By Susanne Fengler
In an era of polycrisis, polarisation and digital upheaval, the media usage patterns of audiences are also undergoing profound changes. News avoidance and news fatigue are increasingly raising questions about citizens’ social and political engagement in various political contexts and media systems. Several panels at the annual conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), held in Cape Town in early June 2026, also addressed these issues.
The relationship between the public and journalism is changing
The panel ‘Audience Engagement and Disengagement in the Global Context’ examined how the public’s relationship with journalism is transforming in the face of fragmented public spheres, growing news avoidance and changing media habits. The presentations combined theoretical reflections on engagement with empirical studies on news avoidance, news perception and well-being. It became clear that audience behaviour is increasingly understood as active, selective and context-dependent – no longer merely as passive consumption or non-consumption of news.
Bernadette Uth presented a conceptual overview in her paper “Mapping the Landscape of Audience Engagement”. She demonstrated that “audience engagement” is now defined in very different ways: as emotional attachment, active participation, algorithmic interaction or an economic usage strategy. Research therefore oscillates between normative notions of a democratic public sphere and platform-driven logics of digital visibility. Engagement no longer appears merely as a journalistic goal, but increasingly as a measurable platform resource. At the same time, Uth highlighted key challenges: the heavy reliance of journalistic interactions on platforms, unclear definitions of terms, and tensions between economic attention and the democratic public sphere.
Tali Aharoni, Amy Ross Arguedas, Sayan Banerjee, Camila Mont’Alverne, Benjamin Toff, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Richard Fletcher presented a cross-cultural approach in their study ‘Having Fun and Learning Something’. The researchers investigated, across four countries, how users define what counts as ‘news’. Particularly interesting was the finding that many respondents no longer associated news exclusively with traditional political reporting. Entertainment, practical information, explanatory formats and content relevant to everyday life were also increasingly perceived as journalistically relevant. This is shifting the boundaries of what an audience understands by “news”: news was defined less by its institutional origin than by its perceived usefulness, relevance and personal relatability.
News Avoidance: More Than Democratic Apathy
The paper “The Politics of Disengagement” by Renee Barnes, Shangyuan Wu and Melissa Innes offered a particularly nuanced analysis. The study challenged the often simplistic notion that news avoidance is primarily an expression of political disinterest or democratic apathy. Instead, the researchers interpreted it as a form of ‘contextual boundary-setting’ – that is, as an active strategy to regulate emotional strain, information overload and trust issues when engaging with political news.
At the heart of the study was a theoretical model that described news avoidance as a dynamic process within specific social contexts. The researchers distinguished between different forms of engagement – ranging from active and moderate to professional or incidental contact with news – as well as various forms of avoidance: complete, selective, temporary or platform-specific news avoidance.
Various strategies and causes for news avoidance
The analysis of specific avoidance strategies was particularly important. Participants described highly active ways of managing their media consumption: these included muting political content, filtering and unfollowing accounts, deliberately skipping headlines, limiting news consumption to specific times, or deliberately switching platforms. News avoidance thus appeared less as a passive withdrawal and more as a form of conscious self-regulation within a media environment perceived as stressful.
The researchers also identified various causes of these avoidance practices. These included emotional and psychological strain, trust issues, negative moods, perceived sensationalism, and practical overwhelm caused by a constant flow of information. It was particularly interesting to note that these motives varied in intensity depending on the national context.
Users are setting new demands on journalism
The comparative findings between Australia and Singapore illustrated these differences particularly clearly: in both countries, selective rather than complete news avoidance predominated. At the same time, however, different cultural and political priorities emerged. Australian participants expressed strong criticism of media bias, sensationalism, negativity and the repetition of political conflicts. Here, news avoidance was frequently linked to emotional exhaustion, conflict avoidance and political mistrust.
Respondents in Singapore, by contrast, were more accepting of the factual accuracy of political reporting, but criticised a lack of analytical depth, limited diversity of perspectives and restricted relevance. There, avoidance behaviour stemmed more frequently from efficiency considerations, emotional strain and the impression of limited differentiation in content. To encourage a return to more active news consumption, participants called for more detailed analyses and a greater variety of perspectives.
A particularly key finding was that, despite avoidance strategies, political news continued to be regarded as socially relevant. Most participants did not reject political information outright, but rather set out specific conditions for renewed engagement: more balanced reporting, greater transparency, solution-oriented journalism, stronger local relevance and more nuanced perspectives. News avoidance thus appeared less as a democratic withdrawal than as an expression of disappointed expectations of political journalism.
“Correlates to News Non-Use”: The reasons for news abstinence are manifold
Erin Wertz and Magdalena Wojcieszak adopted a more systematic approach in their paper “Correlates to News Non-Use”. The study presented a systematic review of factors associated with news abstinence. It became clear that news non-use cannot by any means be explained by a single cause. Rather, political attitudes, education, trust, social milieus, platform dynamics and emotional stress interact. Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that news avoidance is becoming increasingly normalised and can no longer be clearly explained along traditional demographic lines.
The session concluded with the paper “The Social Side of News” by Hannah Greber, Elena Broda, Sophie Lecheler and Cristian Vaccari. The study examined the link between news consumption and well-being and challenged the widespread assumption that news consumption is fundamentally harmful to mental health.
The results presented painted a much more nuanced picture. The researchers showed that different types of media have very different relationships with well-being. BBC consumption, for example, was associated with a lower frequency of negative physical stress effects. Commercial media consumption, by contrast, sometimes showed the opposite patterns. At the same time, the use of traditional legacy media correlated more strongly with social well-being and life satisfaction.
Neither traditional nor social media necessarily harm mental health
Particularly interesting was the finding that social media use could not be assessed as exclusively negative. Rather, the study suggested that, under certain conditions, social media can also have positive associations with well-being. Overall, the researchers found only limited evidence of a general harmful effect of news consumption on mental wellbeing.
The researchers therefore argued that we should look at ‘news’ less in isolation and take the entire media environment more into account. It is not political news alone, but the structure of digital media environments as a whole that influences emotional experiences and social orientation.
Across the board, the panel made it clear that audience behaviour in digital journalism must increasingly be understood as active, selective and reflective. Engagement and disengagement no longer appear as simple opposites, but as flexible strategies for finding one’s bearings within complex media environments. News avoidance was seen less as a democratic deficit and more as an expression of changing expectations regarding the relevance, credibility and emotional acceptability of journalistic communication.
This article, “News Avoidance, News Fatigue: New Insights at ICA 2026“, was originally published by the European Journalism Observatory on June 18 2026.