![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
This article examines the news behaviors and attitudes of teenagers, an understudied demographic in the research on youth and news media. Based on interviews with 61 racially diverse high school students, it discusses how adolescents become informed about current events and why they prefer certain news formats to others. The results reveal changing ways news information is being accessed, new attitudes about what it means to be informed, and a youth preference for opinionated rather than objective news. This does not indicate that young people disregard the basic ideals of professional journalism but, rather, that they desire more authentic renderings of them.
Keywords youth and news, Facebook, fake news, objectivity, civic engagement
References
Section:
|
Amadeo, J., Torney-Purta, J., Barber, C. H. (2004). Attention to media and trust in media sources: Analysis of data from the IEA Civic Education Study. College Park, MD: The Center For Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement. Google Scholar | |
|
Associated Press . (2008). A new model for news: Studying the deep structure of young adult news consumption (A research report from the AP and the Context-Based Research Group). Retrieved from http://www.ap.org/newmodel.pdf Google Scholar | |
|
Barnhurst, K., Wartella, E. (1991). Newspapers and citizenship: Young adult’s subjective experience of newspapers. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8, 195-209. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Barnhurst, K, Wartella, E. (1998). Young citizens, American TV newscasts and the collective memory. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 15(3), 279-305. Google Scholar | |
|
Baym, G. (2005). The Daily Show: Discursive integration and the reinvention of political journalism. Political Communication, 22, 259-276. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Baym, G. (2010). From Cronkite to Colbert: The evolution of broadcast news. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Google Scholar | |
|
Bennett, W. L. (2005, September 1). Civic learning in changing democracies: challenges for citizenship and civic education. Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC. Google Scholar | |
|
Bennett, W. L. (2008). Changing citizenship in the digital age. Civic Life Online: Learning how digital media can engage youth (pp. 1-24). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Brown, M. (2005). Abandoning the news (pp. 1-16). New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation. Google Scholar | |
|
Buckingham, D. (1999). Young people, politics and news media: Beyond political socialisation. Oxford Review of Education, 25, 171-184. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Clark, J., Van Slyke, T. (2010). Beyond the echo chamber: Reshaping Politics through networked progressive media. New York, NY: New Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Collins, S. J., Armstrong, C. L. (2008). U of Florida students prefer campus paper to free daily. Newspaper Research Journal, 29(1), 77-89. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Costera Meijer, I. (2003). What is quality television news? A plea for extending the professional repertoire of newsmakers. Journalism Studies, 4(1), 15-29. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Costera Meijer, I. (2007). The paradox of popularity: How young people experience the news. Journalism Studies, 8(1), 1-22. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Fox, J, Kolloen, G., Sahin, V. (2007). No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidentail Election Campaign. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 51(2), 213-227. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Frola, L. 2006. Tracking the teenage path to news. Retrieved from http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=110852 Google Scholar | |
|
Gans, H. (1979). Deciding what’s news. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Google Scholar | |
|
Garnham, N. (1992). The media and the public sphere. In Calhoun, C. (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 359-376). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Gigli, S. (2001). Young people and media in Central and Eastern Europe, the CIS, and Baltic states. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/magic/resources/InterMedia2000.pdf Google Scholar | |
|
Grusin, E. K., Stone, G. C. (1993). The newspaper in education and new readers: Hooking kids on newspapers through classroom, Journalism Monographs, 141, 1-39. Google Scholar | |
|
Hallin Daniel, C. (2000). Commercialism and Professionalism in the American News Media. In Curran, J., Gurevitch, M. (Eds.), Mass Media and Society (3rd edition, pp. 218-237). London, UK: Edward Arnold. Google Scholar | |
|
Harrington, S. (2005). The democracy of conversation: The panel and the public sphere. Media International Australia, 116, 75-87. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Harrington, S. (2008a). Future-proofing journalism: Youthful tastes and the challenge for the Academy. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 22, 395-407. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Harrington, S. (2008b). Popular news in the 21st century: Time for a critical approach? Journalism; Theory, Practice and Criticism, 9, 266-284. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Jones, A. (2008). Losing the news: The future of the news that feeds democracy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Lazarsfeld, P., Katz, E. (1955). Personal influence. New York, NY: Free Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., Zickuhr, K. (2010). Social media and young adults. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx Google Scholar | |
|
Livingstone, S. (2002). Young People and New Media: Childhood and the changing media environment. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Livingstone, S. (2009). Children and the Internet: Great expectations, challenging realities. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Google Scholar | |
|
