Rethinking news disengagement: Epistemic disconnection from news

Abstract

This article argues that the term news avoidance is no longer an adequate description of all the circumstances in which young people disengage with journalism. In recent decades, a growing body of research has examined the reasons why people avoid and resist the news. This research has largely been based on the traditional, stable definition of news as a familiar category with democratic characteristics. However, if we accept the premise that avoidance presupposes a certain degree of knowledge and familiarity with this definition, we can observe that this prerequisite is not always met in today’s societies. Rather than deliberate avoidance, this points to a gradual dissolution of shared references and to a weakening of the symbolic, cognitive and cultural dimensions through which news is recognised. Drawing on 15 years of qualitative and participatory fieldwork with young people (2010–), this paper proposes the concept of epistemic disconnection from the news and highlights its implications for journalism, civic life and policy. Epistemic disconnection from the news is not a form of avoidance or resistance. Instead, it describes a situation in which the category of the news is no longer a recognisable or useful reference point in people’s symbolic repertoires or practical reasoning.

Introduction

The concept of news avoidance has become a central focus in journalism studies in recent years, particularly in the light of concerns about democratic and political engagement (Andersen et al. 2024; Brites and Figueiras, 2022; Damstra et al., 2023; Edgerly, 2022; Edgerly et al., 2018b; Figueiras, 2025; Figueiras and Brites, 2022; Fletcher et al., 2020; Lindell and Mikkelsen Båge, 2023; Newman et al., 2017; Schrøder and Blachørsten, 2016; Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020; Syvertsen, 2017; Toff and Kalogeropoulos, 2020; Van Den Bulck, 2006; Vandenplas et al., 2021; Ytre-Arne and Moe, 2021; Zerba, 2011). Avoidance is useful to describe certain patterns of behaviour in which people avoid news in digital societies (Edgerly et al., 2018a; Ohme et al., 2023; Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020; Ytre-Arne and Moe, 2021). It can also be used to cover evidence of emotional rejections (Moeller, 1999). Other concepts, such as news-ness (Edgerly and Vraga, 2020) and news resistance in the context of making strategic and critical choices (Brites and Ponte, 2018; Ohme et al., 2023; Woodstock, 2014a), are also crucial.

Nevertheless, the news avoidance canon (Ohme et al., 2023; Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020) remains too news consumption-based. It is still assumed that the public understands what news is, and its avoidance is considered a reaction to its content, form or perceived bias. The perspective presented here expands and differs from the conventional viewpoint, based on the premise that some citizens may have lost the knowledge needed to recognise the news or may not consider it when making choices, because of its perceived rootlessness or unfamiliarity.

Moving towards a broader conceptualisation, the epistemic disconnection from news goes beyond the consumption/avoidance-resistance dichotomy. It reflects the erosion of news as a recognisable category in individuals’ symbolic repertoires, particularly among young people. Avoidance presupposes minimal knowledge, and resistance assumes awareness and a particular criticality (often rich in agency and intentionally civic, even if it does not follow traditional civic and professional news contexts). Beyond these previous layers, the epistemic disconnection from news is a consequence in which the category of news ceases to function as a meaningful and recognisable reference in everyday life, breaking the typical links between news, knowledge and civic worlds.

To address these complexities, this article explores intersections with journalism studies, from the perspective of the audiences (Meijer, 2020; Swart et al., 2022), sociology of civic cultures (Dahlgren, 2009, 2013; Dahlgren and Hill, 2023), and critical literacies as dialogical and negotiated praxis (Kellner and Share, 2005, 2007). This requires attention to the affective and cultural dimensions of news disengagement, as well as the role of participatory practices and the interaction between mediatisation, datafication and algorithmic curation in configuring repertoires of meaning and practice in a deep mediatised society (Couldry and Hepp, 2017; Hepp and Hasebrink, 2018). Thus, transformations in these domains converge to destabilise news as a recognisable epistemic object, and the relevance of journalism is perceived as unstable.

The reflection and contributions of this article are based on funded qualitative research conducted in Portugal. This research over the last 15 years revealed a series of cumulative observations of social continuities and changes (Neale, 2021; Ruspini, 2002; Saldaña, 2003; Thomson et al., 2003), reflecting historical frameworks throughout people’s lifespans (McLeod and Thomson, 2009). It comprises a constellation of four interconnected projects conducted since 2010, each designed to inform different kaleidoscopic relationships among young people and news (Galan et al., 2019). When considered collectively, these projects produce what McLeod and Thomson (2009: 92) called “temporal layers” of qualitative insights, allowing for the identification of long-term cultural and epistemic changes that would otherwise remain invisible in isolated research projects.

