Abstract
This article seeks to contribute to theorizing the dynamics of incidental news consumption. Through an analysis of 200 semi-structured interviews with people in Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the United States, we show that intentionality in news consumption can be viewed on a continuum, which goes from deliberately setting apart time to access the news on specific outlets to skimming through unsought-for news on social and broadcast media, with intermediate practices such as respondents setting up an environment where they are more or less likely to encounter news. Drawing on structuration theory, this article conceptualizes incidental news in the context of the wider media environment and across multiple levels of analysis and explores how individual agency and social structure interact to shape information acquisition practices.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1136-1153 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Journalism |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 1 2020 |
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 17H01833) and Global Partnership Fund of the Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University.
Keywords
- Audience studies
- broadcast news
- incidental news consumption
- online journalism
- social media
- transnational media studies
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)