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The Paradox of Popularity. How Young People Experience the News Irene Costera Meijer Irene Costera Meijer • Senior associate professor Mediastudies • Department of Media and Culture • University of Amsterdam • Turfdraagsterpad 9 • 1012XT Amsterdam • The Netherlands • Tel: +31 (0)20 525 3994/2980 • Fax:+31 (0)20 5254599 • Email:[email protected]

Paper RIPE Conference: November 16 – 18, 2006

News is like a whole-wheat sandwich: you eat it because it is healthy, not because it is tasty. (Iris, college student, age 25)

There are clear signs that today’s young people pay less attention to conventional mediabased news, be it from television or newspapers. Only one out of five 15-year-olds has a broad interest in media information (Beekhoven & Van Well, 1998), while as much as 14 percent of those between age 16 and 24 feel that there is too much news on television (Hargreaves & Thomas, 2002). Although it was always assumed that young people more or less automatically develop a need for news and information once they move into adulthood, this no longer proves to be the case. This particular age effect has been replaced by a socalled “cohort-effect” (Buckingham, 2000a), which implies that young people’s lack of interest in news is likely to persist when they grow older (Barnhurst & Wartella, 1998; Buckingham, 2000b; Hargreaves & Thomas, 2002; Raeymakers, 2003).

The declining appetite for news among young people has to do with fundamental technological changes in our culture. Since the late 1980s, when there were only three television channels in the Netherlands and four in the United Kingdom, Europe has been moving inexorably towards a multi-channel broadcasting environment.Today an array of media services is available anytime, anyplace. With the emergence of the internet, the introduction of various mobile phone technologies and the expansion of commercial broadcasting, the amount of information and entertainment has grown inordinately. This in turn has influenced where young people find their information, how they interact with each other and which entertainment they value (Huysmans et al., 2004). In a world of information excess the nature and experience of information is bound to change, of course, and this has become evident first among members of the new generation (Johnson, 2006). It turns out that to many of them conventional news is hardly appealing. They are not so much looking

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for “news” and information, but rather for inspiration, a sense of belonging and meaning to their life (Nijs & Peters, 2002). Some critics have argued that we are moving towards an “experience economy” (de Haan et al, 2001; Pine & Gilmore, 2000). If this is the case indeed, the media have to learn to create appealing worlds of experience (cf. Piët, 2003), not just as a way to attract young people but as part of a general service-oriented approach that will ensure the media’s success in the future as well.

How can or should today’s news organizations, which have long relied on a straightforward facts-and-opinions approach, respond to an increasingly experience-oriented society? Do they have to barter their professional values – independence, factuality, and trustworthiness – in order to serve a younger audience? Do they have to lower their standards in order to reach them? This article engages in a critical fashion with these new options and various changes by zooming in on the concerns of younger people in particular. It covers the media experiences of 450 individuals between age 15 and 25 who live in the Netherlands and come from a variety of cultural and educational backgrounds. Specifically, our argument is based on data derived from 239 in-depth interviews, 148 news biographies and 65 online questionnaires that directly and indirectly address their patterns of information consumption,

Young People’s News Consumption Data from the Dutch audience research foundation (SKO, 2004) reveal that the viewer density and the market share of Dutch public TV’s major news broadcast, NOS News (or “NOS Journaal”), are much lower for the age group 16-24 than for the general population (over 6).

Figure 1. Viewer rates and market shares, Dutch NOS News, January 2004 for the 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. broadcasts January 2004 Average

Time

VR 6+

VR 16-24

MS 6+

MS 16-24

6 p.m.

9.7

3.3

33.6

18.8

8 p.m.

12.4

3.6

28.7

13.0

Source: www.kijkonderzoek.nl

The viewer rates for commercial news broadcasts on Dutch television display a similar pattern (Witte, 2004). Moreover, the younger generation also proves to be less attracted by newspapers and news magazines. If young people read newspapers at all, it is usually one of the new newspapers that are distributed free of charge in railway stations and elsewhere (Bakker and Scholten, 2005).

