NAIROBI, Kenya – A growing number of people are actively avoiding the news, describing it as depressing, relentless, and boring, according to a new global study.
The 2024 Digital News Report by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute highlighted a significant rise in news avoidance, with almost four in ten (39p.c) people worldwide reporting they sometimes or often avoid the news. This is a sharp increase from 29p.c in 2017.
The report suggested that the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, have contributed to this trend.
“The news agenda has obviously been particularly difficult in recent years,” said Nic Newman, the report’s lead author. “You’ve had the pandemic [and] wars, so it’s a fairly natural reaction for people to turn away from the news, whether it’s to protect their mental health or simply wanting to get on with the rest of their lives.”
Conducted by YouGov, the survey gathered responses from 94,943 adults across 47 countries between January and February 2024.
The results showed a marked decline in global interest in the news, with only 46p.c of people saying they were very or extremely interested, down from 63p.c in 2017. In the UK, interest in news has nearly halved since 2015.
Despite this decline, the report noted a slight increase in trust in news during the pandemic, though it remains lower than pre-pandemic levels.
In the UK, trust in the news edged up to 36p.c this year but is still significantly lower than before the Brexit referendum in 2016.
The study also highlighted a dramatic shift in how people consume news, with traditional sources like TV and print seeing sharp declines.
In the UK, 73p.c of people now get their news online, compared with 50p.c for TV and just 14p.c for print.
Facebook remains the most important social media platform for news, although it is in decline.
TikTok, however, has seen a surge in use, especially among young people, and has overtaken X (formerly Twitter) for the first time. Thirteen percent of people use TikTok for news, rising to 23p.c among 18-24 year-olds globally.
Video is becoming an increasingly important medium for online news, particularly short news videos that resonate more with younger audiences.
“Consumers are adopting video because it is easy to use, and provides a wide range of relevant and engaging content,” said Newman.
However, many traditional newsrooms, rooted in text-based culture, struggle to adapt their storytelling to this format.
News podcasting remains a bright spot for publishers, though it attracts primarily well-educated audiences and remains a minority activity overall.
Amidst these shifts, there is growing public suspicion about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in news reporting, especially for hard news stories like politics or war.
The report indicated that while there is some comfort with AI handling behind-the-scenes tasks such as transcription and translation, there is resistance to AI replacing journalists in the field.
