| الوصف: |
News consumption in childhood is an important predictor of news consumption later in life (Huang, 2009). Moreover, news socializes children into active and critical citizens in society (Alon-Tirosh & Lemish, 2014; Van Deth, Abendschön, & Vollmar, 2011). It is thus important that children (between approximately 8 and 13 years old) are informed about events happening in the world. However, concerns are raised that (negative) news consumption might lead to news avoidance as well (cf. Alon-Tirosh & Lemish, 2014). The topic of news avoidance did not receive much research attention yet, especially not when it comes to children. Skovsgaard and Anderson (2020) provided a general framework for news avoidance, in which they define it as “low news consumption over a continuous period of time caused either by a dislike for news (intentional) or a higher preference for other content (unintentional).” This distinction is important, as it shows two different reasons of news avoidance. Intentional news avoidance causes the most concerns, because people explicitly decide not to follow the news (anymore). Three main reasons explain this: (1) news is too negative, (2) news cannot be trusted, and (3) there is too much news. Unintentional news avoidance, however, is not based on an active choice, but on a stronger preference for other media content instead of news (Skovsgaard & Anderson, 2020). In this study on children’s news avoidance, we focus on intentional news avoidance only to investigate whether this might be a result of (negative) news exposure (cf. Alon-Tirosh & Lemish, 2014). It is well-known that the news most often has a negative focus, which affects the emotions and well-being of adult news consumers negatively over time (Boukes & Vliegenthart, 2017; Soroka, 2014). This has been found in children’s news studies as well (Kleemans et al., 2017a, 2017b; Walma van der Molen, Valkenburg, & Peeters, 2002). Moreover, previous research showed that adults’ trust in media is harmed, because they perceive the media as biased and willing to push their own interests (Newman & Fletcher, 2017; Toff & Nielsen, 2018). Additionally, previous research showed that news overload in adults leads to news avoidance as it is correlated with news fatigue and paralysis (Song et al., 2017). These factors are not investigated among children yet. However, because parents play an important role in children’s lives (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017), it might be that children’s news avoidance is influenced by them. For example, a distrust in news by parents might play a role in how often children are willing to consume news. Moreover, the role of parents is also important from a parental mediation perspective. Parental mediation might influence the relation between children’s perceived negativity of news, news media skepticism, perceived news overload and news avoidance by a restrictive parental mediation strategy of the parents or the lack of social coviewing and active parental mediation (cf. Buijzen et al., 2007; Valkenburg et al., 1999). The aim of this study is to investigate what predicts children’s and parent’s news avoidance and whether and how parents have an influence on children’s news avoidance. In the current study, it will be investigated whether perceived negativity of news, trust in news and perceived news overload can be seen as predictors of children’s and parent’s news avoidance. Parental mediation might moderate the role of these predictors for children. Additionally, we investigate whether parents’ perception of these predictors – perceived negativity of news, news media skepticism and perceived news overload – also influences children’s perception and news avoidance. |