Learning from myself: News audiences are smart, but passive
When Mark Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 11 that Facebook’s goal would shift to fostering “meaningful social interactions,” he explained the rationale as being rooted in research. The company has found that while connecting with others online is good for users, “passive” consumption of content is “not as good.”
So when I recorded my news consumption habits for an entire day last week, I was a little dismayed to realize how passive those habits are. I suppose that means my news routine is “not as good” — but does that matter?
Out of the hundreds (if not thousands) of tweets, headlines, emails, text messages, and push notifications I saw that day, only seven led me to click on a link and open an article page. The rest of my news consumption was entirely passive — eyes scanning over a blurb for less than a second before moving on with my day.
Let’s look more closely at what articles I actively opened on Friday, Jan. 12:
- The Modesto Bee — homepage
- Fast.Co Design — “Changing inmates’ behavior with architecture”
- Popular Science — “24 hidden iPhone settings you should know about”
- People — “20-Year-Old Wins $451 Million Mega Millions Grand Prize, Hopes to ‘Do Good for Humanity’”
- The Atlantic — “The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed”
- Quartzy by Quartz — “Dating preferences among men and women are looking increasingly similar”
- The Atlantic — “Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents?”
What do these have in common (aside from being very ordinary)? Perhaps these posts are related to my niche interests — Modesto, architecture, digital culture, etc.
As far as “engagement” goes, the People link was sent to me via iMessage, and I replied to that message. I tweeted the Atlantic story about cartoon villains but otherwise did not engage further with the content.
Almost all of the posts were sourced from Pocket email newsletters, where I saved the links on my phone in the morning and read them on my laptop later in the day. I viewed them sporadically while taking breaks from the assignment I was working on, so they seem to have served the purpose of a mental break or reward.
Speaking of mental breaks, I believe the reason I don’t go deeper with news is that I just don’t have the time or the mental stamina for it all. On Twitter, I maintain a private list of 25 accounts that I’ll scroll through when I don’t want to look at the hundreds of accounts I follow. On Facebook, I’ve only reacted to a single post in all of 2018. On my phone, I almost never tap through on push alerts from news apps. And in my inbox, I delete most of my email newsletters without opening them.
A lot of it has to do with anxiety. After the 2016 election, I didn’t go on Twitter or Facebook for nearly two weeks, and I still haven’t fully picked up my prior level of consumption. A few months ago, I deleted the Facebook app from my phone. I don’t miss it. It’s hard enough trying to manage the anxiety caused by my own life; why would I invite thousands of other voices into it?
You’d think that as a journalism student at a large journalism school, I’d engage more with the news. But I don’t. Maybe I’m antisocial or over-anxious — or maybe passivity is the norm.
When we in the media are devising ways to build deeper connections with our audiences (without relying too much on Facebook) moving forward, we need to remember that most people are like this. They’re not news junkies. News, to them, is a passive experience and a minimal part of their day.
That doesn’t mean our audiences are dumb or should be discounted. It does mean that rather than produce news for ourselves and our peers, we have to mold our journalism — and its design, business models, etc. — to that audience: people who are smart, but passive.
This post was written as part of an assignment for a course at USC Annenberg entitled “Strategies for Monetizing New Media,” taught by Professor Gabriel Kahn.
