Comparing children's and teens' news engagement practices and affective news experiences

Tanya Notley; Hua Flora Zhong; Michael Dezuanni; Sarah Gilbert

doi:10.1080/13676261.2022.2053667

Comparing children's and teens' news engagement practices and affective news experiences

Tanya Notley, Hua Flora Zhong, Michael Dezuanni, Sarah Gilbert

Western Sydney University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Studies that examine the news engagement practices of school students usually examine children or teenagers, and this precludes an examination of the similarities and differences between these groups. In 2020, we carried out a nationally representative survey of the news practices and experiences of young Australians aged 8–16 years and we compared the results for those aged 8–12 years and 13–16 years. The findings demonstrate that family is the most common source of news for both groups. Nonetheless, there is a significant shift that takes place as children enter their teen years, whereby they become far more likely to get news online from social media, news websites and apps. The impact of this shift is not straightforward, however. Contrary to our expectations, this development does not appear to increase the degree to which young people say news is important to them and it is not strongly correlated with their self-reported affective experience of news. Overall though, we find that the method young people use to get news and their affective experience of news engagement are significant predictors for their motivation to want to act on or respond to news.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	878-893
Number of pages	16
Journal	Journal of Youth Studies
Volume	26
Issue number	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2022.2053667
Publication status	Published - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Keywords

children
civic participation
News
teenagers
young people

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1080/13676261.2022.2053667Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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title = "Comparing children's and teens' news engagement practices and affective news experiences",

abstract = "Studies that examine the news engagement practices of school students usually examine children or teenagers, and this precludes an examination of the similarities and differences between these groups. In 2020, we carried out a nationally representative survey of the news practices and experiences of young Australians aged 8–16 years and we compared the results for those aged 8–12 years and 13–16 years. The findings demonstrate that family is the most common source of news for both groups. Nonetheless, there is a significant shift that takes place as children enter their teen years, whereby they become far more likely to get news online from social media, news websites and apps. The impact of this shift is not straightforward, however. Contrary to our expectations, this development does not appear to increase the degree to which young people say news is important to them and it is not strongly correlated with their self-reported affective experience of news. Overall though, we find that the method young people use to get news and their affective experience of news engagement are significant predictors for their motivation to want to act on or respond to news.",

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year = "2023",

doi = "10.1080/13676261.2022.2053667",

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N2 - Studies that examine the news engagement practices of school students usually examine children or teenagers, and this precludes an examination of the similarities and differences between these groups. In 2020, we carried out a nationally representative survey of the news practices and experiences of young Australians aged 8–16 years and we compared the results for those aged 8–12 years and 13–16 years. The findings demonstrate that family is the most common source of news for both groups. Nonetheless, there is a significant shift that takes place as children enter their teen years, whereby they become far more likely to get news online from social media, news websites and apps. The impact of this shift is not straightforward, however. Contrary to our expectations, this development does not appear to increase the degree to which young people say news is important to them and it is not strongly correlated with their self-reported affective experience of news. Overall though, we find that the method young people use to get news and their affective experience of news engagement are significant predictors for their motivation to want to act on or respond to news.

AB - Studies that examine the news engagement practices of school students usually examine children or teenagers, and this precludes an examination of the similarities and differences between these groups. In 2020, we carried out a nationally representative survey of the news practices and experiences of young Australians aged 8–16 years and we compared the results for those aged 8–12 years and 13–16 years. The findings demonstrate that family is the most common source of news for both groups. Nonetheless, there is a significant shift that takes place as children enter their teen years, whereby they become far more likely to get news online from social media, news websites and apps. The impact of this shift is not straightforward, however. Contrary to our expectations, this development does not appear to increase the degree to which young people say news is important to them and it is not strongly correlated with their self-reported affective experience of news. Overall though, we find that the method young people use to get news and their affective experience of news engagement are significant predictors for their motivation to want to act on or respond to news.

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Comparing children's and teens' news engagement practices and affective news experiences

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Open Access - Access Right Statement

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

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