“Give Me a Break!” Prevalence and Predictors of Intentional News Avoidance During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

Intentional news avoidance describes an intermittent news use practice in which people deliberately turn away from the news. Previous findings point out that the level of intentional news avoidance has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. Since this might be related to negative consequences both with regard to compliance with measures and for the economic situation of journalism, the current study empirically investigates the prevalence and predictors of intentional news avoidance during COVID-19. For this purpose, we analyze two waves (April 2020 n = 1459, May 2020 n = 1433) of the Austrian Corona Panel that include relevant measures for news avoidance and potential predictors. Our findings show that the vast majority of the participants at least sometimes avoid news about COVID-19 (75% in April and 80% in May). This behavior can be explained by a lack of trust in news about COVID-19 and negative emotional responses to news (e.g. information overload or emotional distress). In sum, the high prevalence of news avoidance can be considered a result of the general burden of the pandemic, but also dissatisfaction with the role of the media.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered many facets of life, including the information environment. Since the outbreak of the virus, people are constantly provided with updates on infection rates, preventive measures, or vaccination progresses. Even though this ongoing information flow about the crisis is an important task of the media in times of a pandemic (Perreault & Perreault, 2021), it can also contribute to a feeling of being overwhelmed by the overabundance of available information. First, people can feel distressed due to the sheer amount of information about the pandemic that permanently confronts them with negative and unsettling information. Second, the pandemic also came with a so-called infodemic (World Health Organization, 2020), which refers to fears of an increased spread of mis- and disinformation about the crisis. That means, citizens are facing an additional challenge to separate true from false information, which can cause confusions and fears of being manipulated (van der Linden et al., 2020).

This interplay of the general burden of the pandemic and the specific characteristics of the information environment can motivate people to actively avoid the news (Skovsgaard & Andersen, 2020). According to the data collected in 36 countries for the Reuters Digital News Report, an average 32% of Internet users intentionally avoided the news at least sometimes before the pandemic (Newman et al., 2019). If it comes to motivations that can explain why people avoid the news, studies suggest that there are several important predictors, such as negative effects of news on well-being, lack of trust in media or government, or political attitudes (e.g., Newman et al., 2017; Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020).

The aim of our study is to investigate intentional news avoidance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria. For this purpose, we analyze the data of the Austrian Corona Panel that provides measures for intentional news avoidance and predictors in two waves (April and May 2020), using a sample representative of Austrian society. First findings for European countries point out that the level of news avoidance has increased during the pandemic (de Bruin et al., 2021; Fletcher et al., 2020; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2021). However, since news use patterns including the avoidance of news highly depend on the national context (Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020; Villi et al., 2021), these findings cannot be generalized. This especially applies to the context of the pandemic where the course, political measures, and media coverage of the pandemic differed between countries. This case study on Austria adds novel empirical insights to our knowledge on news avoidance behavior during the pandemic within the European context.

Learning about intentional news avoidance and its predictors is relevant for several reasons. First, if people actively turn away from the news, they might miss important information, which might hinder an effective handling of the crisis. Indeed, findings by Siebenhaar et al. (2020) show that information avoidance during the pandemic was negatively related to compliance with preventive measures. Second, news overload during the pandemic might pose a serious mental health risk for news users. If the news indeed causes people to feel depressed, experience physical consequences (such as headaches or sleeping problems), or suffer elevated levels of stress, avoiding the news (sometimes) might actually be a very effective coping strategy and provide some relief during these challenging times.

Definition of news avoidance

Previous studies investigating news avoidance provide different understandings for the term. Skovsgaard and Andersen (2020) outline that these different approaches can be summarized with (1) intentional news avoidance or (2) unintentional news avoidance. If people unintentionally avoid the news, they show a low frequency of news use due to different reasons, including a preference for more entertainment-based content (Skovsgaard & Andersen, 2020) or a belief that news is just not part of the daily routine (Toff & Palmer, 2019). The common way to define and measure unintentional news avoidance is through an assessment of levels of news exposure, followed by either a grouping of participants into different types of news users including news avoiders (Bos et al., 2016; Ksiazek et al., 2010) or through the definition of a relative or absolute cutoff point of news exposure (Shehata, 2016; Strömbäck, 2017). However, low levels of news exposure cannot be equaled with unintentional news avoidance. Low news consumption can be motivated by preferences for other genres, but it can also be a conscious decision against using news, or a mix of both intentional and unintentional motives (Palmer et al., 2020; Toff & Palmer, 2019).