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Figure 2 Age & newspaper readership in the Netherlands (in %). Nederland National Regional newspapers newspapers Age group 13-24 years 15 11 11 25-34 years 18 16 13 35-49 years 29 29 28 50-64 years 22 27 29 65 years and older 15 18 19 Total 99 101 100 Source: NOM Print Monitor November 2003 - October 2004 (In: Bakker & Scholten, 2005:7)

Among today’s young people we no longer encounter a straightforward, unambiguous interrelationship between watching television news, civic identity and social involvement: “Whatever it means to them to be citizens, to be political does not seem to require the services of television news” (Barnhurst & Wartella, 1998: 304). Furthermore, Raeymakers (2003), Barnhurst & Wartella (1998) and Beekhoven & Van Wel (1998) observe that young viewers may be hungry for news but that this is not satisfied by the ways in which news is currently offered on television. To youngsters, many topics in standard news programs are hardly appealing, whereby domestic politics, international politics, culture and the economy are seen as least interesting. If they show concern for news at all, they appear mainly interested in following news headlines (Groenhuijsen & Van Liempt, 1995; Raeymakers, 2003), which is why some mockingly refer to them as “spotlight chasers” (Hargreaves & Thomas, 2002). Barnhurst (1998:205) has even gone as far to claim that the products of institutional journalism are largely felt to be “irrelevant to their lives”. Most news, it seems, belongs to a realm beyond young people’s everyday life. In this respect Bird (2003: 2) has argued that much news hardly impresses viewers, unless they are personally affected by it: “The images and messages wash over us, but most leave little trace, unless they resonate, even for a moment, with something in our personal or cultural experience.” Putnam (1995, 2000) and more recently Mindich (2005) suggested that the marginal significance of news and current affairs programs in the life of youngsters is indicative of their limited social involvement, but Beekhoven and Van Wel (1998) concluded that this is not necessarily the case. Only when young people increasingly experience media worldviews as fragmented and gloomy do they tend to be less involved in global and political issues. This could be countered, several critics have claimed, by presenting news in more coherent ways or in more appealing formats (Beekhoven & Van Wel, 1998; Buckingham, 1999; Fiske, 1992; Katz, 1993; Livingstone, 2002; Raeymakers, 2003). According to Richard Sambrook, director BBC World Service and Global News Division and former director BBC news, young people

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“no longer sit down with news as appointment viewing, but it would be wrong to conclude that they don’t care about the news” (Hargreaves & Thomas, 2002: 85). Other research suggests that young people do in fact value news. Gauntlett and Hill (1999) asked their young British respondents to keep a diary of their TV viewing behavior during a period of five years. Based on these diaries, the researchers claim that news programs increasingly became part of the youngsters’ daily routine as they grew older. Data gathered by Raeymakers (2003:173) indicate that in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium over 40 percent of the young respondents (age 16-18) consume news regularly. The Dutch Central Data Agency also concluded that young people’s interest in TV news increases as they mature. In the Netherlands, more than one out of three in the age group 15-17 and more than one of two in the age group 18-24 report that they follow the news on a daily basis (CBS, 2003:119). The striking difference between these data and the viewer rates mentioned above may be explained by the fact that the high percentages come from surveys that rely on selfreporting by youngsters (cf. Raeymakers, 2003:168). Moreover, even when young people show an interest in news, they tend to follow television news in a fragmentary way and merely focus on the large issues. As soon as it takes too much of an effort to watch, they basically pull out. Interestingly, results reported by Barnhurst and Wartella (1998) support the conclusion that young people experience news as just one genre out of many in the neverending flow of television images. Moreover, they do not draw a strict line between entertainment and information, and to develop their political awareness they rely on a much broader set of programs and media than just news. In this respect Barnhurst (1998: 217) has argued that young people “use magazines, ads and commercials, fictional TV shows and films and sports or gaming to give form to their dreams, personal or collective, and then they act as bricoleurs, gathering the detritus of fad and fashion to create their own styles and express themselves as political beings.”