I will detail each of these projects later on. For now, I note that I aligned the first three projects into a first temporal phase, beginning in 2010 and ending around 2018. Together, these three projects conducted in the Greater Porto area form a coherent phase I, in which young people’s disinterest in news was already being shaped by mistrust, negative affect, or perceived irrelevance, even if there was not yet an epistemic break. The category of news continued to carry symbolic weight, and they could identify it, even if they stepped on it. In the early 2010s, the socio-economic impact of the financial crisis and unemployment drove news avoidance due to disillusionment with politics (Brites and Ponte, 2018; Brites, Ponte, et al., 2017). Phase II begins in 2021, and it starts with a project on young people, news and digital citizenship. The project was aimed at people aged 15–19 and 20–24 from different places and nationalities. It was intentionally designed to revisit and update the focus of the first project on young people, news and participation, but in the context of a vastly different digital landscape. This phase is firmly rooted in a deeply digital and data-driven media environment.

After presenting the initial justifications for this argument and its reasoning, the subsequent analysis will examine in depth how the public has become increasingly detached from the news over the last 15 years. This revolutionary period in human history has been marked by a pandemic, profound changes in the media and digital landscape, and as well as deep individual and social changes. The analysis will consider the two main phases under review and will present a conclusion and a final critical reflection. The focus will be on what can be done now and in the future, based on the existing reality.

News and forms of agency to avoid and resist

The first project on young people, news and participation (with participants aged 15–18, from a diverse range of educational and socioeconomic backgrounds) was a 2-year exploratory longitudinal study that examined how young people engaged with news and civic participation. Although many participants expressed distrust or dissatisfaction with journalism, they maintained a clear cognitive, cultural and symbolic understanding of what constituted news. Their disengagement aligned with forms of selective avoidance and critical resistance. At that time, in the early 2010s, the discussion was still about the traditional and non-traditional meaning of news and civic engagement. The animated transition to the 21st century and enthusiasm about digital challenges and positive outcomes for democratic life were still enlightened by the early days of Internet 2.0.

All participants in the project easily identified news as a category, and a considerable number positioned themselves as critical news readers. Despite the consistency of the identified profile of news lovers (“News and information are the basis of everything. It’s all about power. Having information means being ahead, having an advantage” reflected Joaquim), some participants had already chosen to avoid discussing some news topics, news formats and news brands.

These avoidances can be divided into two distinct groups. At first, avoidance was based primarily on the perception that certain subjects were considered irrelevant to young people, boring and/or adult matters (“Honestly, I’m not very interested in politics. Sometimes, in class, we talk about this or that. . . but I’m only turning 18 this month and I don’t know much about it”, pointed out Vasco). Several young participants even suggested that, in the context of family life, serious and political news were a topic of discussion among adults, with minimal expression of the opinions of the young people present in the room (“they [the adults in the family] talk about disasters, sometimes violence, politics”, said Dino in a resigned tone, while point news as adult stuff; Brites, 2015). Secondly, they expressed dissatisfaction with the way journalists portray young people and their living conditions, contributing to a lack of trust in traditional media and a feeling of dissatisfaction with the representation of youth in the media (“Often, in [high-risk] neighbourhoods, when there are violent incidents, the Jornal de Notícias [a daily newspaper] comes here and, if it is awful, it reports supposedly what ‘happened’. Those who are there and who saw it say one thing, but the newspaper says things that may not be what happened in here, they report it in a completely different way”, said Beatriz critically.

During this extensive period of observing young people in various contexts and analysing their relationship with the news media, a discrepancy emerged between the characteristics of journalism perceived as inspiring and those not perceived as such. This is primarily because young people were exposed to television anchors at dinnertime, and these TV moments still represented traditional symbols of legacy media (Deacon et al., 2024). Inversely, there was a growing disengagement from journalism, or rather, news consumption and identification.

This was particularly evident during the RadioActive Europe project. Within this project, inspired by participatory research contexts (e.g. online radio for at-risk young people aged 13–21) and aiming to promote critical thinking (especially in digital contexts), young people could still master journalistic skills even when they didn’t follow the news. Journalism has undoubtedly shifted from being a passive source to becoming a dynamic method, and has established itself as a valuable set of tools for expression (Brites, Santos, et al., 2017).

