Why millions of Americans avoid the news — and what it means for the election

But a big part of news consumption is really social, and depends on what we call news communities. These groups are a really important piece of people’s relationship with news. They reinforce the habits around following news and the social benefits people get from paying attention to news. It’s hard to know how to create a news community where one doesn’t already exist, but it might be good to try.

This is probably not going to come from political coverage but from other areas of journalism that people are both more interested in and feel less divided about. I’m thinking of things like sports, culture, or food. If you develop habits and a relationship with news audiences around these areas of coverage, the hope is that then they’ll feel a sense of familiarity with the organization and they’ll turn to you for specific information as well.

We often exaggerate how much of an impact this actually has. But the anxiety about the election is fueling that kind of concern. Today we have more voices in the media in general, and this is not just on cable news but also on social media. There’s no lack of places where you can hear media criticism. In some ways, that’s very healthy compared to 40 years ago, when all the news looked fairly similar and was basically decided by a small group of old white guys.

It’s a good thing that we have a much more pluralistic media environment, but it also means that there are many different perspectives on every story in the news. So it’s also easier than ever to find critiques of why coverage is wrong and inaccurate. The sense that it’s harder to know the truth is also fuelling some people’s sense that it’s safer to just not trust any news at all. That is part of the way in which the digital environment is also fueling some of that generalized skepticism and distrust.

The analogy we use in the book is that it’s like trying to tune into the fourth season of “Game of Thrones” without knowing who these people are, or what difference any of this makes. For a lot of people, that’s their feeling about the news.

These people are not the primary audiences that most news organizations are trying to serve. They tend to be much more focused on the people who are already spending a lot of time with them, and trying to convert them into paying subscribers. They are not even focused on serving these more evasive audiences.

A lot of the news avoiders we interviewed who were not voting would often point to this feeling that they just didn’t think they knew enough to vote. They have the sense of having no agency. News consumption and political engagement are intertwined and they reinforce each other in this kind of spiral. From a public policy standpoint, it’s hard to see what’s going to be most effective at solving that puzzle.

You do see differences by country, though. Places that have a lot more investment in public service media have much higher rates of engagement with news and more political engagement. That’s currently a non-starter in the U.S. But that’s one solution that some say is increasingly necessary, given the market failure around local news.

Eduardo Suárez is head of editorial at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, where this story was originally published.