Blue news: Study reveals why most Kiwis avoid the news at least part of the time

Hand holding TV remote control with a TV in the background. near
Photo: Yegor Larin / 123RF

Analysis: Are you a news avoider? Do you turn off the six o’clock news, skip over the headlines, skip radio bulletins or just ignore the news altogether?

If you do some or all of these things, you’re not alone. New Zealand has some of the highest news avoidance rates in the world, a new survey shows.

With media already struggling with declining revenues and audiences, this adds to the immense challenges facing the industry in a competitive and politically polarized environment.

Previous research has found that news avoidance is on the rise worldwide. But New Zealanders have also shown a love-hate relationship with news: avoidance rates are high, but so is general interest in news. At the same time, trust in the media has been steadily declining.

To find out, we surveyed 1,204 people in New Zealand in February 2023. We asked about news avoidance and motivation for it, and recorded demographic details such as age, gender and political beliefs .

We found that 60% of survey participants reported that they sometimes, often, or almost always avoided the news. This combined total is higher than any other national figure reported in other studies, with Greece and Bulgaria next highest at 57 percent.

A chart showing how often people like to avoid the news.
Photo: Beattie et al., 2024 / The Conversation

Women reported higher rates of news avoidance than men. This could be due to a legacy of unequal access to news and a perceived lack of diverse voices in New Zealand news production, leading some to feel that the news is not for them.

A chart showing news avoidance by gender.
Photo: Beattie et al., 2024 / The Conversation

We also found that people with far-left or far-right political beliefs were more likely to avoid the news than those with centrist views. Those closer to the ends of the political spectrum are less likely to find their views represented in the mainstream media and therefore seek alternative news sources that support their worldview.

A graph showing news avoidance by political leaning.
Photo: Beattie et al., 2024 / The Conversation

Avoid depressing and unreliable news

The main reason for avoiding news is the negative effect that news has on mood (32.7%).

More immediately, New Zealand had been hit by severe flooding in Auckland and Cyclone Gabrielle in the North Island just a month before our survey. But more generally, concern about the impact of news consumption on personal well-being has increased since the pandemic.

Similarly, many New Zealanders are experiencing news fatigue, with almost 20 per cent of respondents saying they were exhausted by the sheer volume of news these days.

Chart showing the reasons given for avoiding the news (participants could select multiple reasons).
Photo: Beattie et al., 2024 / The Conversation

The second most popular reason given was the perception that the news was unreliable or biased (30.1%). People with right-wing political beliefs were more likely to cite this.

This suggests that the decline in trust could be more about right-wing audiences perceiving a left-wing bias in the media, rather than a general distrust of the New Zealand media in general.

About a quarter of respondents said the news is too sensational (25.3%). Ironically, using clickbait and alarmist headlines to grab audiences may be driving them away from the competitive attention economy.

In contrast, younger people (18-24) were more likely to cite not having enough time as a reason for avoiding the news.

Is it important to avoid the news?

Our high news avoidance rates say several things about the audience. For one thing, skipping the news every now and then can help manage stress and keep people interested in the long run.

This could explain why New Zealanders show high rates of both news avoidance and news interest: avoiding the news from time to time can help people manage their general ability to engage and care.

Furthermore, despite high rates of news avoidance, voter turnout in the 2023 general election was 78 percent. News avoidance may not affect citizen participation.

However, we also found that New Zealanders have high rates of very low or no news consumption. Just over 13 percent of participants said they avoid the news “almost always,” more than in any other international survey.

Instead of consuming traditional news, many are likely turning to YouTube, social media and blogs, which often lack the more rigorous journalistic standards applied by mainstream media.

Scapegoating the media

It might be easy to conclude that New Zealand’s high rates of news avoidance are an implicit criticism of the media itself. But this is to overlook the nature of their work and the immense challenges they face.

Holding governments to account and covering crises or divisive issues can be an unpopular and thankless task. Blaming the messenger is perhaps an understandable response.

But we also expect the media to compete with information giants like Facebook and Google, which do not employ journalists or recognize any real responsibility for disseminating news.

This fuels a business environment where traditional media must compete for attention and revenue against platforms that operate without the same ethical and professional standards.

Our findings also highlight the difficulty of satisfying an increasingly polarized news audience. With various groups perceiving bias and distrust differently, it’s almost impossible to keep everyone happy.

With Google recently threatening to remove local news from its search engine due to its opposition to the Digital News Fair Trading Act (which would require digital platforms to pay for news content), these issues aren’t going away anytime soon.

Rather than blaming the media for high rates of news avoidance, we see the results of our survey as part of a larger argument to support and strengthen what is an essential service in a democracy that work

* Alex Beattie is Lecturer, Media and Communication, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington; John Kerr is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago; Richard Arnold is Professor of Statistics and Data Science, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.

– This article was originally published by The Conversation