controversies (climate change, vaccination, genetically modified organisms, crime, and immigration). Relying on a large-scale survey among Swedish citizens conducted in 2020 (N = 2,160), we find that the relationship with patterns of news use is substantially different across these types of beliefs. Among other things, the results suggest that knowledge of uncontested issue domains is positively related to news use, but knowledge of contested issue domains is not. The intentional avoidance of news is only negatively related to knowledge of contested issues. Taken together, the results suggest that the mechanisms driving beliefs related to uncontested versus contested issues are substantially different.

虽然学术界对新闻回避的关注越来越多，但很少有研究考虑到有意和无意的新闻回避之间的区别，也没有研究过这两种类型的新闻回避与政治和社会知识之间的联系。为了填补这一空白，本研究探索了这种关系，同时区分了与无争议问题相关的知识和与受到公众争议（气候变化、疫苗接种、转基因生物、犯罪和移民）相关的知识。依托 2020 年对瑞典公民进行的大规模调查（N = 2,160），我们发现这些类型的信念与新闻使用模式的关系有很大不同。除其他外，结果表明，对无争议问题领域的知识与新闻使用呈正相关，但对有争议问题领域的知识则不然。故意回避新闻只与对有争议的问题的了解呈负相关。综上所述，结果表明，驱动与无争议和有争议问题相关的信念的机制大不相同。