Whether we look for it or not, news finds us

January 19, 2012

Many Internet users come across news unintentionally, says research cited by the website of Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab. Borchuluun Yadamsuren, a fellow at Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute who studies how people receive information and how it makes them feel, reportedly has identified four types of news consumers: avid news readers, news avoiders, news “encounterers” and crowd surfers.

Avid news readers visit news sites multiple times per day and tend to trust the media. Monitoring the news helps them feel empowered and informed, while also relieving their boredom and giving them a break from work. At the other extreme, news avoiders choose not to visit news sites because they’re sensitive to negative stories and tend to distrust the mainstream press. But even avoiders still see news incidentally, for example through the Yahoo! portal.
 
A third category, those whom Yadamsuren calls “news encounterers,” neither search for nor avoid news, but trust that important news will find them one way or another. “Crowd surfers,” meanwhile, rely on friends and online communities for news, and tend to mistrust the viewpoints of journalists and the mainstream “filter.” Yadamsuren has found that when people unexpectedly come across positive news it can feel like discovering treasure, but stumbling upon bad news can amplify the feelings associated with bad news. Some readers react negatively to incidental exposure regardless of the content, because to them it feels like a distraction or a waste of time. — Greg Beaubien

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