Avoidance behavior towards repetitive and complex messages

A considerable part of society deliberately avoids confrontation with news about current world events. According to a recent study by the Reuters news agency, 40 percent of Americans do not follow the news in the newspaper or online. The explanation often given is that the reporting is too alarming. Communication scientist Gwendolin Gurr, who currently works as a data analyst for Swiss-German radio and television SRF, shows that this is not the only reason.

In her SNSF-funded study, published in the International Journal of Communication, Gurr identified three causes for audiences to lose interest in a long-standing issue and avoid related messages: repetition, complexity, and a focus on political strategies.

To test these factors, Gurr looked at how news about Brexit was followed in Switzerland. "I didn't choose the topic at random, of course," she explains. "It affects Switzerland, but not so directly that fears were the main reason for defensiveness." The topic was also "topical for long enough for a fatigue effect to occur at all."

In her study, the researcher combined results from a survey of the Swiss population with a content analysis of reporting on Brexit in this country. The respondents indicated what thoughts and feelings the topic triggers in them and how often they inform themselves about it. The news, in turn, was classified according to various criteria, namely negativity, intensity, complexity, sensationalism, repetition, political strategies.

In total, the researcher conducted three surveys at different points in time - and in each case simultaneously analyzed the articles about Brexit. This enabled her to observe whether public sentiment developed in step with the tone and content of the media reports.

Context bores

A first point that emerges from the study concerns the repetition effect. In general, fatigue is observed when media reports contain little new but at the same time a lot of familiar information. These are frequently recapitulated to place them in the overall context. In other words, too much information that is already known deters the audience. And vice versa: The most current news is the most attractive.

The second deterrent is complex style. Gurr has applied a system that she uses to evaluate the difficulty of language in articles and reports. To do this, she measures such things as sentence length and other linguistic aspects. The result: Complex news items are more likely to cause a feeling of fatigue.

Finally, the analysis revealed that fatigue is more likely to occur when political aspects dominate. That is, when it's not so much about facts, but about political maneuvering in connection with those facts - intrigues in parliament, alliances, election strategies. Or to put it briefly: Political maneuvers may excite politicians and the media, but they apparently leave a large part of the public cold.

Problem child climate

In contrast to other analyses, in which the negativity of news is often cited as the main reason for disinterest in news, this effect was not found in the Freiburg study. However, this does not mean that Gurr's findings contradict previous research. "In Switzerland, the coverage of Brexit was almost exclusively negative, so it was not even possible to measure an effect," the researcher explains.

Can these results be applied to other topics such as the climate crisis? "You can say, of course, that climate is very repetitive as a subject of news coverage because similar events occur and are analyzed over a long period of time," Gurr explains. "Our work clearly shows that this plays an important role in fatigue."

Moreover, explanations are often technical - favoring more complex formulations - and susceptible to political capture and corresponding maneuvering. In other words, all three of the factors for fatigue identified by Gurr are present in the climate crisis. Media professionals who want to inform a broad public about climate issues thus do not have it easy, according to the researcher. At the same time, she cautions, "Even if general conclusions can be drawn from my study, our results cannot simply be transferred like that, because each issue is individual." As an example, she cites armed conflicts or humanitarian disasters, where a specific form of fatigue occurs, so-called "compassion fatigue." (pd)

Those interested can download the study "What Leads to Audience Issue Fatigue? A Linkage Analysis Study on the Effects of News Coverage on Fatigue From Ongoing News Issues" by Gurr and Metag. here read up.