Intentional news avoidance is an active and conscious choice to avoid the news (Skovsgaard & Andersen, 2020). It describes an intermittent news use practice that people apply independently of their general news use due to an antipathy toward the news that motivates people to turn away from it (Skovsgaard & Andersen, 2020; Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020). Although intentional news avoidance can be related to lower general news usage, even news “junkies” can sometimes decide to actively avoid specific news content. Thus, intentional news avoidance cannot be inferred from general news exposure, but individuals have to self-identify as news avoiders by indicating how often they find themselves actively avoiding news (Skovsgaard & Andersen, 2020).

In line with the uses and gratifications approach (Katz et al., 1973), the audience in intentional news avoidance scenarios is pictured as active and aware of their own needs that guide their media behavior. Even though studies relying on the uses and gratifications approach usually investigate drivers of media exposures, selectivity can also be explained with a need to avoid certain content (McLeod & Becker, 1974).

Prevalence of intentional news avoidance and the role of contextual factors

Concerning the prevalence of intentional news avoidance, the results of the 2019 Digital News Report based on 36 countries indicate that on average 32% of the participants sometimes or often intentionally avoid the news (Newman et al., 2019). However, the numbers for news avoidance highly depend on the country that is investigated: While 56% of the Internet users actively avoid the news often or sometimes in Croatia, this only applied to 11% in Japan (Newman et al., 2019). As pointed out by Toff and Kalogeropoulos (2020), countries differ with regard to their “culture of news consumption,” which is defined as “group-level social, cultural, or political forces that pertain to the supply of available media choices, perceptions about their accuracy and utility, as well as norms about the value of news consumption” (p. 367). They find that not only individual predispositions and attitudes but also country-level variables play a role in news avoidance. In their model of 35 countries, they find that the press freedom index, perceived media independence, and political freedom are negatively correlated with intentionally avoiding news. These findings provide an explanation for why news avoidance varies highly between countries (Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020; Villi et al., 2021).

In this study, we are interested in the case of Austria. Therefore, country-level characteristics that have been identified as relevant for news avoidance should also be considered. Austria is a German-speaking parliamentary democratic federal republic with about 8 million inhabitants. Following the framework by Hallin and Mancini (2004), Austria’s media system can be categorized as a northern European democratic corporatist. Important indicators for this model are a press market that is highly concentrated and has a high reach in different parts of the society, a high level of political parallelism, high journalistic professionalism, and a dual broadcasting system. According to the freedom of press index, Austria is number 17 in the ranking of 180 countries and rated as satisfactory for freedom of press (Reporters without Borders, 2021). Moreover, interest in news is quite high: only 7% of the Austrian population report having little or no interest in news (Gadringer et al., 2021). The level of trust is similar to the European and global average in Austria: 46% generally trust the news (Europe: 45%, Global: 44%, Gadringer et al., 2021). For the public service broadcaster, this number is higher: 74% in Austria indicate to trust news from the ORF (Gadringer et al., 2021).

Another relevant structural factor that shapes news consumption, and therefore also news avoidance, is a crisis situation. According to the uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975), people experiencing uncertainty due to a negative or unusual situation increase their effort for information seeking in order to decrease the level of uncertainty and negative feelings. This theory originally stems from the field of interpersonal communication but has been applied to a mass communication context: In times of crises such as terrorist attacks, earthquakes, or nuclear disasters, people experience a high level of uncertainty and fear, which increases their need for information and consequently their information seeking behavior (Boyle et al., 2004; Westlund & Ghersetti, 2015).

With the spread of the coronavirus in 2020, both the focus of the media coverage and news use behaviors have significantly changed. During the crisis, the media provided constant information about the spread of the virus, political and legal interventions, and scientific developments that helped to understand and fight the pandemic (Hart et al., 2020). Concerning news use behaviors, studies have shown for several European countries that with the start of the pandemic, news exposure temporarily increased (Bendau et al., 2020; Castro et al., 2021; de Bruin et al., 2021; Newman et al., 2020; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2021). At the same time, however, numbers for news avoidance were also high: In the UK, the share of people who often or always intentionally avoided the news increased from 15% to 25% between April and May 2020, and stayed on a higher level until July of that year (Fletcher et al., 2020). Moreover, the findings of a four-wave panel study in the Netherlands show that news avoidance was slightly but consistently increasing throughout the pandemic (de Bruin et al., 2021). Qualitative findings by Ytre-Arne and Moe (2021) provide more nuanced insights and describe news use patterns at the beginning of the pandemic with conscious shifts between news avoidance and information seeking. Even though interest in news was high, participants also consciously opted out of news at certain times of day or on certain media (e.g., their phone); some also only turned to selected sources of information to learn more about COVID-19. Similar findings are also reported by Groot Kormelink and Klein Gunnewiek (2022). After a first shock about the pandemic that increased news exposure, the participants described dosing their news consumption. Even though they tried to keep up to date about the course of the pandemic, they also tried to avoid the news from time to time.

