A “news finds me” attitude can turn readers away from political and science news

Many adults in the United States do not actively follow traditional television, print, or online news outlets because they believe the information will find them through social media or their social networks. One in three adults in the United States maintains a “news finds me” (NFM) mentality, which can lead to less political knowledge, less interest in politics and more political cynicism, according to Penn State researchers.

Researchers at the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications conducted a study to understand the behavior of these people when given the opportunity to choose news stories to read instead of waiting for the news to find them. They learned that when given a choice, people who believe the news will find them choose to read light news, such as entertainment or sports, more often than hard news, such as politics or science.

The findings are published in the journal Communication studies by Chris Skurka, Assistant Professor of Media Studies; Mengqi Liao, PhD student; and Homero Gil De Zúñiga, Distinguished Professor of Media Studies.

Thanks to algorithmic news management and the ability to view shared news stories on social media, it’s easier than ever to take a passive stance when accessing news – and the news a user does access is often delivered through a narrow, tailor-made view . According to the researchers, this passive use is troubling because an informed citizenry is vital to a successful democracy, but NFM people may believe they are more informed than they actually are.

“We started by talking about the importance of ordinary citizens being informed and aware of current events,” Skurka said. “I think many political scientists and political communication researchers would agree that to stay informed about current events, you have to actively follow the news.”

Among longitudinal studies that address the societal consequences of NFM adoption, researchers note a paucity of “in-the-moment” research that examines the behavior of these NFM individuals when they encounter news online. They predicted that, given the choice between hard news and soft news, people with NFM perceptions would choose to engage with soft news more often than with hard news.

To elucidate the mechanisms underlying online news consumption behavior, the researchers developed a mock news website that resembled the homepage of the Associated Press. More than 530 participants were tracked as they viewed one of three versions of the site, which presented a headline, image, and lead for 13 real news articles.

Each participant took a pretest that collected demographic information and measured participants’ NFM beliefs. To determine the level of NFM, the researchers asked the participants to answer a series of questions using a 10-point scale. The pretest included questions such as how strongly they agreed with statements such as “I rely on my friends to tell me what’s important when the news is happening” and “I can stay well informed even when I’m not actively following the news.” The responses determine the level of acceptance of NFM among the participants.

Participants were then shown both hard and soft news stories in random order. Researchers define hard news as stories about politics, business, science, and COVID-19. The pandemic was top news at the time of data collection. Soft news included celebrities, entertainment and sports. Each dummy site included 10 hard news and three soft news. The researchers observed which stories were clicked on and the time spent on each article.

“We mostly gave people hard news options to choose from,” Skurka said. “This was not a self-report. We measured what they click on and what they actually spend their time on in a tightly controlled environment. We wanted to understand how this perception of ‘the news will find me’ relates to actual engagement with the news.”

The researchers found a positive relationship between NFM perception and soft news engagement. According to their results, almost all participants clicked on hard news, but NFM participants—roughly 25% of the sample—were more likely to select soft news. Of the characteristics the researchers looked at, which included demographics, political interests, and news consumption habits, the NFM most consistently predicted level of news exposure.

“For every one-unit increase on the NFM scale, the odds of clicking on a soft news item increased by 13 percent, and the time spent on soft news items increased by five seconds,” Skurka said. “Soft news was vastly outnumbered by the presence of hard news in AP’s fake news environments. You can imagine that if you take this out of the controlled environment where soft news is even more abundant, NFM will play an even bigger role.”

The research also offers insight into NFM mindsets based on the news genres represented on AP sites. Individuals with the perception that science news will find them are less likely to engage with the science news used on fake news pages.

“These findings suggest that when it comes to science news, NFM means that the individual does not believe they should pay attention to climate news or current science updates because they will get to them,” Skurka said.

According to Skurka, the results show a relationship between individuals with strong political perceptions of NFM and less engagement with political news, but the relationship is not consistent across all fake websites. The researchers found that for one of the fake sites, strong political NFM did not mean that these participants engaged less with political news.

“We’re not sure why this is, but we think that whether NFM leads to lower news engagement depends on the specific stories in question, as well as the surrounding stories competing for news users’ attention,” Skurka said.

Skurka said more research is needed to test the uptake of NFM using different news content and different news formats, including social media feeds. Other future steps include using this type of research to develop interventions that can help NFM readers become more engaged with hard news.

“We have to be cautious about the conditions under which this relationship might play out,” he said. “We hope to unpack this in future work.”