Journalism Studies

ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20

Conceptualizing News Avoidance: Towards a

Shared Understanding of Different Causes and
Potential Solutions

Morten Skovsgaard & Kim Andersen

To cite this article: Morten Skovsgaard & Kim Andersen (2019): Conceptualizing News Avoidance:
Towards a Shared Understanding of Different Causes and Potential Solutions, Journalism Studies,
DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2019.1686410

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2019.1686410

Published online: 11 Nov 2019.

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JOURNALISM STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2019.1686410

Conceptualizing News Avoidance: Towards a Shared

Understanding of Different Causes and Potential Solutions
Morten Skovsgaarda and Kim Andersena,b
a
Centre for Journalism, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark; bDepartment of Journalism,
Media and Communication, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
News avoidance is considered an increasing problem for the news News avoidance; news
industry and democracy at large. As news companies lose consumption; media trust;
consumers, democracy loses the informed foundation for an news overload; media
engaged citizenry. Meanwhile, research on news avoidance is preferences; opportunity
structures; inadvertent
hampered by the lack of a common understanding of the audiences
phenomenon. In this conceptual study, we first review and discuss
extant conceptualizations and operationalisations of news
avoidance. Second, we present a model distinguishing two types
of news avoidance—intentional and unintentional—depending on
the underlying causes leading people to tune out. Third, we argue
that different solutions apply to the two types of news avoidance.
To engage intentional news avoiders, the news selection and
news presentation must to be changed. To engage unintentional
news avoiders, the opportunity structures provided in the media
system must be more favourable towards inadvertent news
exposure.

Despite increasing availability of news, the number of people that avoid the news is on the
rise (Blekesaune, Elvestad, and Aalberg 2012; Strömbäck, Djerf-Pierre, and Shehata 2013).
For good reasons, this tendency has recently received substantial scholarly and public
attention. First, although some studies point out potential positive side effects of news
avoidance (e.g., Woodstock 2014), on balance, it is a potential democratic problem, as
news exposure is positively related to political knowledge and engagement (e.g.,
Aalberg and Curran 2012; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). Second, the business model of
news media already challenged by dwindling advertisement revenues will be increasingly
pressured as the news media lose consumers. In turn, this will weaken professional journal-
ism and its important democratic role (Nielsen and Selva 2019).
Existing research on news avoidance is challenged by conceptual ambiguity, however.
Most studies are not clear in their definition of news avoidance, and the concept is oper-
ationalized in a number of different ways. As a result, there are massive differences in the
assessment of the proportion of news avoiders in different studies (from 11 to 73 per cent)
as well as an inconsistent account of the underlying causes. This situation impedes aca-
demic advancement and implementation of real-world solutions. To facilitate a more
coherent conceptual foundation for the study of news avoidance and to foster guidelines

CONTACT Morten Skovsgaard skh@sam.sdu.dk

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M. SKOVSGAARD AND K. ANDERSEN

for the responsible actors, we develop a model that can serve as a point of departure for
systematic thinking about (1) different types of news avoidance, (2) the different causes of
news avoidance, and (3) the potential solutions to news avoidance.
When talking about news, we refer to novel information about relatively recent affairs
of public interest or importance provided by journalists (see Schudson 2018). Based on a
literature review of extant research on news avoidance, we argue that avoidance of news
can have either an intentional or an unintentional nature. Intentional news avoidance is
the consequence of people consciously tuning out because they dislike the news.
Among the most prominent reasons are either a perception that the news coverage is
too pessimistic and affects their mood negatively (Boukes and Vliegenthart 2017;
Newman et al. 2017; Zerba 2011), scepticism toward or lack of trust in the news media
(Tsfati and Capella 2003; Zerba 2011), or a feeling of news overload (Song, Jung, and
Kim 2017). In contrast, unintentional news avoidance is a consequence of changing
characteristics in the broader media environment. As the supply of media content has
exploded, people with a relatively higher entertainment preference have turned to
more entertaining content at the expense of news exposure, without having an explicit
dislike for the news and without making an active choice to limit their news consumption
(Prior 2007; Blekesaune, Elvestad, and Aalberg 2012; Strömbäck, Djerf-Pierre, and Shehata
2013).
Understanding the underlying causes for these different types of news avoidance is
crucial for understanding that they demand solutions at different levels. Intentional
news avoidance, on the one hand, requires changes in the journalistic profession and
the news content, in order to reduce negativity, increase credibility and trust in the
news, and decrease news fatigue among the audience that actively tune out. Uninten-
tional news avoidance, on the other hand, requires changes in media organizations’ mix
of different content (e.g., entertainment and news) or media policies more broadly in
order to increase the opportunities for inadvertent news exposure. We argue that journal-
ists and the news media, policy makers, and citizens each have their responsibility in
pushing for such solutions.

