Recent research indicates that belief among Americans in the civic duty to keep informed continues to fade.

Mass communication research from 1982 to 2000 analyzed the civic duty to keep informed among Americans. Studies consistently showed that voting-age adults felt obligated to keep up with current affairs. Citizens said they needed to know what was happening so they could be informed voters. Highly educated people usually felt a stronger duty to stay informed than those with lower education levels. Adults sought out civic information from print, broadcast, and online news organizations.

The 2023 results from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism show much less interest among Americans in keeping up with the news than earlier researchers identified. The 2023 results support findings from a 2014 study I did among Virginia Tech students. That limited analysis, published in 2017 in the Newspaper Research Journal, determined that millennials didn’t recognize a duty to keep up with political news the way earlier generations did. The young people born at the end of the 20th century indicated no clear commitment to keeping up with civic or political events—even though more than half the people in my survey said they saw news reports at least six days a week.

Interest in news drops

The 12th edition of the Digital News Report, released in June by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, showed that only 49% of Americans in 2023 said they were interested in news. That percentage was 18 points lower than in 2015, the year after my study.

Reuters researchers found that 12% of Americans in 2023 said they had not looked at any news reports in the past week. That news engagement level was much lower than I identified in my research. Reuters said interest in news in 2023 was lowest among women and young people.

“In the United States, we find that consumers are more likely to avoid subjects such as national politics and social justice, where debates over issues such as gender, sexuality, and race have become highly politicised,” the Reuters study said.

An Aug. 1 Washington Post article about the Reuters findings used Claudia Caplin to illustrate the change in news consumption. The retired advertising executive used to read two newspapers each morning, watch television news in the afternoon or evening, and listen to NPR programs during trips in her car.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, she began to consume less news, the Post story said. She reportedly found news coverage too “apocalyptic.”

“I’ve always felt I had a responsibility to know everything,” she told the Post. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

Caplin’s quotation summarizes the apparent change in the civic duty to keep informed.

Reasons for the change unclear

I don’t know—and neither do other researchers—exactly why people no longer feel obligated to stay informed. The 2023 Reuters report, which gathered data from six continents and 46 markets, identified several possible factors:

• Relying on social networks rather than traditional news organizations for information.
• Low trust in an ever-expanding array of online information sources.
• Lack of interest in what many news sources report.
• Rising costs for news content reported by working journalists.

“When it comes to news,” the Reuters report said, “audiences say they pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists in networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This contrasts sharply with Facebook and Twitter, where news media and journalists are still central to the conversation.”

Many people were skeptical of algorithms used to select what they saw via search engines, social networks, and other platforms, the Reuters report said. Nevertheless, users still slightly preferred news selected by algorithms to content chosen by editors.

Another factor, according to Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, the Reuters Institute’s director (quoted in the Post story), could be that publishers focus on consumers willing to pay for news content. Consequently, news organizations report stories intended to attract “politically interested” readers. That focus drives away politically disconnected individuals.

Assumptions questioned

Two assumptions of civic-duty research were that citizens with a strong sense of civic duty to keep informed would (1) seek out information from news media about issues facing the government and (2) be more likely to vote than those who do not accept such a duty.

With fewer people today interested in news reports, the first assumption may no longer be valid. I’ve already questioned whether—as the Libertarian press theory maintains—we can count on news consumers to seek out information on all sides of a topic (see July 21 post about press theories).

The second assumption may be debatable as well. Public opinion polls and academic research on voter participation often offer contradictory information.

Some reports say issues, such as abortion, drive increased voter participation—especially among women and young voters. Gallup reported July 23 that women and men hold similar views on the legality of abortion at each stage of pregnancy. Overall, Gallup reported that a record-high 69% of Americans said abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy and that 34% said abortion should be legal in all cases.

Pew Research reported July 12 that women voted more for Republican candidates than Democrats in the 2020 and 2022 elections. GOP candidates tend to oppose access to abortions.

Pew reported that voters 50 and older accounted for a larger share of the total electorate in 2022 (64%) than in the past three elections. The share of voters 18 to 29 went from 11% in 2018 to 14% in 2020 and 10% in 2022.

Other sources said that multiple factors—income, racial segregation, education level, political polarization, and the work of nonprofits—determined civic and political engagement among young people. In communities where young adults volunteered, helped their neighbors, and belonged to groups or associations, people in that age group voted.

Thinking may need to change

The 2023 Reuters results raise a crucial question about potential voters today: How can the 51% of Americans not interested in news find credible information to inform their choices at the ballot box?

Traditional democratic theory—what I learned during high school civics in the late 1960s—lists variables that increase citizen engagement in democratic systems. Freedom of information about government functions and openness by public officials about their plans were influential factors. Political candidates who avoided public scrutiny could mislead uninformed voters.

If Americans today don’t see their role as news consumers the way that people in my generation were taught to expect, we may need to adjust our thinking about how news consumption influences voting.

Copyright © 2023 Douglas F. Cannon