“News comes across when I’m in a moment of leisure”: Understanding the practices of incidental news consumption on social media

an article by Pablo J Boczkowski (Northwestern University, USA), Eugenia Mitchelstein (Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina) and Mora Matassi (Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA) published in New Media & Society Volume 20 Issue 10 (October 2018)

Abstract

Incidental consumption of news on social media has risen in recent years, particularly among young people.

Previous studies have characterized what the main dimensions and effects of this phenomenon are. In this article, we complement that literature by looking at how this phenomenon unfolds. Inspired by practice theory, we aim to answer two questions:

1. what are the practices that subtend incidental news consumption on social media among young people? and
2. What are the social consequences of these practices?

We draw upon 50 in-depth interviews with respondents aged 18–29 years from Argentina.

Our findings show the existence of

1. strong connections between technology and content, “anywhere and anytime” coordinates, derivative information routines, and increasingly mediated sociability and
2. fragmentary reading patterns, loss of hierarchy of the news, and coexistence of editorial, algorithmic, and social filtering.

We conclude by elaborating on the empirical and theoretical implications of these findings.

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