In sum, intentional news avoidance is highly shaped by the culture of news consumption in a certain country. Also, previous findings point out that news use and news avoidance drastically change in times of a crisis such as a pandemic. The aim of our study is to investigate the level of news avoidance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria. We ask:

RQ1: What is the prevalence of intentional avoidance of news about the corona crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria?

Predictors of intentional news avoidance

In order to get a better understanding of the concept of intentional news avoidance, it is important to investigate what motivates people to actively turn away from the news. Previous studies have identified a number of predictors for news avoidance. In this study, we will focus on the three most prominent sets of individual-level explanations: trust in media, political attitudes, and emotional reactions to news. Their relevance for news avoidance will be outlined in the following.

In general, trust can be defined as an expectation of honest and truthful behavior that is based on shared values and norms (Fukuyama, 1995). In the context of news avoidance, trust in media plays an important role. Media trust comprises certain news values such as accuracy, objectivity, and believability (Williams, 2012). A lack of trust can stem from the perception that news does not provide neutral information about current affairs, but rather that the media paint a biased picture and pursues its own agenda. Qualitative research on news avoiders shows that their perception that journalism is no longer a “watchdog” in society, but rather a complicit for political and economic actors, helps explain their low levels of news consumption (Palmer et al., 2020). Quantitative findings confirm high correlations between trust in news and news exposure (Edgerly, 2021; Edgerly et al., 2018; Kalogeropoulos et al., 2019; Tsfati & Cappella, 2003). This indicates that low media trust increases tendencies to turn away from the news.

For intentional news avoidance, previous research also shows a negative association: the less people trust professional news, the more they actively avoid the news (Goyanes et al., 2021; Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020). However, this relationship is less strong and depends on the type of modeling (Goyanes et al., 2021). Research on intentional news avoidance during COVID-19 in the UK shows that 32% (May 2020) and 34% (July 2020) of the people who state that they sometimes or often actively avoid the news during the pandemic do so because they lack trust in the news (Fletcher et al., 2020). Thus, media trust seems to be a strong predictor for intentional news avoidance during the pandemic. Therefore, we ask:

RQ2: To what extent does media trust explain the intentional avoidance of news about the corona crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria?

Moreover, political attitudes are also likely to affect news avoidance during the pandemic. From the early start of the pandemic in 2020, COVID-19 and how to deal with it became a strongly politicized issue. People’s political attitudes affect their need for political information in general, but this is likely to be pronounced in the context of the pandemic that shocked the world and resulted in drastic measures to decrease the number of infected people and the spread of the virus. Most importantly, political trust is likely to affect news consumption behavior. After all, if people have little trust in political institutions and in the political elite, they also have less reason to stay informed about their actions through political news consumption (e.g., Aarts et al., 2011). Indeed, a number of studies show that there is a positive relation between political trust and news exposure (Norris, 2000; Strömbäck et al., 2016; Strömbäck, 2017), which indicates that belief in the good intentions of political actors lowers news consumption. Concerning intentional news avoidance, a recent qualitative study by Villi et al. (2021) shows that trust in the government or in politicians has a negative impact on actively avoiding the news. For example, if participants’ trust in political institutions is low or if they believe that what they hear in the media from politicians is just lies, they turn away from the news or switch to a different outlet.

Another reason why people actively turn away from the news could be their general interest in politics. Prior (2007) argues that being politically informed through news consumption is primarily a matter of motivation and that mainly the politically interested choose to do so. In line with that finding, Edgerly (2021) shows that political interest makes it less likely to use very little or no news at all. For intentional news avoidance, political interest also has a negative effect (Goyanes et al., 2021).

Moreover, political ideology might play a role. Partisanship or political preferences strongly impact news consumption behavior in general (e.g. Iyengar & Hahn, 2009; Knobloch-Westerwick & Meng, 2011). When it comes to intentional news avoidance, left-leaning people engage in higher levels of intentional news avoidance compared to those on the right side of the ideological spectrum (Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020).

In sum, people’s political attitudes are likely to influence their need for political information in general, but probably especially their wish to be informed about the highly politicized issue of COVID-19. During the pandemic, in which political actors were much more dominant in everyday life compared to non-crisis times and where political decisions were highly impactful on the personal freedoms of citizens, the effects of political attitudes on news avoidance are likely to be even exacerbated. Therefore, we ask:

RQ3: To what extent do political attitudes explain intentional avoidance of news about the corona crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria?