Extant Conceptualizations and Operationalizations of News Avoidance

In a media environment where a plethora of news is available day and night, it is a paradox
that a growing number of people turn their backs to the news, leading to increasing
inequalities in political knowledge and participation (e.g., Prior 2007; Van Aelst et al.
2017). Nonetheless, several recent studies of news consumption have identified a substan-
tial group of people who consume no or only a limited amount of news and labelled them
news avoiders, minimalists, non-users, or intermittents (e.g., Mosca and Quaranta 2016;
Trilling and Schönbach 2013a; Strömbäck 2017; Strömbäck, Falasca, and Kruikemeier
2017; Wolfsfeld, Yarchi, and Samuel-Azran 2016).
Despite increasing attention to the concept, scholars are far from reaching consensus
on the extent of news avoidance. Based on national representative samples, a South
Korean study labelled nearly 73 per cent of the respondents news avoiders (Lee and
Yang 2014), while a Dutch study found only 11 per cent news avoiders (Trilling and Schön-
bach 2013a), and a Swedish study found 15 per cent news avoiders (Strömbäck, Djerf-
Pierre, and Shehata 2013). Several other studies present proportions in between these
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 3

extremes (e.g., Bos, Kruikemeier, and de Vreese 2016; Kim and Webster 2012; Ksiazek, Malt-
house, and Webster 2010). This notable discrepancy is likely—at least partly—to be a
result of variations in the conceptualization and operationalizations of news avoidance.
Such inconsistencies make it difficult to assess the extent of news avoidance in general,
let alone to compare news avoidance across different media systems.
As we will illustrate in the following, four different approaches to the operationalization
of news avoidance can be identified in the literature. The differences between these four
approaches highlight the need for a coherent conceptualization of different types of news
avoidance. Thus, our aim is not to deem one approach better than the others. Instead, we
will review the four approaches in order to provide a conceptual model for more conscious
and explicit thinking about different types of news avoidance, their causes, and potential
solutions.
The first approach is to apply cluster analysis or latent class analysis in order to induc-
tively define groups based on their news exposure (e.g., Bos, Kruikemeier, and de Vreese
2016; Edgerly 2015; Ksiazek, Malthouse, and Webster 2010; Lee and Yang 2014; Strömbäck,
Falasca, and Kruikemeier 2017; Trilling and Schönbach 2013a). In these studies, one group
is characterized by general low news exposure compared to the mean news exposure
among respondents. The members of this low news exposure group are labelled news
avoiders, occasional users, or minimalists.
A second approach to identifying news avoiders is to apply a relative cut-off point in the
amount of news consumption. For example, Strömbäck (2017) finds this cut-off point by
subtracting one standard deviation from the mean news exposure, meaning that
people who score below one standard deviation from the mean on an index of total
media use are considered news avoiders. In another example, Wolfsfeld, Yarchi, and
Samuel-Azran (2016) operationalize avoiders as the ones scoring below the mean on
two scales measuring exposure to political information—one based on exposure
through traditional media and one based on exposure through social media. While such
an approach—contrary to the cluster analysis approach—provides a specific cut-off
point for news-avoiders it is still based on a relative measure, where avoidance is identified
in relation to the general news consumption in the population. Thus, both the first and
second approach identify news avoiders in relation to how much news the average
citizen is exposed to.
A third approach is to apply an absolute cut-off point for news avoidance. Blekesaune,
Elvestad, and Aalberg (2012), Wonneberger, Schönbach, and van Meurs (2013) as well as
Kim and Webster (2012) operationalize news avoiders as the ones who did not watch any
news show during a week. By the same logic Trilling and Schönbach (2013b) operationa-
lize news avoidance as not using any information channel to get a news overview during a
week. Papathanassopopoulos et al. (2013) and Shehata (2016) operationalize avoidance as
less than two days of news exposure in a week across any news type, while Schrøder and
Blach-Ørsten (2016) set the threshold for news exposure at less than once a month.
A common feature of the studies applying these three different approaches is that they
do not present a formal definition of news avoidance. Instead, the inconsistencies in con-
ceptualization and operationalization impede valid comparisons and knowledge accumu-
lation from these studies. The answer is not one uniform operationalization of news
avoidance, however. Different operationalizations can be appropriate in relation to
different research questions and different normative points of departures. For instance,
4 M. SKOVSGAARD AND K. ANDERSEN

if the research question—based on a deliberative conception of democracy with an aim of

