DAccording to the Reuters Institute’s “Digital News Report”, interest in news in Germany has declined slightly. 52 percent of those surveyed can agree with the statement that they are extremely and very interested in news, which is five percentage points less than last year.
In particular, interest in political information has fallen. While 51 percent said they were very interested in political news in 2021, the figure fell to 36 percent this year.
This is particularly evident in the 18 to 24 age group. Here only 19 percent express an interest in politics. However, the continuing stable use of media stands in the way of the declining interest shown in this way. 89 percent said they read, listen to or watch news content digitally or in print more than once a week, up from 92 percent in 2022.
wipe away messages
The study is part of an international project, which is coordinated by the Oxford-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and is being conducted simultaneously in 46 countries. The German responsibility fell to the Leibniz Institute for Media Research based in Hamburg. The participants were recruited from an online access panel and weighted according to the variables age, gender, region and level of education. In the opinion of the Reuters Institute, the results can claim to be representative for the German population with Internet access from the age of 18, but the sampling from the Internet creates a slight imbalance in the question areas relating to Internet use.
One aspect of reported news fatigue is news avoidance. Ten percent of all respondents stated that they often actively avoid messages. Julia Behr, co-author of the study, understands this as the tendency for news to be actively avoided, as she says in an interview with the FAZ. The authors of the study speak of this phenomenon if one could agree with the statements, either actively ignoring news, swiping them away on the screen of the user device unimpressed, or making a selection according to department and subject areas, news sources or usage times and locations. If you look at the topics that fall out of the grid due to the avoidance strategies, it is in particular the war in Ukraine (45 percent) and entertainment, health and sports news (36 percent).
Confidence in news processing and reporting in Germany has also fallen. At 43 percentage points, this is a low point since this question was included in the study design in 2015. Media users place the greatest trust in the main news formats of ARD and ZDF.
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