Another important cluster of predictors can be summarized by the emotionally distressing effects of news that motivate people to intentionally avoid news. Here, the logic is to actively avoid the news in order to protect one’s emotional well-being. News is generally dominated by a negative tone (McIntyre & Gyldensted, 2017). It is a journalist’s role to make citizens aware of public threats and worrisome events, which explains the tendency to focus on negativity in news coverage (Eriksson & Östman, 2013). In addition, negativity is an important news factor that helps determine the newsworthiness of a story (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). This negativity bias in news helps citizens to keep up with relevant current affairs, but at the cost of negative emotional responses: Studies show that following (hard) news has negative effects for psychological well-being and increases stress and anxiety (Boukes & Vliegenhart, 2017; Wagner & Boczkowski, 2019). This could also be the case in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. A study by Bendau et al. (2020) found a positive relationship between the duration as well as frequency of exposure to information about the pandemic and anxiety related to COVID-19 and symptoms of depression.

Studies on news avoidance show that the emotional distress that people experience when following the news has different consequences for intentional news avoidance and news avoidance that is operationalized as low news consumption. Although Edgerly (2021) did not find a relationship between negative emotional reactions to news and low levels of news exposure, emotional distress serves as a widespread explanation why people actively take a break from the news from time to time (Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020). For the COVID-19 pandemic, qualitative findings by Ytre-Arne and Moe (2021) indicated that participants described news coverage during the pandemic as emotionally draining and unsettling, which resulted even for heavy news users in intermittent avoidance behavior. This kind of behavior is an effective coping strategy in order to stay mentally healthy (de Bruin et al., 2021). In sum, emotionally distressing effects of news might not necessarily lower the general level of news exposure but still increase the level of intentional news avoidance during the pandemic.

Other negative emotional responses are related to the sheer amount of available news. Both the selection and evaluation of information in digital media environments can be challenging and can cause an information overload, which can be defined as a psychological state in which the requirements to process information go beyond the available cognitive capacities resulting in a state of stress and exhaustion (Eppler & Mengis, 2004). Research shows that information overload is related to an increase in intentional news avoidance (Park, 2019; Song et al., 2016). The risk of information overload is particularly high during the corona crisis: no other topic was covered as extensively and enduringly as the pandemic (Maurer et al., 2021). Indeed, participants in both qualitative and quantitative studies report that information overload was a key motivator to actively turn away from news about the pandemic (de Bruin et al., 2021; Groot Kormelink & Klein Gunnewiek, 2022; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2021). This can be explained with news fatigue (Groot Kormelink & Klein Gunnewiek, 2022) that people developed in light of the vast amount of information about COVID-19 in the news.

As already pointed out, not just the amount of available news about one specific topic is extraordinary during the pandemic but also the time people spend with news about COVID-19. Studies have shown that news exposure has drastically increased, especially at the beginning of the pandemic (Bendau et al., 2020; Fletcher et al., 2020; Groot Kormelink & Klein Gunnewiek, 2022). However, spending that much time with news can also have negative emotional effects because people might have the feeling that they neglect other parts in their life. A recent qualitative study with young adults by Aharoni et al. (2021) shows that some participants regret the amount of time they spend on news and express the desire to cut down their news consumption. They describe themselves as news addicts and feel almost obsessed with keeping up with information about current affairs. Studies show that the perception that news is too time consuming is also related to actively avoiding the news (Newman et al., 2017). Studying the UK during the pandemic, the perception that news distracts people from other things is often brought forward as an explanation of why they actively turn away from the news (Fletcher et al., 2020).

In sum, negative effects for the emotional well-being, information overload, and time spend with the news have shown to affect intentional news avoidance, which could especially be the case in times as challenging as the pandemic. We ask:

RQ4: To what extent do factors related to emotional distress (emotional well-being, information overload, time spend with news) explain intentional news avoidance of news about the corona crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria?

Method

Data

To investigate the research questions, we utilize the Austrian Corona Panel Project (Kittel et al., 2021), organized by the Vienna Center for Electoral Research (Kittel et al., 2020). The Austrian Corona Panel is a panel survey among around 1500 respondents that represents the socio-demographic structure of the Austrian population. In this panel, the relevant measures for our study were included in two waves (mid-April 2020, n = 1459; end of May 2020, n = 1433). Thus, the surveys were fielded right after people went through the first hard lockdown and when regulation became continuously less strict. At this stage, people were already familiar with the pandemic, were not in a state of shock anymore, and had to live with the virus for a couple of weeks already. As outlined by Paul et al. (2021), ethical approval was not required for this project which was in accordance with the local legislation, but participants provided a written informed consent for their participation.

Sample description and data analysis

In total, 861 respondents that participated in both waves of the Austrian Corona Panel are included in the analysis that tests the impact of media trust, political attitudes, and emotional distress on news avoidance during the pandemic (45.64% female; Age: M = 48.48, SD = 16.67). We used the data from survey 2 (May 2020), but included a lagged dependent variable (news avoidance in survey 1). This way, we regress the change in news avoidance between April and May 2020 on the explanatory variables in our model and control for unobserved confounding variables. We use OLS linear regression analyses with robust standard errors. In the robustness analyses, we run the model with a variety of different model specifications, to test the robustness of our findings.