equal conditions for political participation (Habermas 1989)—asks if the gap between
news avoiders and other news consumers is increasing, news avoidance is perhaps best
operationalized as relative to overall news exposure in the population (e.g., Strömbäck,
Djerf-Pierre, and Shehata 2013). If the research question instead takes its starting point
in a competitive model of democracy and asks how many people are exposed to
enough news to make informed choices as monitorial citizens (Schudson 1998), news
avoidance is perhaps best operationalized as a minimal threshold of absolute exposure
to a news overview, for instance less than once a week (e.g., Trilling and Schönbach
2013b).
Instead of operationalizing news avoidance in terms of relative or absolute cut-off
points, a fourth approach relies on people self-identifying as news avoiders. For
example, Kalogeropoulos (2017) asked respondents if they find themselves actively avoid-
ing the news, with the replies “sometimes” or “often” expressing news avoidance. This way
of operationalizing news avoidance is not concerned with an individual’s actual level of
news consumption, but rather whether he or she consciously and deliberately avoids
the news sometimes or often. Thus, people do not need to have a low overall news
exposure to be a considered a news avoider. In fact, the sample in Kalogeropoulos’
study was made up of respondents who answered that they followed the news at least
once a month—excluding the ones who almost entirely avoid the news. Even people
with a very high news consumption could potentially answer that they sometimes find
themselves avoiding the news. Consequently, this operationalization fits better with
research questions on why people sometimes choose to turn their backs to the news,
rather than research questions concerned with the extent of news avoidance.
In line with Kalogeropoulos (2017), Van den Bulck (2006) asked people to self-identify as
news avoiders. However, this operationalization also includes the type of news avoidance
that is not a result of a conscious choice. Specifically, Van den Bulck asked (the young)
people in his study whether they actively seek out news (intentional news exposure), if
they watch news because they come across it accidentally when switching channels (unin-
tentional news exposure), if they do not get around to watching the news (unintentional
news avoidance), or if they do not watch the news much because they do not really want
to watch it (intentional news avoidance). Of course, a question like this with four discrete
categories that are not clearly mutually exclusive has potential shortcomings in terms of
validity. Someone might seek out news sometimes, while at other times avoiding news
either intentionally or unintentionally.
Two points from these operationalizations are particularly important for systematic
thinking about news avoidance. First, the distinction between intentional and uninten-
tional news avoidance. Avoidance is often understood as someone taking action to
avoid something. However, stressing the difference between avert and avoid, the
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English states that while avert “incorporates the
idea of taking action to ward off an undesirable event in advance”, avoid is not necessarily
tied to intentionally taking action (Thompson 1995). Thus, just as news exposure is not
always the result of an active, conscious choice, neither is news avoidance. Taking the dis-
tinction between intentional and unintentional news avoidance as our starting point, we
develop a model that outlines the underlying causes behind the two types of news avoid-
ance and the potential solutions that follow from the underlying causes.
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 5

Second, the operationalizations by Kalogeropoulos (2017) and Van den Bulck (2006)
imply that news avoidance does not necessarily entail that an individual has a low
general news exposure. On this point, they part ways with most other studies, which,
despite their lack of formal definition of news avoidance, indicate that low general
news exposure constitutes their understanding of news avoidance. This not only adds
to the conceptual ambiguity of news avoidance, but it also raises the important question
whether avoidance of any piece of news will be defined as news avoidance regardless of
an individual’s general level of news exposure. There is a vast amount of news every day
that people do not expose themselves to, either with or without intent. Selective avoid-
ance of specific content can obviously be problematic for democracy regardless of an indi-
vidual’s general level of news exposure (see Garrett 2009). The literature on selective
exposure shows that when people select news content that they agree with and avoid
news content that they disagree with, it tends polarize the electorate (Stroud 2010).
However, if this type of avoidance of news is included in the concept of news avoidance,
the implication would be that avoidance of any news story would count as news avoid-
ance. As a consequence, we would all be news avoiders, as even news junkies expose
themselves only to a fraction of the available news. Thus, defining selective avoidance
of some specific kind of news as news avoidance would stretch the concept and make it
less useful for the accumulation of knowledge.
In the same vein, we argue that consuming no or a very limited amount of news for a
very brief spell, for instance during a vacation abroad or an extremely busy week at work,
should not count as news avoidance. Almost everyone has small blips when they consume
a very limited amount of news, and the potential effects of news avoidance will only occur
after a sustained period of time of avoiding the news. Therefore, in our definition, news
avoidance is low news consumption over a continuous period of time caused either by a
dislike for news (intentional) or a higher preference for other content (unintentional).

Causes of Intentional and Unintentional News Avoidance

We now proceed to developing a model that outlines the two types of news avoidance—
intentional and unintentional—in order to distinguish the underlying causes and the
potential solutions.

