News Consumption Patterns in Belgium

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Pascal Verhoest, whose central question is about how diverse news consumption is. The approach here is not focussing on the diversity of topics, sources, viewpoints, and location, but to examine the time spent using news sources and relate them to social-demographic, ideological, and psycho-social factors (such as political knowledge and self-efficacy).

The project used an electronic media diary system to gather data from Belgium on the time spent in engaging with the news, gathering information on primary activities (e.g. work), secondary activities (e.g. taking a break), and the platform and title of any news sources being engaged with in such activities. Overall, some 460 participants completed the study.

Diversity in news consumption was measured in terms of the variety of categories encountered (the total number); the disparity in these categories (the maximum distance between them); and the balance in the distribution of consumption across these categories (the intensity of engagement with each category).

There were no significant patterns in the relations between the different news titles encountered – this means that there is no evidence at all in this study for the ‘filter bubble’ hypothesis, as no ideological or other separations emerged. Variety was relatively high, with 60% of participants engaging with 4-6 news titles on average, and only 13% consuming three or fewer news titles. The amount of time spent on these different sources is relatively balanced, too, and this is relatively constant independent of the number of news titles people consulted.

There was some evidence of distinction between high-brow and low-brow titles, however: political knowledge, political interest, and ideological alignment all pushed users towards high-brow titles, and this was especially pronounced for politically progressive users. However, while income and education, political interest, and internal political efficacy affected what hard or soft news content was consumed, ideology played no significant role here.