Measures

News avoidance

Largely following the operationalization of intentional news avoidance of the 2017 and 2020 Reuters Digital News Report (Fletcher et al., 2020; Newman et al., 2017), we asked respondents to indicate how often they actively avoid news about the corona crisis. Thus, we did not measure general news avoidance, but specifically focus on avoiding news about the pandemic. To answer the question, we relied on a scale from 1 never to 10 very often.

Media trust

To measure media trust, we asked respondents to indicate to what extent they agree with the statement that they cannot rely on the news to be truthful (scale: 0 = completely disagree to 4 = completely agree; M = 1.78, SD = 1.13). Additionally, we measured to what extent respondents trust the news coverage on the corona crisis (scale: 0 = no trust at all, 10 = a lot of trust; M = 6.04, SD = 2.53).

Political attitudes

To measure political attitudes, we considered various indicators. For the measurement of political trust, we averaged the indicated trust in Parliament and the federal government in the context of the corona crisis (scale: 0 = no trust at all, 10 = a lot of trust; M = 5.55, SD = 2.83). Additionally, we measured how satisfied respondents are with how democracy functions in Austria and respondents’ satisfaction with the federal government (scale: 0 = very dissatisfied, 4 = very satisfied; satisfaction democracy: M = 2.45, SD = 1.13; satisfaction government: M = 2.46, SD = 1.27). To assess respondents’ interest in politics, we asked them to indicate their general level of political interest (scale: 0 = very uninterested, 3 = very interested; M = 1.96, SD = 0.83). Lastly, we included a measure of respondents’ ideological self-placement of a left–right scale (scale: 0 = left, 10 = right; M = 4.79, SD = 2.15).

Emotional distress

To measure emotional distress, we investigate emotional well-being, information overload, and time spent with news. For emotional well-being, we asked respondents to indicate to what extent they agree with the statement that news media has a negative effect on their mood (scale: 0 = completely disagree, 4 = completely agree; M = 1.48, SD = 1.16). The same item was also part of the Digital News Report (Newman et al., 2017). Also, in line with that study, we measured information overload by asking participants to what extent they feel exhausted by the news overload (scale: 0 = completely disagree, 4 = completely agree; M = 1.85, SD = 1.25). Finally, to measure how people feel about the time they spend on the news, we ask respondents if they agree with the statement that following the news is too time consuming (scale: 0 = completely disagree, 4 = completely agree; M = 1.39, SD = 1.09). Again, this item has been adapted from Newman et al. (2020).

Control variables

The models testing the impact of media trust, political attitudes, and emotional distress for intentional news avoidance include various possible confounding variables. We measured demographic information including gender, age, and level of education. Also, we control for corona-related considerations by asking respondents to indicate the estimated risk of the corona virus for them personally and for society (scale: 0 = low risk, 4 = high risk; personal: M = 1.09, SD = 1.01; society: M = 1.78, SD = 0.94) and their estimated duration of the corona crisis (0 = less than six months, 1 = more than six months; 64% believe that the corona crisis will take more than six months). Lastly, we control for people’s general news exposure, by measuring their newspaper use (reading the offline or online editions of the Kronen Zeitung, Der Standard, Die Presse, Österreich, Kurier, Salzburger Nachrichten, or another newspaper) and television use (watching ORF [the Austrian public broadcaster] or private broadcasters; scale: 0 = never, 4 = multiple times a day; newspaper exposure: M = 0.94, SD = 0.67; television exposure: M = 1.77, SD = 1.12).

Results

To answer Research Question 1 and determine the prevalence of intentional news avoidance behavior of news about corona during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria, we looked at the descriptive results of the measure for intentional news avoidance of news about the corona virus. Figure 1 shows the results. In April 2020, respondents had a mean score of 3.70 (SD = 3.10). The left-hand image in Figure 1 presents the distribution and shows that about 25% of the respondents never avoided corona-related news, indicating that around 75% of the respondents at least sometimes avoided news about the corona crisis. Around 40% of the respondents had a score of 5 or higher on the news avoidance scale. In May 2020, news avoidance about the corona crisis was slightly higher, with a mean score of 4.38 (SD = 3.36). The right-hand side of Figure 1 shows that a little over 20% of the participants never avoided corona-related news, while around 79% of the respondents at least sometimes actively avoided news about the corona crisis. About 50% of the respondents had a score of 5 or higher on the news avoidance scale. Difference tests showed that the mean score of news avoidance of news about the corona crisis in May 2020 was significantly higher than in April 2020 (t = −5.59; p < .001)

Figure 1. News avoidance of news about the corona crisis.