Intentional News Avoidance

People’s media use is usually characterized by a combination of various genres. However,
this does not mean that they necessarily include all possible genres in their combined
media diet. People’s dislikes for a particular genre appears to be more important for
their composition of their individual media diet than their strong preferences for one or
a few specific genres (Webster 2014). In other words, people are more likely to exclude
genres they dislike from their media diet than they are to include only genres they
have a high liking for. Exactly this type of antipathy towards the news explains intentional
news avoidance. The question is why some people dislike the news.
By asking people about the reasons behind their choice to actively avoid news, Kaloger-
opoulos (2017) gives an indication. In this study, almost half of the respondents who
“sometimes” or “often” avoided the news answered that the news can have a negative
6 M. SKOVSGAARD AND K. ANDERSEN

effect on their mood. Along the same lines, 22 per cent replied that graphic images in the
news upset them, and 28 per cent expressed apathy by replying that they feel that there is
nothing they can do about it. In another study that allowed respondents with extremely
low news exposure to give qualitative answers, respondents also pointed to overly nega-
tive news that are “very depressing” (Schrøder and Blach-Ørsten 2016; see also Zerba
2011).
Indeed, conflict and negativity are important journalistic news values, and news
content has been shown to have a negative focus (e.g., Soroka 2014). Consumption of
negative news has also been shown to increase the negative affect of news consumers
(Skovsgaard and Søberg 2016) and decrease the well-being over time (Boukes and Vlie-
genthart 2017). People in general tend to strive for positive affective states (e.g., Bless
and Fiedler 2006), which would explain why negative news would result in some
people actively avoiding news.
A second cause for intentional news avoidance is a lack of trust in the news. As one
news avoider states: “because the BBC are a propaganda machine they do not give the
news as it is, they just give their view of the news and can’t be trusted” (Schrøder and
Blach-Ørsten 2016). Newman and Fletcher’s (2017) study also support this statement. Ana-
lysing open-ended answers to why people do not trust the news, they find that respon-
dents perceive the media as biased and as pushing for their own political and
economic interests. As a consequence, such news avoiders simply do not know what to
believe (Toff and Nielsen 2018).
It is no surprise that perceptions of political bias lead to a lack of trust in the mainstream
media. Kohring and Matthes (2007) found that trust in news media is constituted by trust
in selectivity of topics, selectivity of facts, accuracy of depictions and journalistic assess-
ment. Media scepticism and lack of trust in news media are in general negatively
related to mainstream media use (Tsfati and Capella 2003). In other words, the perception
that news content is biased against peoples’ viewpoints will make it more likely that they
will avoid the news.
A third cause for intentional news avoidance relates to the increasing amount of avail-
able news. In general, people are constantly flooded with information and cannot attend
to all the information all the time (Lupia and McCubbins 1998). Too much information is
likely to result in an information overload when people feel that they do not have the
capacity to sufficiently process the information. Perceived information overload has
been shown to create stress, confusion and anxiety (Eppler and Mengis 2004) and
impact decision making (Jacoby 1984).
In one illustrative experiment, customers in a grocery store were presented with free
samples of jam. In a limited choice condition, six different flavours were on offer, and in
an extensive choice condition 24 different flavours were on offer. Although the extensive
choice condition attracted more of the by-passing customers (60 per cent vs. 40 per cent),
only 3 per cent ended up buying a jar of jam in the high choice condition, while nearly 30
per cent ended up buying a jar of jam in the limited choice condition (Iyengar and Lepper
2000). Of course, news is not jam, but a study showed that a sense of news overload was
correlated with news fatigue and paralysis, which in turn led to news avoidance (Song,
Jung, and Kim 2017). It seems that being confronted with an increasing amount of
news around the clock can be counterproductive and lead people to actively avoid the
news altogether.
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 7

Summing up, intentional news avoidance is based on a specific dislike for news, and
three different causes are conspicuous in the literature; (1) the news is too negative, (2)
the news cannot be trusted, and (3) there is too much news to navigate.

