For the past year we have been glued to the newsfeed. In this exercise we now call doomscrolling we keep on refreshing the news about the pandemic on and on. What does this do to our sanity? It might be helpful to actually avoid news nowadays.

In this inaugural episode of Keywords, Tali Aharoni, who is a PhD student at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem, tells about news avoidance. She has recently published a study with her colleagues on news avoiding youth in Israel. We will hear more about why the young israelis are avoiding news – not because of their lack of interest, but in fact, because they are too invested in what is going on around them.

In the bonus episode Tali tells us more about the methodology in the research we discuss.

Keywords: Audience studies; news avoidance; news consumption; qualitative interviews; texto-material perspective; young adults

• The article discussed in this episode

Aharoni, T., Kligler-Vilenchik, N., Tenenboim-Weinblatt, K. (2021), ‘Be Less of a Slave to the News’: A Texto-Material Perspective on News Avoidance among Young Adults. Journalism studies (London, England). 22 (1), 42–59.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1852885

This study is part of the cross-national research project NET (News, Entertainment, and Technology). Neta Kligler-Vilenchik and Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt are the co-authors of Tai Aharoni's study. The NET research members are Pablo J. Boczkowski, Kaori Hayashi, Eugenia Mitchelstein, and Mikko Villi.  

• The study on incidental news consumption mentioned in the episode:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464884920915355

• Dear listener: I want to hear from you!

For comments, feedback or suggestions on articles for future episodes, please reach out to me on Twitter @rasmuswilhelm or by mailing me on rasmus.kyllonen@helsinki.fi

• About the host

Rasmus is a master’s student at the University of Helsinki. He is doing his major in journalism and communication with a minor in pedagogy. Before his studies he worked both as a journalist and as a news designer at various newspapers and magazines in Finland.

• Disclaimer

The articles showcased on Keywords are all published in scientific journals that have received an official classification (level 1, 2 or 3) by the Publication Forum. This means the publications are always peer-reviewed. For more information on the academic classification criteria: https://julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/evaluations/classification-criteria

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