Testing News Junkies’ Intrinsic Need for Orientation

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Justin Martin, whose interest is in news junkies – or people with a ‘need for orientation’ (NFO), which has traditionally been measured in a simplistic, US-centric way as interest in and uncertainty about the choices in US presidential elections. The present study replaces this with a new NFO scale that better explores news junkies’ intrinsic need for orientation (INFO).

The INFO scale asks four questions: whether people check the news first thing in the day; check the news during downtime; feel more connected to other people by keeping up with the news; and feel discomfort when not keeping up with the news. This correlates positively with heavy news use, but goes beyond volume of consumption only. The news junkies this identifies tend to be more interested in politics and foreign affairs than sports and entertainment; are more likely to vote; but don’t necessarily have better political knowledge. INFO is underpinned by uses and gratifications and self-determination theory: it is motivated by the need for autonomy, competence, and connectedness.

The project explored this with voters in the US, through a representative survey of some 2,000 US residents eight weeks ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. It found that partisan and decided voters reported higher INFO scores; that liberals had higher INFO scores than conservatives or moderates; that Biden voters had higher INFO scores than Trump voters; and that this was not driven simply by respondents’ overall interest in politics.

This departs from conventional NFO research: it found that indecision or lack of political affiliation did not produce higher scores; partisans and liberals indeed had higher INFO scores. INFO scores should therefore also be taken into account in studies of the relationship between news use and political variables. Finally, there is also a need to advance beyond these statistical analyses by conducting interviews with news junkies and news avoiders.