ABSTRACT
As we are now rounding up our second year with COVID-19, studies have provided insight into the pandemic's impact on news practices around the world. However, most of these accounts describe data from the early months of the outbreak. Further research is needed to explore the shapes that news repertoires might have settled into in the wake of the pandemic. By comparing data from a Latent Class Analysis of news repertoires using the Digital News Report 2020 and 2021, this paper contributes to extant knowledge of the pandemic's impact on news use in Flanders. We find that users were significantly more likely to adopt Casual rather than Limited news repertoires in 2021, pointing to a potential growth in news habits of users with a previously limited repertoire.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus pandemic sent tremors throughout the news landscape. While the onset of the pandemic appeared to significantly increase news hunger, soon after, studies reported an uptick in what they termed "coronablocking": the conscious avoidance of coronavirus related news. Younger age groups in particular appeared more likely to engage in coronablocking. This article seeks to contribute to extant research by providing a textured account of how and why young news users avoid the news. To explore these questions, we conducted 25 in-depth interviews with Belgian news users under the age of 35. We propose that news avoidance practices are fluid, as news avoidance was often preceded by moments of increased news consumption, and inherently connected to the specific spatiotemporal context of users and enacted within their broader media repertoire. In our analysis, we discuss the user-identified characteristics which lead users to a 'tipping point', at which point they avoided the news to varying degrees by reconfiguring their media repertoire. Three types of reconfigurations are identified: tuning out news content, regulating the flow of information, and controlling the tone of voice, all of which underline users' agency in shaping their repertoires to avoid the news. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journalism Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)