Unintentional News Avoidance

Unintentional news avoidance is more complex than intentional news avoidance. While
intentional news avoidance is based on a specific dislike for news, unintentional news
avoidance—as the term implies—is not based on a conscious and active choice by an indi-
vidual to generally opt-out of news exposure. Instead, it is based on an individual’s relative
preference for news vis-à-vis other media content. That is, on the one hand, the preference
for news is not so low that the individual will actively avoid any news that comes his or her
way, but on the other hand, the preferences for other choices are stronger. This also means
that the choice context is important for unintentional news avoidance. The easier it
becomes to meet one’s strongest preferences the less one’s weaker preferences will be met.
Drawing on this logic, Prior (2005, 2007) introduced the measure of peoples’ relative
entertainment preference. The measure reflects if people on balance prefer entertainment
vis-à-vis news without necessarily being averse to news. Prior argues that in a low-choice
media environment with restricted choice of media content (entertainment as well as
news) people with a high relative entertainment preference will more likely be inadver-
tently exposed to news as a by-product of consuming entertainment. In a high-choice
media environment, on the contrary, these people will more easily seek out media
content in line with their preference for entertainment because it takes less effort to con-
stantly find entertainment content. In other words, people are hardly perfect rational
actors that meticulously weigh preferences against each other when they consider their
content options. Instead, a certain level of inertia means that when it takes more effort
to meet one’s preferences, people will tend to settle for less than a perfect match—at
least some of the time (e.g., Klein 1972).
In line with Prior (2007), Iyengar (2017) argues that in the low-choice media environ-
ment in the 60’s and 70’s a large part of the audience would watch the news awaiting
the entertainment programme that succeeded the newscast. These inadvertent news
audiences that do not dislike the news, but by active choice would pick entertainment
content over news, decreased over time as the range of media content increased.
Iyengar shows that the audience for the evening newscasts on the three main television
networks in the US dropped by more than 30 million viewers from 1968 to 2010 as cable
television, local television, and the Internet emerged.
Other empirical studies support the notion that increasing media supply over time has
resulted in a growing number of news avoiders. For example, Strömbäck, Djerf-Pierre, and
Shehata (2013) shows that the proportion of news avoiders in Sweden has increased from
6 per cent in 1986 to 14 per cent in 2010—a period with rapid growth in media supply.
They also show that political interest has become increasingly important as a predictor
of news exposure. In other words, people with low political interest (and likely a higher
relative entertainment preference) were less inclined to watch the news as the amount
of content to choose from increased. These people will have a limited news exposure,
not because they intentionally turn their backs to the news out of discontent, but
because it has become easier to satisfy their immediate preferences for entertainment.
8 M. SKOVSGAARD AND K. ANDERSEN

In the digital era, algorithms have become an important factor for media exposure
(Thorson and Wells 2016). Algorithms make automated decisions on what content is dis-
played to a user, in particular on social network sites. These decisions can be based on a
wide range of factors, but one often utilized factor is prior behaviour by the user, which
means that these algorithms also interact with an individual’s preferences to form
content choices (Thorson et al. 2019). If an individual exposes him- or herself to a
limited amount of news because other content has more appeal to him or her, many algor-
ithms will make future content decisions in favour of other content, e.g., entertainment,
and give news stories a lower priority. Thus, the algorithms potentially lead to uninten-
tional news avoidance through a mutually reinforcing process between preferences and
algorithmic content choices.

Potential Solutions to News Avoidance

Understanding the different types of news avoidance and their underlying causes is
important when searching for solutions to the increasing number of news avoiders.
From our outline of the causes, it should be clear that there is no one-size-fits-all solution
to the problem of news avoidance. Therefore, we will in the following discuss potential
solutions and illustrate them with examples of concrete initiatives. When doing so, we
also discuss how these possible solutions demand different actions from the different
actors in the “media, politicians, and citizens”-nexus.

Solutions to Intentional News Avoidance

Intentional news avoidance is based on a discontent with the news, be it the predomi-
nantly negative focus of news, the low credibility of news, or the volume of news. We
argue that there are two main avenues for addressing these three different causes of
intentional news avoidance: the selection of news and the presentation of news.
The first reason for intentional news avoidance outlined above is that some people find
that news has an overly negative focus, which is depressing and affects their mood nega-
tively. Such findings have also been picked up within and outside the news business
where a debate about constructive news or constructive journalism—with clear parallels
to earlier movements such as peace journalism, civic journalism, and public journalism—is
emerging (Bro 2019). A central point in the debate over constructive news is that a focus
on the negative ignores the long term, positive developments (e.g., Haagerup 2017;
Hermans and Gyldensted 2019). The proponents of constructive journalism argue that
this bias must be rebalanced by accompanying the selection of negative news with
more positive stories (e.g., Haagerup 2017).
In addition to the selection of news, the presentation of news likewise plays a role in
rebalancing the distorted picture of the world according to the constructive news move-
ment. One way of doing so is to attach solutions and a future-oriented perspective to the
news stories that expose problems or malfunctions in society (e.g., Haagerup 2017). Such
an add-on to a news story has been shown to reduce people’s negative feelings and yield
more favourable attitudes towards the news story (McIntyre and Gyldensted 2017).
An additional point of the constructive news movement in regard to the presentation of
news is to provide people with more context when they are presented with specific (and
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 9

