The final session on this first full day of IAMCR 2023 is on how audiences consume (or perhaps engage with) disinformation, and the first presenter is Hillel Nossek, with a focus on news consumption by Jewish youth in Israel. He describes this group as ‘newsers’: new news consumers. What characterises this group, then?
The study built on a representative nationwide survey of 673 young people of age 15-18 (i.e. not quite of voting age just yet) at state and state-religious schools; questionnaires were distributed during school hours to ensure participation. The top news medium for this group was social media, followed by YouTube, smartphone apps, search engines, and finally television – in other words, nobody reads newspapers any more.
Some 77% of youth are frequently exposed to news on social media – throughout the day, or 2-3 times per day; they also frequently use smartphone apps, YouTube videos, search engines, and TV (the latter also via streaming media). Blogs, podcasts, print newspapers, and radio played only a very limited role.
These youth also actively talked to friends about news stories face-to-face; communicated about the news through social media or WhatsApp; liked or recommended news stories; shared news stories through social media; or commented on news stories using social networks. Key news stories concerned news and security matters in Israel; news about education in Israel; health news; weather news; and news about politics and government in Israel. Notably, satirical news programmes also surfaced as a critical source of news in the study. (These results need to be read against the present-day political and security situation in Israel, of course.)
Many of these youth are quite active in community activities (also those that could be considered political), yet not in Israeli party politics: creating change in society is important to them, but this does not extend to active political engagement (leading some credence to Lazarsfeld & Merton’s ‘narcotisation’ theory). This engagement may be sharpened especially also by the current mass protests against the judicial changes proposed by the Netanyahu regime; and of course Israeli youths’ political and news interests may also be motivated by their impending compulsory army service, which is likely to commence soon after they leave school.
