Nachrichtennutzung und Nachrichtenwissen junger Menschen
Final Report Abstract
The overarching interest that we have pursued with this project is the quality of democracy. Besides many structural conditions this quality is primarily affected by the performance of its main actors. We have looked at two of these actors, the citizens and the media, the latter as the key supplier of news on politics and public affairs. Starting from recent results about a declining interest in the public sphere we have been particularly interested in the younger generation. We wanted to assess how they, compared to other age groups, are aware of the news and what information sources they use. Our study has four methodological features that make it distinct from most other research in this area. First, we have used a normative approach to identify the news items that the “good citizen” (Schudson, 1998) should know. We are convinced that there is no alternative to such a normative assessment if the quality of democracy should not depend on a relativistic “anything goes” principle where the newest love affairs of celebrities are deemed as important as discussions about possible solutions for an international financial crisis. Second, we have measured exposure to the news, news sources, and knowledge of the news in a concrete way, based on the news of the day over a period of 30 days – and not with general questions yielding by far exaggerated and distorted results. Third, we have combined a large survey with 1,800 respondents with a dual content analysis of 3,102 sources offered by the media and/or sources used by the respondents. Fourth, we have been able to apply a plethora of independent and intervening variables on both the citizens’ and the media’s side in order to come closer to the complexity in the real world of news production, consumption, and learning. The complexity of the design and, as a consequence, of the data sets plus the fact that a certain proportion of the news sources could not be retrieved for content analysis turned out as major challenges for the analysis. However, following clear paths of descriptive and explicative analyses we were able to answer most of the research questions derived from previous literature. We deem out results as of high relevance for understanding the current state of political communication and for shaping political education and policy-making. While the overall awareness of top political news is average, young people show an alarmingly low interest in political news and, as a consequence, lack the knowledge that one would expect of a “good citizen” a lively democracy. The fact that only 24 percent of the adolescents and 34 percent of the young adults had heard about the two most important news items of the previous day, and that – based on the total population – only 8, respectively 17 percent had bothered to receive at least some additional information on both topics falls by far short from what one can expect. Plus, these results have to be seen in the light of a higher than average duty to keep informed and political interest in our sample! The sources, however, do not differ very much between the age groups. Internet and social media play only a marginal role for daily news information, even for the younger generation. In terms of quality of the news it is the profession, not the platform that counts. Professional media, and here predominantly the press, and semi-professional media (that more or less cover the professional media) offer a much higher quality than blogs covering the dame issues. However, the individual quality of the news used by the recipient does not much affect his or her news knowledge. Instead, it is important to get in contact with the news and additional information in the first place. Our study leads to the conclusion that journalism is the „knowledge profession“ of our times (Hjarvard, 2008) – but the knowledge that it provides needs a broader audience than it finds today.
Publications
- (2010): News Use and News Knowledge in Times of the Internet/Consumo y Conocimiento de las Noticias en los tiempos de Internet. El Consejo Latinoamericano de Acreditación de la Educación en Periodismo (CLAEP)/Medienprogramm der Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Merida, Mexico, Nov 6, 2010
Donsbach, W.
- (2011): Everything but the News. Despite the Boom of Social Media the Youth’s Daily News Consumption still Relys on Traditional News Sources. Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Political Communication Division, Boston, May 26–30, 2011
Donsbach, W., Rentsch, M. & Walter, C.
- (2011): Have You Heard about…? Measuring Political Knowledge and News Sources on a Day-to-Day Basis. WAPOR Regional Seminar “Transnational Connections-Challenges and Opportunities in Communication and Public Opinion Research”, Segovia, Spain, March 17–18, 2011
Donsbach, W.
- (2011): Nothing to Deliberate on? News Knowledge in the Modern Communication Environment. Conference “Political Communication in the Era of New Technologies”. Polish Communication Association and University of Warsaw, Warsaw, September 22, 2011
Donsbach, W.
- (2011): „Hast du schon gehört…?“ Die Rolle der interpersonalen Kommunikation bei der täglichen Nachrichtenrezeption von Jugendlichen. 3rd colloquium of the Nachwuchsnetzwerk politische Kommunikation (NapoKo), Dresden, June 23–25, 2011
Walter, C.