often negative) events that do not always reflect a negative trend (Hermans and Gyl-
densted 2019). One example is the decreasing number of casualties in terrorist attacks
around the world, which gives context to the generally negative coverage of the individual
attacks. Another example is the specific focus on people living in poverty and hunger
without the context that there is a long-term trend moving people in the developing
countries out of poverty (Rosling 2018). Contextualizing news stories in such a way
reduces the risk that people automatically extrapolate and draw overly negative con-
clusions about the world from the often fragmented, event-driven, and negative news.
The second reason for intentional news avoidance outlined above is low trust in the
news. It is unlikely to find any quick fix to this problem since trust is not easily built. As
mentioned, trust in news is constituted by trust in selectivity of topics, selectivity of
facts, accuracy of depictions, and trust in journalistic assessment (Kohring and Matthes
2007). In other words, trust also depends on the selection and presentation of news
stories. However, journalists’ authority and legitimacy to select topics and facts and give
accurate depictions is questioned in a society where the authority of professions is gener-
ally declining (Pfadenhauer 2006) and where partisans have a tendency to perceive a news
story as biased against their own view (e.g., Gunther and Liebhart 2006).
Such mechanisms, however, do not imply that journalists and news media should not
strive to increase their credibility and hence people’s trust in the news. The most basic sol-
ution is for news media and journalist to stick to reporting fact-based journalism and avoid
opinionated content (Newman and Fletcher 2017). Another solution for increasing trust is
for journalists and news media to be more transparent about the choices behind the selec-
tion and presentation of their news stories. For example, journalists can implement explai-
ners next to their stories telling about the process behind the journalistic product, or they
can release the documents behind a given news story (Mor and Reich 2018). Not all people
know how journalism works, and providing insights to the journalistic work process might
help increase trust in the media.
The third reason for intentional news avoidance outlined above is news overload. In
today’s saturated news environment, some people experience news fatigue and paralysis,
causing them to avoid the news altogether (Song, Jung, and Kim 2017). An interesting
development in this regard is news curation, where a news outlet provides overviews of
news stories from other news media outlets (Bakker 2012). Such overviews could help
people find their way in the information overload. Related, another interesting tendency
has been labelled “slow journalism” or “slow news” (Laufer 2014; Masurier 2015, 2016).
Slow journalism is exactly a reaction to the “context of hyper-acceleration and over-pro-
duction of journalism, where quality has suffered, ethics are compromised and user atten-
tion has eroded” (Masurier 2016, 405, our emphasis).
Inspired by the slow food movement, the slow journalism movement wants to over-
come all the junk news available and instead provide in-depth, often long format, journal-
ism (Masurier 2015). Thereby they hope to maintain those news consumers who have not
tuned out yet or maybe even reengage those currently avoiding the news. The central
point for this movement is not that all news should be slow news. Importantly, we
need both fast and slow journalism for the news to fulfil its role in democracy.
However, with an in-depth format, slow news can support some of the key journalistic
roles in society, such as providing overview of complex issues and facilitating an under-
standing of different opinions in an increasing pluralistic society (Craig 2016).
10 M. SKOVSGAARD AND K. ANDERSEN

Solutions to Unintentional News Avoidance

While intentional news avoidance is based on a dislike for news, unintentional news avoid-
ance is based on structural changes in the media supply, which makes it easier for the con-
sumer to choose media content in line with his or her preferences. This also means that
solutions must come from actors that can influence these structures, for instance man-
agers in the media business or policy makers, rather than journalists themselves.
Iyengar (2017) illustrates the structural changes and what he calls “the demise of the
inadvertent audience” by referring to a substantial decrease in audiences for American
network news since the heyday with sixty million daily viewers—of whom a significant
share watched the news because of the entertainment programmes surrounding the
news shows. Of course, time cannot be rolled back to the prime of audience figures for
television news, but the potential for inadvertent audiences has not completely vanished
with the explosion in media supply. Andersen, Skovsgaard, and Pedersen (2019) show that
scheduling a news broadcast in connection to the hugely popular entertainment show The
X Factor more than doubled the audience for the Danish television news on Friday nights
over the last decade. Moreover, the largest increases were found among the young and
the ones with the lowest news preference. These results confirm that opportunity struc-
tures conducive to inadvertent news audiences are not only characterized by providing
several news broadcasts in attractive time slots, but also scheduling news adjacent to
entertainment programming with broad appeal, which is often how public service broad-
casters schedule their programmes (Andersen, Skovsgaard, and Pedersen 2019; Curran
et al. 2009; Esser et al. 2012).
Even though inadvertent audiences for television news can still be generated in today’s
media environment, one caveat is that people are increasingly moving from flow televi-
sion to streaming. This movement is one of the reasons public service broadcasters
have embarked on creating public service algorithms that not only propose content
based on big data of people’s personal preferences, but also on what the broadcaster
itself find relevant for the users (EBU 2016). Such an algorithm could allow the public
service broadcasters to build a new potential for inadvertent news audiences even in
times of streaming and digital media content, but how substantial the potential is
remains to be seen.
However, public service broadcasters are not the only ones with the potential to gen-
erate inadvertent news audiences. A field experiment varied the mix of news and enter-
tainment on the internet portal Yahoo! JAPAN and showed that presenting news
alongside entertainment increased learning, especially among the individuals with a
high relative entertainment preference (Kobayashi, Hoshino, and Suzuki 2017). This
finding indicates that mixing entertainment and news on an internet portal generates
inadvertent news exposure. Other studies indicate that social media also have the poten-
tial to generate inadvertent news audiences based on the mix between news and enter-
tainment (e.g., Bode 2016; Boczkowski, Mitchelstein, and Matassi 2018; Fletcher and
Nielsen 2018; Valeriani and Vaccari 2016). These studies suggest that social media can
serve as a gateway to news for the less interested, and that the fear of news-less filter
bubbles created by social media algorithms might be exaggerated. However, while
public service broadcasters have an obligation to reach people with information of societal
relevance, this is not the case for social media or internet portals. This difference became
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 11