The RadioActive Europe project moved the focus to the pedagogical potential of journalism (Brites, Santos, et al., 2017; Clark and Marchi, 2017; Jaakkola, 2022; Tomé and Brites, 2020). Drawing inspiration from journalistic techniques such as investigation, interviewing, reporting and fact-checking, the project developed an online youth radio station to encourage learning through practical experience. As I pointed out before, even when participants did not consume news regularly, they understood and appropriated journalistic genres meaningfully during the production of radio programmes. Journalism continued to function as an inspiring method, and news remained a coherent epistemic category, even if it was not widely used in their daily lives (Brites, Santos, et al., 2017). Journalism served as an operational inspiration for civic expression, even if its consumption was intermittent or selective. They did not see themselves as news consumers, but adopted a reactive form of journalistic practice in a radio project.

Between 2014 and 2018, when southern European countries were still severely affected by financial crises, the third project on audiences, news and critical literacies was submitted and accepted for financing. Incorporating the concept of critical literacies, the project aimed to expand context-based analysis of young people, including parents and educators, to review the news repertoires of the first project. The main sample comprised young people aged 15–19, and the secondary sample included some of their relatives aged 45 or older. It was conducted an analysis of the intergenerational dynamics of news use in school, family and community environments. Here, the news category continued to convey meaning, shaping conversations, tensions, and expectations among different age groups. Participants recognised the news, even when they were critical of it. However, it soon became clear that half of the sample (young people/parents/grandmother) showed strong signs of disengagement from the news, such as avoidance and resistance (Brites and Ponte, 2018).

Among those who did not wish to follow the news, there were two distinct groups. Firstly, some avoided for reasons related to their life circumstances, such as disillusionment with politics, the economic and financial crisis, and unemployment. Secondly, some saw this decision as a selective choice to obtain higher-quality information that, in their view, escaped the more commercial logic (namely, television news) and ensured a more reflective, careful search for news. “I remember when they finally came to install the television. We had moved into our new house about two years earlier, and the TV was the last thing on our minds. . .,” said Marta, explaining that her parents decided that there wasn’t enough space for the TV, so they stopped watching it (Brites and Ponte, 2018). This was one of the families interviewed who considered television to be overly commercial and to have lower-quality news. This latter pattern corresponds to what Woodstock (2014a, 2014b) identified as news resistance, a form of disengagement built on criticism, awareness and agency. Murumaa-Mengel and Klaassen (2025: 113) also adopt this perspective, contending that certain types of disconnection constitute skilled “audience literacies”. This is achieved by users deliberately overlooking or disregarding content to safeguard their well-being or prevent algorithms that incite rage-baiting.

Evidence of epistemic disconnection from the news

Consistent with the “normative folk theories of journalism” identified by Garusi and Juarez Miro (2025: 580) among Austrian youth, participants in phase I mostly viewed journalism through the lens of traditional expectations. However, by phase II, it was observed an erosion of these cognitive frameworks, and the common understanding of what journalism is and does became unusable.

The second phase begins in 2021 with the fourth project on youth, news and digital citizenship – YouNDigital. This project was deliberately designed to revisit and update the focus of the first project, now in the context of a deeply digital, data-driven media environment. The project involved 42 young people living in Portugal and with different nationalities, aged 15–19 and 20–24. At this stage, the epistemic disconnection from the news became visible as a qualitatively different phenomenon. In contrast to previous forms of evasion or resistance, which still exist, some participants in this project demonstrated an absence of operational understanding of how to recognise the news, including its formats, democratic authority and utility. Thus, in this sense, the fourth project marks a conceptual break. It does not merely extend the patterns of evasion documented in previous years. It reveals a fundamentally new condition that can be labelled “epistemic disconnection from the news”. The loss of the news is symbolic, cognitive, and cultural and therefore faceless.

This phase II is characterised by the proliferation of deep mediatisation (Couldry and Hepp, 2017; Hepp, 2016; Hepp and Hasebrink, 2018) as a condition in which individual and social processes are increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures, datafication and algorithmic systems (Mathieu and Vengerfeldt, 2020; Møller Hartley et al., 2023). The history and advent of deep AI models that navigate our lives without citizens being fully aware of this implicit surveillance and often tolerate it (Kalmus et al., 2025) have accelerated a process that can be considered a deep digital mediatisation. The advent of a society characterised by deep digital mediatisation and the omnipresent role of algorithmic curation has exacerbated existing digital relationships with human beings. These include their relationship with AI and algorithms, and the fact that, without additional knowledge to help users overcome the difficulties of understanding, algorithms are unable to present users with diverse and journalistic content effectively (Brites et al., 2024). The algorithmic curation also erodes the primacy of legacy news media (Deacon et al., 2024) and includes diverse ways to navigate the news (Bengtsson and Johansson, 2024).

