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Winner, 2025 Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award, International Journal of Press/Politics
Winner, 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
A small but growing number of people in many countries consistently avoid the news. They feel they do not have time for it, believe it is not worth the effort, find it irrelevant or emotionally draining, or do not trust the media, among other reasons. Why and how do people circumvent news? Which groups are more and less reluctant to follow the news? In what ways is news avoidance a problem—for individuals, for the news industry, for society—and how can it be addressed?
This groundbreaking book explains why and how so many people consume little or no news despite unprecedented abundance and ease of access. Drawing on interviews in Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States as well as extensive survey data, Avoiding the News examines how people who tune out traditional media get information and explores their “folk theories” about how news organizations work. The authors argue that news avoidance is about not only content but also identity, ideologies, and infrastructures: who people are, what they believe, and how news does or does not fit into their everyday lives. Because news avoidance is most common among disadvantaged groups, it threatens to exacerbate existing inequalities by tilting mainstream journalism even further toward privileged audiences. Ultimately, this book shows, persuading news-averse audiences of the value of journalism is not simply a matter of adjusting coverage but requires a deeper, more empathetic understanding of people’s relationships with news across social, political, and technological boundaries.
— Melissa Bell, publisher of Vox Media
News avoiders are one of the most neglected topics in communications research, yet listening to and understanding them may be absolutely crucial for the health of democratic culture. This precisely grounded, sociologically rigorous, and searching three-country study sets completely new standards for pursuing this elusive topic.
— Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science
This is a beautifully written book that teaches us so much about the nature of our relationships to news by looking in closely at the lives and understandings of people who choose to avoid it.
— Katherine Cramer, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This book is a wide-ranging investigation of not only the quantitative data about news avoidance but also, most importantly, the sentiments of those who have opted out of quality journalism. If journalists want to regain these readers, then it is crucial that we understand them first. This book serves as an important first step.
— Clara Jiménez Cruz, CEO of Maldita.es and chair of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network
A deep dive into the complicated reasons that people distrust the news. A must-read for any journalist who wants to serve the people, meaning all the people—not just their friends and colleagues.
— Amanda Ripley, Washington Post columnist
Highly recommended.
The novelty of this book lies in its exploration of consistent news avoidance and its implications for democracy, as well as its methodological contribution to the field of media studies. It offers an in-depth explanation of the phenomenon of news avoidance.
This book takes a key step toward trying to understand audiences who, quite simply, do not see journalistic work as essential.
This is a clearly written and thought-provoking book which will prove accessible for journalists as well as scholars.
Makes an important contribution to journalism studies by expanding the discussion on news consumption beyond traditional areas like trust in news and media literacy.
The book is a good read and makes a wholesome contribution to the literature.
Toff, Palmer, and Nielsen find and share personal answers to their questions, as well as patterns of behavior, socialization, and shared perceptions of what the news is and how it fails to serve everyone. The results, depending on the reader’s point of view and investments in the field of journalism, are at least worrying and perhaps even depressing. This said, the authors’ findings demand attention.
Benjamin Toff is assistant professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.
Ruth Palmer is associate professor of communication and digital media at IE University in Madrid and Segovia, Spain.
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and professor of political communication at the University of Oxford.
Acknowledgments
1. Is Ignorance Bliss?
2. Who Are Consistent News Avoiders?
3. Why News Avoiders Say They Don’t Use News
4. Identities: How Our Relationships to Communities Shape News Avoidance
5. Ideologies: How Beliefs About Politics Shape News Avoidance
6. Infrastructures: How Media Platforms and Pathways Shape News Avoidance
7. News for All the People?
Appendix A: Studying News Avoidance Using Interpretive Methods
Appendix B: Summary Tables Describing Study Participants
Appendix C: Interview Protocols for In-Depth Interviewing
Notes
Index