To answer Research Questions 2, 3, and 4 we ran an OLS regression model in which we regress the measure of news avoidance in survey 2 on the lagged dependent variable (i.e., news avoidance in survey 1), media trust, political attitudes, and emotional distress variables. Appendix A (see Online Supplementary Materials) shows the full regression table of this model, while Figure 2 plots the effects. The figure shows, first, that trust in the news about the corona crisis had a negative effect on news avoidance (b = −0.10; SE = 0.05; p = .047). This indicates that citizens who did not believe that the news reported truthfully about the corona crisis were more likely to avoid this news. General trust in the media, however, was not significantly related to news avoidance about the corona crisis (b = −0.06; SE = 0.10; p = .535).

Figure 2. Predictors for avoiding news about COVID-19.Note. The figure shows the B-coefficients of the OLS regression analysis presented in Appendix 1, and their 95% confidence intervals. The model additionally controls for: gender, age, level of education, perceived danger of corona for respondents personally and for society, perceived duration of the corona crisis, newspaper use and television use for political events. Also, the lagged dependent variable (e.g., news avoidance of news about the corona crisis in wave 1) is included and the models estimates robust standard errors.

Next, the figure shows that none of the political indicators significantly affected news avoidance. Thus, unlike media trust, political trust did not have an effect on news avoidance (b = −0.05; SE = 0.06; p = .431), indicating that citizens who distrust politics, were not more likely to avoid news about the corona crisis. Furthermore, citizens’ satisfaction with the democracy in Austria (b = 0.06; SE = 0.13; p = .644), satisfaction with the government (b = −0.05; SE = 0.14; p = .746), political interest (b = 0.17; SE = 0.11; p = .118), and left–right self-placement (b = 0.01; SE = 0.04; p = .879) did not affect the extent to which they avoid news about the corona crisis.

Figure 2 shows, moreover, that the emotional well-being variables all had positive effects on news avoidance. Citizens who experienced that consuming news had a negative effect on their mood were more likely to avoid news about the corona crisis (b = 0.21; SE = 0.09; p = .022). Likewise, the more people felt exhausted by the news overload, the higher the likelihood for news avoidance (b = 0.43; SE = 0.10; p < .001). Moreover, whether news consumption was deemed too time consuming also contributes to explaining news avoidance of news about the corona crisis: there was a positive effect of support for the statement that news takes up too much time on news avoidance (b = 0.32; SE = 0.10; p = .002).

Concerning the control variables, age had a negative effect, whereas gender and the level of education had an insignificant effect on corona-related news avoidance. In line with Toff and Kalogeropoulos (2020), we show that younger people were more inclined to avoid news. Corona-related beliefs did not seem to drive news avoidance; the effects of the estimated risk of the corona virus for society and for oneself, as well as the impact of the estimated duration of the corona crisis on news avoidance of news about the corona virus, were all insignificant. Lastly, the table in Appendix A shows that newspaper use had a negative effect on news avoidance, although television use for political information was insignificantly related to news avoidance. This indicates that, on average, higher political news consumption through newspapers was related to lower news avoidance behavior.

Robustness

To test the sensitivity of these results to our model specifications, we performed a series of robustness tests in which we tested whether the findings were robust to alternative estimation methods. First, we ran an OLS linear regression analyses on the stacked data of the two surveys, in which we clustered on respondents to control for the dependence in answers given by the same respondent and control for the survey in which the answers were given. Appendix B (see Online Supplementary Materials) presents the results and shows that these findings largely replicated the findings of the main model. Of the variables of interest, the only difference is that political trust here had a significant negative effect. This indicates that citizens that distrust politics were more inclined to avoid the news. Second, we ran a random intercept model on the stacked dataset, with observations nested in respondents, instead of an OLS regression model with clustering on respondents. Appendix C in the Online Supplementary Materials presents the findings and shows this model to be a replication of the previous robustness model: although the coefficients differ slightly, the direction and significance of all variables was equal to the model in Appendix B. Third, we ran the analyses on the two waves of the surveys separately. Appendix D and E (see Online Supplementary Materials) present the findings and show largely the same effects as the main model, except that in survey 1 (April 2020) political trust and political interest both did have a significant negative effect on news avoidance, while in survey 2 (May 2020) political interest had a one-sided significant negative effect.

Overall, we conclude that the findings are quite robust. Independent of the model specifications, we show that distrust in the media to report truthfully about the pandemic and the emotional well-being variables all induced news avoidance. We are somewhat less sure about the impact of political factors on avoiding the news. Although political ideology and satisfaction with the democracy seem robustly unrelated to news avoidance, some models show that political trust and political interest negatively affect avoiding the news.