Further than that, accidental disconnection from the news can also occur when algorithms do not expose users to journalistic content, particularly in the absence of an intentional search. This phenomenon intersects with the epistemic disconnection dimension. When exposure is rare, either due to social factors or the reconfiguration of exposure to traditional and digital news media, recognition and symbolic relevance diminish over time, thereby reinforcing distancing from the unknown.

This is the context in which the latest data on young people and news was collected. At the project’s start, the transformation was evident. In participatory interviews, some young people lacked a ready understanding of news, as I pointed out already, involving how it worked, its formats, its democratic authority, and its utility.

It was not only a matter of avoiding the news (Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020), resisting it (Woodstock, 2014a) or being skilled at avoiding injuries (Murumaa-Mengel and Klaassen, 2025). The category of news for some of the participants had ceased to function as a point of reference (Norris, 2000; Park, 1940/2009; Schudson, 2002; Tuchman, 1980; Zelizer, 2004), even to daily (civic) talk (Park, 1940/2009). Participants, even when they ensured they followed reference newspapers, often had difficulty simply identifying and describing what news is.

“I’m not sure how to classify it, but I think it was just a description of what happened, and it’s so. . . Well, it became a hot topic for a few days and then disappeared. No one talks about it anymore; no one knows anything about it. . . Well, no one knows where it came from. . . That information just appeared, and that was it. I think the news is a little. . . It probably involves more people, maybe, probably”, Laura described with some effort. Another interviewee stated: “I don’t really know how to differentiate between news and information, you know? But anyway. The news is part of the information. No, the information is part of the news. . .”, described Alice; “I don’t think it’s very relevant news. [laughs] Maybe it’s information? I don’t know. . . Or a curiosity? I don’t know, I don’t know, but what are the topics that can [be news]?” said Tânia, a slightly hesitant and uncertain of what she was saying.

This erosion occurred mainly because they showed a lack of consistent cultural and cognitive references to the news. In such contexts, the conventional status of journalism has become inoperative or has suffered a process of reduction. This is in line with the notion of a deep digital mediatised society, where the proliferation of communicative figurations (Couldry and Hepp, 2017; Hepp, 2013, 2014; Hepp and Hasebrink, 2018) reconfigures symbolic hierarchies and destabilises established categories.

Research shows that participants are concomitantly shifting from informed avoidance or resistance to an epistemic disconnection from the news. Selnes (2024) suggested that fake news can trigger engagement. This is by driving Norwegian teenagers back to mainstream media outlets to verify information. However, my research in Portugal with different nationalities and living contexts indicates that, in some cases, participants lost the impulse to verify information. Both results lead to different shades of meaning that do not necessarily conflict with each other, but rather point to different layers of engagement and disengagement with the news. They highlight existing and relevant strands from a democratic perspective.

Together, the two phases illustrate a 15-year arc that traces an emerging media, individual and social transformation. The transition from news avoidance and resistance (phase I) to manifestations of epistemic disconnection from the news (phase II) reflects behavioural changes and also profound reconfigurations of civic cultures and mediated epistemologies in an era of deep digital mediatisation. For many young people, journalism neither provides them with knowledge nor exists as a meaningful category in their repertoire of civic or mediated life. This marks a significant cultural shift. Deacon et al. (2024) argue that the crisis of reach is only partial, as legacy brands maintain significant exposure via social media. My findings suggest that even if reach is maintained, namely through accidental exposure, an epistemic disconnection from the news may still occur if the audience no longer recognises the content as part of a distinct, authority-based category.