evident when Facebook recently changed the algorithm for the newsfeeds to give higher
priority to posts from family and friends and less to public content (Mosseri 2018).
The examples above illustrate that it is possible to find new avenues for generating
inadvertent audiences in today’s high-choice news environment. However, this depends
on policymakers or editors and news managers to generate opportunity structures
based on the idea that it is beneficial to society to get people with a relative higher pre-
ference for entertainment than news to be inadvertently exposed to the news.

A Model for Causes and Potential Solutions to News Avoidance

Above we have argued that intentional and unintentional news avoidance are driven by
different causes and hence require different solutions pushed by different actors. In this
section, we sum up our discussion by presenting a model structuring the different
causes and potential solutions to news avoidance.
Our model is illustrated in Figure 1. We have argued that news avoidance can be either
intentional or unintentional. Intentional news avoidance is based on a specific dislike for
news that leads people to actively turn their backs to the news. We highlight three
different potential reasons for this type of dislike for the news, that is the negative
focus of news, a lack of trust in news, or news overload. Unintentional news avoidance
is not based on a specific dislike for news, but rather on the relative content preferences
of an individual. If a person has a higher preference for other content than for news, it will
be much easier for this person to find content that matches his or her preferences as
media supply increases. In other words, people with a higher preference for entertainment
than for news will be inclined to seek out entertainment and unintentionally avoid news. In
turn, algorithms that are built to cater to people’s preferences will also push such an indi-
vidual towards more entertainment content and less news.

Figure 1. Causes and solutions for intentional and unintentional news avoidance.
12 M. SKOVSGAARD AND K. ANDERSEN

These different types of and causes for news avoidance require different solutions. We
argue that changing the selection and presentation of news stories can help solve inten-
tional news avoidance. Making the news selection and presentation more fact-based,
transparent, constructive, contextual, and slow will potentially prevent some from
turning their backs to the news and reengage the ones who have already done so.
Such changes will help overcome perceptions that there is an overload of negative
news, which cannot be trusted. The responsibility of changing the selection and presen-
tation of news mainly lies with the news media and the journalists.
Reengaging unintentional news avoiders requires a change towards opportunity struc-
tures more conducive to inadvertent news exposure. As these news avoiders are not
actively turning their backs to the news, this solution focuses on lowering the cost or
the effort of being exposed to news as well as increasing the effort needed to avoid the
news. This goal can be achieved by creating opportunity structures where news is avail-
able at attractive time slots and platforms placed in connection to entertainment
content. As media content is increasingly consumed online, algorithms that aim at
mixing entertainment content with news content can also be a way to create opportunity
structures that are more conducive to inadvertent news exposure. While such opportunity
structures can be created by almost all types of news organizations, the literature shows
that public service media are often the ones with best conditions and incentives to do so
(e.g., Curran et al. 2009; Shehata et al. 2015). The implication is that while media organiz-
ations have a responsibility for their individual choices on their content mix, a large part of
the responsibility for the opportunity structures for inadvertent news exposure in a media
system lies with the policy makers.