Discussion

Recent research in our field suggests that intentionally avoiding the news is a prevalent phenomenon in current information-rich environments. Research points out three important sets of explanations for news avoidance: a lack of trust in media, political attitudes, and emotional distress that people experience due to the exposure to news. However, findings for both the prevalence and predictors of news avoidance depend on the national context and also the prevalence of crisis. Given that news avoidance during the pandemic threatens individual compliance with protective measures (Siebenhaar et al., 2020), the aim of the current study was to investigate both the prevalence and predictors of news avoidance during the pandemic in Austria.

Our findings show that a majority of participants (75% in April and 80% in May 2020) at least sometimes actively avoid news about the pandemic. This indicates that intentional news avoidance is a very common behavior that seemed to increase throughout the pandemic. This is in line with a number of qualitative and quantitative studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which confirm a pattern of both higher news exposure but also higher needs for news avoidance (Bendau et al., 2020; Castro et al., 2021; de Bruin et al., 2021; Newman et al., 2020; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2021). The corona crisis is an omnipresent topic and has a huge effect on people's lives, including the way people work, how people organize their (family) lives, and how they spend their free time. Also, the pandemic has become omnipresent in the news media (Maurer et al., 2021; Perreault & Perreault, 2021). In order to get by in these demanding times, it can be a good and even advisable strategy to sometimes skip the news and find some distraction with other topics or activities from time to time. Findings by de Bruin et al. (2021) confirm that news avoidance during the pandemic is positively related to well-being. That means, news avoidance can be a healthy coping strategy to get through the crisis. However, there are also risks that might result from this behavior. Our findings show that the level of news avoidance has increased throughout the pandemic. This might indicate that people show the tendency to become less engaged and even fatigued (Groot Kormelink & Klein Gunnewiek, 2022) by the topic. As a result, news avoiders might miss important information and also show a lower level of compliance with measures that might hinder an effective crisis management.

Further, we also investigated the most likely individual-level predictors that explain the avoidance of news about COVID-19. First, in line with previous findings (Fletcher et al., 2020; Newman et al., 2020), we find that lower levels of trust in news about corona increase the level of news avoidance. Secondly, the role of political trust in explaining news avoidance is more ambiguous. Depending on the model specifications, some findings show that citizens with lower levels of trust in Parliament and the government are more likely to avoid the news, while others cannot confirm this relation. However, even if the role of political trust for news avoidance is not entirely clear based on our findings, the combined findings for trust in media and trust in politics might indicate that news avoidance could be related to anti-elitism and populist attitudes (Krämer, 2013; Palmer et al., 2020). It can be assumed that people who avoid the news for these reasons are also more open for alternative news sources since populist attitudes are related to using alternative media more frequently (Müller & Schulz, 2021). This way, the circulation of fake news and beliefs in conspiracy theories could also increase. It is thus important for future studies to more thoroughly investigate how news avoidance is related to populist attitudes and general news use patterns. Also, it is unclear how different ways of reporting news in journalism relate to the impact of media and political trust on news avoidance. Previous research shows that the communication style in journalism has an effect on trust in politicians (Otto & Maier, 2016) as well as trust in news (Thier et al., 2021). It might be the case that tabloid journalism, including strong dramatization of the topic, lowers trust in news and the government in times of the pandemic and thereby indirectly increases news avoidance. However, as said, the relationship between political trust and news avoidance is less robust than the other findings of this study. That means, more research is needed to examine the relationship between news reporting, trust, and news avoidance.

Most importantly, we show that people avoid news because they feel emotionally overwhelmed by the negativity of the news, the amount of information and because of the amount of time they spend with news about the pandemic. These emotional responses were the strongest predictors for news avoidance in our models. This is in line with previous studies that showed that emotional distress positively affects intentional news avoidance (de Bruin et al., 2021; Fletcher et al., 2020; Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020). Since emotional reactions to news play such an important role for intentional news avoidance, it can be concluded that characteristics of the media coverage are important when attempting to keep news avoidance low. If news is too negative and overwhelms people with too much information, it might also be more likely that they turn away. There are several implications for journalism that might help to lower the need for news avoidance. First, even if it is important to communicate pressing issues about the pandemic, it might be advisable to also focus on different topics to provide opportunities for distraction. One possibility could be to have certain news places (e.g., certain time slots on TV and certain pages in newspapers/news magazines) that are free of information about the pandemic. This would ensure that people can bypass news about pandemic and still stay up to date about current affairs. Second, especially in so-called infotainment formats like talk shows, podcasts, or documentaries, it would be advisable to put other topics besides COVID-19 into focus as well and lower the attention that is being paid to the pandemic. And finally, news should not be too negative. Even though the pandemic is automatically linked to fear and uncertainty, journalism could try to cover the crisis more constructively by focusing on solutions instead of solely problems, on coping strategies, and on a positive outlook. These are approaches formulated in constructive journalism (Mast et al., 2019) and solution journalism (McIntyre, 2019) which might be worth considering in news coverage, especially in times of crises. This might not just help to attract and keep the audience but also help people to get better through challenging times.