Escape ostrich syndrome by facing reality: A chance for democracy

The analysis identifies a gradual erosion of news as a significant epistemic category in young people’s relationships with the news. There is a shift from behavioural choice to a deeper erosion of journalism’s role in society. Both epistemic disconnection and traditional news avoidance involve distancing from news, but their causes and audience relationship differ, becoming unidentifiable in some cases. The concept of epistemic disconnection from the news reframes the debate about young people’s distancing from journalism, shifting attention from behaviour (consumption vs avoidance/resistance) to the symbolic, cultural and cognitive erosion of news’s connotations across diverse social settings. It reframes young people’s disengagement not as a matter of mere consumption, but as a collapse of the category and connection with traditional news, constructed as a structural link to democracy. As mentioned before, in Portugal, as in some other southern European countries, television anchors at dinnertime have historically held symbolic significance in news broadcasting (Brites, 2015). In consideration of the aforementioned, the transition to epistemic disconnection in phase II is of such consequence that it denotes the deterioration of the conventionally robust TV-based cultural foundation of Southern European family life (Brites, 2015; Brites and Ponte, 2018; Brites, Ponte, et al., 2017). At the same time, journalism is losing its reputation as the authority on fact-checking and credible information. There is a rupture in how news claims are recognised and accredited as knowledge. It is a fact that, despite the maintenance of legacy brands and their long-standing institutions, the four crises identified by Deacon et al. (2024) have somehow contributed to a loss of authority in the eyes of audiences.

In light of this, the present study refers to the condition whereby some people neither avoid nor resist the news, but rather fail to recognise it in its contemporary form. This phenomenon goes beyond behavioural, attitudinal and consumption aspects, incorporating the status of knowledge, regimes of authority and validation. Given that, I use the concept of epistemic disconnection from the news to denote a state that existing concepts, such as avoidance and resistance, cannot fully capture.

Implications for democratic life and policy

The answer to the current situation cannot be simply to aim to return to the past. It is not possible to fully undo what changed. However, it is possible to formulate ideas based on what exists and on what society is facing.

In practical terms, this shift has implications for critical literacy programs and the claim to discuss power relations and contexts (Clark, 2013; Kellner and Share, 2007). If news itself has lost symbolic and epistemic relevance, traditional technical skills-based literacy initiatives are not enough. One promising way is to integrate journalistic practices into collaborative projects, without assuming a prior attachment to the news. This allows critical capacities to be cultivated while re-establishing the symbolic and civic values and journalism for younger audiences (Brites, Ponte and Menezes, 2027; Clark, 2013; Clark and Marchi, 2017; Jaakkola, 2022). These views should carefully avoid imposing normative expectations on what counts as valuable engagement with the media (Dahlgren, 2009, 2013; Dahlgren and Hill, 2023), respecting the multiplicity of ways in which people make sense of their mediated worlds (Carpentier, 2017), even if they might be challenging to tackle and controversial (Council of Europe, 2021; Drotner and Erstad, 2014). It’s about creating conditions where democratic anchors can regain relevance through dialogue, inclusion and the recognition of diverse perspectives (Council of Europe, 2021; Drotner and Erstad, 2014).

It is imperative to emphasise that the objective of this article is not to stigmatise or burden citizens. Given so, from a policy perspective, and despite the absence of a consensus on the impact of news consumption on democratic foundations, it is crucial to acknowledge the current landscape’s with the erosion of news, which has the potential to foster the proliferation of conspiracy theories and the acceptance of biased platform algorithms and democratic contexts that lack critical scrutiny (Brites et al., 2024; Kalmus et al., 2025). It has the potential to engender anti-democratic behaviours, including the mobilisation of individuals in the context of information disorder (Wardle and Derakhshan, 2017).

As some authors have been warning for several decades, journalistic practice needs renewed efforts to connect journalism with the lived realities, informative and news experiences and cultural frameworks of younger audiences (Bengtsson and Johansson, 2024; Meijer, 2020; Patterson, 2007; Swart et al., 2022). In light of this article, it is critical to also consider an additional pivotal dimension, especially from the standpoint of audiences. Claiming to reimagine and reinvent journalism as a novel and distinct cultural artefact might not be enough. The consequences of epistemic disconnection from news and its ramifications for democratic expectations, civic demands and contemporary life are not to be ignored. These dimensions still require further study in order to understand when they are positive or negative for democratic processes and how they can be improved in the democratic sense.

Future research could go wider than the historical consumption paradigm and explore how different levels of avoidance, resistance, news-ness and epistemic disconnection manifest themselves across countries and the implications this has for democratic life and for the present and future of journalism. This could involve examining differences and common ground between generations and media systems, as well as how these factors intersect with inequalities related to class, gender, education and digital access. Longitudinal qualitative approaches are well-suited to this task, as they allow researchers to trace how epistemic relations to news are formed, destabilised or reconfigured over time (Neale, 2021; Ruspini, 2002; Saldaña, 2003; Thomson et al., 2003), bringing different layers to the light (McLeod and Thomson, 2009: 92).