Discussion
The presented model with intentional and unintentional news avoidance, their causes and
potential solutions developed in this article offers a vantage point for future research on
news avoidance. It serves as a foundation for more conceptual rigour when addressing
questions concerning news avoidance, and it highlights a number of research agendas
connected to news avoidance, which deserve further attention. For example, conditions
for and effects of constructive journalism, journalistic credibility, slow journalism, and
opportunity structures for inadvertent news exposure.
Even though the model invites systematic thinking about news avoidance, it also raises
questions that are important to consider. First, the model cannot capture the full complex-
ity of news avoidance and its causes and solutions. Any useful model must reduce reality,
highlight patterns, and give a systematic overview over a broader phenomenon. Thus, a
specific individual’s news avoidance might not fit cleanly into the boxes of the model
as it can have several different causes that might not be easily disentangled. The two
types of news avoidance should therefore be understood as ideal types that aid concep-
tual and systematic thinking about the concept. For instance, there is a fine line between
intentional news avoidance due to news overload, where the individual actively averts the
news, and unintentional news avoidance based on a plethora of content on display that
leads an individual to opt for entertainment rather than news. In this situation, we need
to know the exact constellation of preferences to determine whether the news avoidance
is intentional or unintentional. This can be difficult because people are not always able to
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 13

clearly express their preferences, and preferences are not clean and stable constructs (e.g.,
Swart, Peters, and Broersma 2017). The potential volatility of preferences stresses that
news avoidance can also be a dynamic as well as a stable behaviour. Factors such as
upbringing, socialization, education, existing political knowledge, and interest are
known to affect an individual’s level of news exposure, and they can indirectly cause
news avoidance through their impact on preferences. These structural factors add a
rather stable layer to preferences and potentially constitute a “habitual” news avoidance
that is the hardest to reverse because it would demand a broad societal effort. Other
factors that impact preferences, however, are less stable, such as the individual’s mood,
utility of the content, and the gratifications pursued (Webster 2014). These factors can
lead to “situational” or periodic news avoidance that will more easily be affected by
changes in selection and presentation of news.
The distinction between “habitual” and “situational” feeds into the normative question
whether we should worry about news avoidance in the first place. While news exposure
has a positive impact on political knowledge and engagement (e.g., Aalberg and Curran
2012; Norris 2000), some types of news have been shown to make people more cynical
and pessimistic (e.g., Boukes and Vliegenthart 2017; Cappella and Jamieson 1997). Thus,
news avoidance can have both negative and positive implications. However, changing
the selection and presentation of news to reduce news avoidance, for instance, by select-
ing less negative news or by presenting solutions to the reported problems, may also
reduce some of the negative effects generated by news exposure.
The extent to which news avoidance is a democratic problem cannot be determined by
empirical studies of the effects of news alone. It also depends on the conception of democ-
racy. In participatory or deliberative conceptions of democracy, on the one hand, citizens
must be knowledgeable and must consistently be mobilized. Avoiding news will lead to
less mobilization and less knowledge, and in these conceptions of democracy news avoid-
ance is an obvious problem. On the other hand, in a competitive democracy, citizens
should be mobilized to vote at regular competitive elections where they must have
enough information to choose between different politicians (Strömbäck 2005). The impli-
cation is that periodic or situational news avoidance might not be a huge problem if the
individual is ready to “jump back in” during election time, during reporting on political mis-
conduct, or in the case of other significant news (e.g., Strömbäck 2017; Toff and Nielsen
2018). This is what Schudson (1998) labelled the monitorial citizens. Habitual news avoid-
ance, however, would still present a problem because habitual news avoiders would be
unlikely to possess the information and knowledge needed to assess the political alterna-
tives in an election.
The negative democratic effects of news avoidance can also be alleviated if people
manage to stay informed in other ways. We defined news as novel information about rela-
tively recent affairs of public interest or importance provided by journalists. In today’s media
environment, however, political information is also prominent in other genres, such as
satire, talk shows, and fictional political dramas (Holbert 2005). It is possible that people
to a certain extent can update themselves via these genres without being exposed to
news, but evidence is mixed (e.g., Baek and Wojcieszak 2009; Becker and Bode 2018),
and the effects seem to depend on a positive motivation for news in the first place
(Feldman 2013).
14 M. SKOVSGAARD AND K. ANDERSEN

Nevertheless, these findings highlight that it is important to take into account how
people process, make sense of, and engage with the information they encounter, be it
news or other content that potentially carries political information (Swart, Peters, and
Broersma 2017). Some news avoiders tend to rely on a “news find me” approach (Gil de
Zúñiga, Weeks, and Ardèvol-Abreu 2017; Toff and Nielsen 2018). That is, if an issue
covered by the news media is significant enough, it will find a way to them because
they rely on people in their network to keep them informed (e.g., Andersen and
Hopmann 2018; Druckman, Levendusky, and McLain 2018). Obviously, this two-step
flow demands that the people passing information on follow the news rather closely in
the first place, and that the receivers are able to process and put into context the infor-
mation that is encountered this way.
The questions raised above illustrate that news avoidance is a complex concept in need
of systematic conceptualization and empirical study. The model developed and presented
in this article provides a framework for thinking systematically about news avoidance, its
causes, and its potential solutions, and the discussion highlights some of the important
questions that empirical studies based on the model can help answer.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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