While we found that both trust and emotional distress play an important role in intentional news avoidance, we did not find that other political attitudes are relevant. That means that satisfaction with the government and democracy, political interest, and political ideology are not explanations for the need for a news break during the pandemic. Previous studies have found this relationship for a general low news consumption (Edgerly, 2021; Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020) and also for intentional news avoidance (Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020). Maybe contextual factors explain why we could not detect this relationship in our sample. We investigated the case of Austria, which might display differences due to a different culture of news consumption (Toff & Kalogeropoulos, 2020). Austria ranks high in the freedom of press index, has a public service broadcaster that people trust and a society that has a high level of interest in news. These preconditions might be more important to news avoidance and lower the relevance of political attitudes. Also, we investigated intentional news avoidance during the pandemic. In these times, the need for a break might be independent from general satisfaction with politics, political interest, or ideology. Since everyone is facing an exceptional situation that causes stress in everyday life, the need for information and also the need for a break might be more determined by the course of the pandemic compared to the general perception of politics. That also means that findings for the role of political attitudes in news avoidance could also differ in non-crisis times.

Naturally, our study comes with limitations. First, due to the nature of the two-wave panel data, we cannot be sure about the causal relation between the variables. More precisely, we cannot formally test if what we claim to be predictors really explain news avoidance or if it is the other way around. For example, concerning emotional well-being, it is also plausible to assume that more news avoidance has a positive impact on perceived overload or how news affects peoples’ mood. Even though the inclusion of the lagged dependent variable de facto models the change in news avoidance between the waves and controls for unobserved confounders, and therefore strengthens the causal claim, it does not resolve the endogeneity possibilities. Ultimately, experimental research or long-term panel studies, observing citizen’s actual news avoidance behavior and measuring their media and political attitudes and emotional distress factors over a longer period of time, is needed to be more certain about the direction of the causal relationship.

Second, our study was embedded in a large-scale election study. This means that space for the measurement of our central concepts was limited. As a consequence, we had to rely for most constructs on single items instead of scales, which lowers the reliability of the measures. Now that we provide first insights about the drivers of news avoidance during the pandemic, future studies could replicate the findings with improved measures, for example, by using multi-item scales for gauging news avoidance as a complex human behavior.

Finally, our findings are restricted to the case of Austria. We have pointed out that both the culture of news consumption in a specific country and the (course of the) pandemic play an important role for news avoidance. In terms of generalizability, it means that findings are likely to be similar for countries that also have a similar media system and therefore can be categorized as northern European democratic corporatist (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) as well. However, it also plays a role if the course of the pandemic and political interventions are comparable. This is, for example, the case for Germany and Switzerland, which have similar media systems and also chose hard and early measures (e.g., lockdown, closing of restaurants, and curfew) in light of the rising COVID-19 cases in their country. However, news avoidance and the role of different predictors might be different for countries like the Netherlands or Sweden, which are similar in terms of the media system but chose a very different political strategy to fight the pandemic. Thus, the study should be replicated in different national contexts.

In sum, our study points out that news avoidance is a phenomenon that is even more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though it is advisable to look for distractions from time to time, the behavior can also be problematic for both democratic outcomes and for journalism. We found that relevant predictors explain news avoidance either with trust in media (and politics) or due to the emotional burden caused by news coverage. This highlights the importance to not put the trust of the people at risk. Otherwise, people might turn away from the news media. Another important implication is that news should not be too overwhelming, both with regard to the amount and the negative tone of the coverage of the pandemic. This can decrease news avoidance and also help people to get better through the crisis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Svenja Schäfer

Svenja Schäfer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Political Communication Research Group, Department of Communication at the University of Vienna. Her research interests include drivers and inhibitors of news exposure as well as effects of news for knowledge (perception), reality perception, and attitude formation. Her focus lies on news in digital environments including news articles on news websites, snack news in social media and user comments.

Loes Aaldering

Loes Aaldering is an Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics at the Free University of Amsterdam. Her main research interests are political leadership and media coverage; gender, politics, and media; electoral behavior; and political representation.

Sophie Lecheler

Sophie Lecheler is Professor of Political Communication at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include news framing, experimental methods, journalism, and emotions. Her research has appeared in various international journals, such as Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Political Communication, and Communication Theory.