Abstract
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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | International Journal of Press/Politics |
| Early online date | 13 Jul 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| State | E-pub ahead of print - 13 Jul 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (grant number M18-0310:1).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
Keywords
- knowledge
- media effects
- misinformation
- news avoidance
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Sociology and Political Science