MacDonald, M. (2000). Rethinking personalization in current affairs journalism. In Sparks, C., Tulloch, J. (Eds.), Tabloid Tales: Global debates over media standards (pp. 251-266). Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar | |
|
Marchi, R. (2012). From disillusion to engagement: Minority teen journalists and the news media. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. 13(6), 750-765. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
McChesney, R. (2000). Rich media, poor democracy: Communication politics in dubious times. New York, NY: Free Press. Google Scholar | |
|
McChesney, R. (2004). The problem of the media: U.S. communication politics in the 21st century. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Google Scholar | |
|
McKain, A. (2005). Not necessarily not the news: Gatekeeping, remediation, and the daily show. Journal of American Culture, 28, 415-430. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
McKee, A. (2005). The public sphere: An introduction. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
McMane, A. (2007 February 15 & 16). Where the young get the news. Paper prepared as part of New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension, sponsored by the World Press Freedom Committee and UNESCO, in partnership with the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Paris, France. Google Scholar | |
|
Miller, T. (2007). Cultural citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, consumerism, and television in a neoliberal age. Philadelphia, PA: Temple. Google Scholar | |
|
Mindich, D. (2005). Tuned out—Why Americans under 40 don’t watch the news. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
National Annenberg Election Survey . (2004). Daily Show viewers knowledgeable about presidential campaign, National Annenberg Election Survey Shows. Retrieved from http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/Downloads/Political_Communication/naes/2004_03_late-night-knowledge-2_9-21_pr.pdf Google Scholar | |
|
Nordenson, B. (2008). Overload! Journalism’s battle for relevance in an age of too much Information. Columbia Journalism Review, 47(4), 30-42. Google Scholar | |
|
Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. New York, NY: Penguin. Google Scholar | |
|
Patterson, T. (2007). Young people and news (A Report from the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy). Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Retrieved from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/research/carnegie-knight/young_people_and_news_2007.pdf Google Scholar | |
|
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press . (2004). Cable and Internet loom large in fragmented political news universe: Perceptions of partisan bias seen as growing, especially by Democrats. Retrieved from http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=200 Google Scholar | |
|
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press . (2007). Public knowledge of current affairs little changed by news and information revolutions: What Americans know. Retrieved from http://www.people-press.org/2007/04/15/public-knowledge-of-current-affairs-little-changed-by-news-and-information-revolutions/ Google Scholar | |
|
Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., Olmstead, K. (2010). Understanding the participatory consumer: How Internet and cell phone users have turned news into a social experience. Retrieved from http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/understanding_participatory_news_consumer Google Scholar | |
|
Quigley, C. (1999). Civic education: Recent history, current status, and the future. Albany Law Review, 62, 1425-1451. Google Scholar | |
|
Raeymaeckers, K. (2004). Newspaper editors in search of young readers: content and layout strategies to win new readers. Journalism Studies, 5, 221-232. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Rainie, L., Smith, A. (2012). Social networking sites and politics. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Social-networking-and-politics.aspx Google Scholar | |
|
Schiller, D. (2000). Digital capitalism: Networking the global market system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Schudson, M. (1999). The good citizen: A history of American civic life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Schudson, M. (2001). The objectivity norm in American journalism. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 2, 149-170. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Sherr, S., Staples, M. (2004). Working paper 16: News for a new generation. Report 1: Content analysis, interviews, and focus groups. Retrieved from http://www.civicyouth.org/circle-working-paper-16-news-for-a-new-generation-report-1-content-analysis-interviews-and-focus-groups/ Google Scholar | |
|
Singer, D., Clark, L. S., Monserrate, R. (2009, May). News a la carte: Customization of news consumption by college students. Keynote panel address, presented to the annual Conference of the Magazine Publishers of America, Boulder: Colorado. Google Scholar | |
|
Sunstein, C. (2007). Republic.com 2.0. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Turner, G. (2005). Ending the affair: The decline of television current affairs in Australia. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: University of New South Wales Press. Google Scholar | |
|
UNICEF . (2005). World Youth Report. New York, NY: CEE/CIS. Google Scholar | |
|
Warner, J. (2007). Political culture jamming: The dissident humor of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Popular Communications, 5(1), 17-36. Google Scholar | |
|
Watkins, S. (2009). The young and the digital: What the migration to social-networking sites, games, and anytime, anywhere media a means for our future. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Google Scholar |
Bio
Regina Marchi holds a PhD in communication from the University of California, San Diego. She is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. A former journalist, she conducts research about media, culture, and civic life. She is the recipient of the 2010 James W. Carey Award for Media Research.
