Lack of interest in news ‘has impact on democracy’
Young adults were found to consume only seven minutes of news a day on their smartphones
Keystone/Christof Schürpf
More than a third (38%) of Swiss don’t follow the news. Young adults in particular are no longer interested in current affairs, according to an annual survey of the Swiss media landscape.
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Falta de interesse em notícias “tem impacto na democracia”.
This is a problem for democracy, as people who don’t follow the news are less likely to take part in the political process and less likely to trust political institutions, concluded the fög research institute at the University of Zurich in its Yearbook Quality of the Media 2022External link, published on Monday.
Young adults were found to consume only seven minutes of news a day on their smartphones, an important source of various information for this age group. Little was known about their use of the smartphone as a news source until now. Therefore this year the fög monitored the mobile media use of 300 people aged 19-24.
The finding of seven minutes of daily news consumption confirmed the news abstinence of younger people that has been observed for several years. While men consumed 11 minutes of news a day, women consumed five minutes.
This has an impact on democracy, Fög said. Voter turnout is particularly high (70%) among people who inform themselves with traditional media such as newspapers, radio or television – not intensively, but regularly.
By contrast, the voter turnout of people who don’t follow the news is drastically lower at 30%. Typical for this group of 38% of the population is also the lower interest in politics and the higher distrust of the government.
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The fög notes that the overall quality of the Swiss media has increased despite dwindling resources.
The top places in the four quality dimensions of relevance, diversity, classification performance and professionalism are occupied, as in previous years, by the information broadcasts of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, SWI swissinfo.ch’s parent company.
SWI swissinfo.ch was also explicitly praised by fög for its high score, especially for its relevant reporting and the increase in background information.
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