Moving beyond Conflicting Research Results The above mentioned research results bring to light two paradoxical situations in particular. First, various researchers suggest that young people tend to show an increasing interest in news as they get older, but ratings show that today’s young generation (age 15 to 25) hardly reads newspapers, watches television news or current affairs programs. Second, most scholars explain these low ratings by pointing to the fact that news items seldom touch on the lives and experience of young people and that for news to become more relevant to them, it should be linked up more closely with their sense of the world and be presented in a more entertaining style, while positive news items should not be excluded. Yet, other research points to the opposite fact that youngsters reject popularization of television news,

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suggesting that “the trend to more popular forms bears some responsibility for the rejection of television news by young people” (Barnhurst & Wartella, 1998: 302). In order to explain and move beyond these contradictory results we decided to adopt a more comprehensive approach. Our major objective was to establish how today’s young individuals in the Netherlands actually experience and reflect on television news. Apart from two research assistants and myself, a total of 37 students were active as data gatherers in our project. They conducted 239 in-depth interviews with youngsters and did 100 street interviews with individuals of various ages and backgrounds at various locations in the Netherlands. Because our investigation was sponsored by NOS News, the number one Dutch news program, our interviewers gained easy access to places where young people gather: trains, schools, universities, shopping malls, fast food restaurants, sports cafeterias. In addition, we analyzed 148 news biographies, 65 extensive digital questionnaires and 147 news items that appeared on Dutch and foreign stations (BBC, ARD, VRT, US). By using a method called ”triangulation” – combining multiple observers, theories, methods, and empirical materials – I wanted to overcome the problems that may have caused the paradoxical results of earlier news research. The underlying idea is that one can be more confident with a result if different methods lead to the same result. In addition I relied on compeers - the “problematic” group itself - as student-researchers, and in their selection I included both news “junks” and news “haters.” Furthermore, our investigations did not exclusively focus on the genre’s positive relevance to them; after all, we had to account for young people’s aversion to news as a genre as well. Third, in our interviews we not only addressed news as presented in various media, but also in relation to other media genres, notably because young people’s definition of news itself was at stake. Popular genres among young people (reality soap, sports etc.) were investigated for clues as to their popularity, while we also related young people’s use of television to their usage of radio, newspapers, mobile phones, and the internet. Specifically, our study is based on the views and experiences of 450 young individuals in the Netherlands between age 15 and age 25. Their background may differ in terms of ethnicicty, gender, culture, region and education. Furthermore, we interviewed 43 students of various journalism schools on their preferences and aversions regarding news. Where existing methods failed to produce useful results, we adapted our tools or invented new ones (cf. Gauntlett, 2003).

Fun and Excitement! Young People’s Media Use If young people do not feel attracted to news or even never watch news, what in fact do they like? What do they want to know? Today’s youngsters are busy with school and homework, and after school they engage in sports or dancing, they earn a little extra money by working

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in a restaurant or the neighborhood supermarket, they spend time shopping, they hang around and chat with friends, or they can be found behind their computer or watching TV. The enormous popularity of cell phones, SMS messages and MSN underscores the crucial importance of contact, interaction, communication with friends. While MSN mainly evokes positive associations among the young people in our survey, many consider watching TV a “stupid activity.” Watching TV, they feel, is like doing nothing: it is useless, a last resort, a waste of time, and therefore you might as well check with your friends to see what they are up to. As Cindy (age 16, advanced high school) observes: “I really do not watch TV any longer because I am simply on MSN all the time; MSN has truly taken the place of TV.” Recently, the amount of time spent watching TV as a percentage of young people’s activities has dropped for the first time ever (Huysmans et al., 2004). Yet there are still many who consider TV viewing as relaxing, a reward after hard work, and who do enjoy watching exciting and informative programs. It is not uncommon for episodes from reality programs such as Idols, Temptation Island, and Peking Express to provoke endless discussions about the participants and speculations on the ultimate winner. If only enough young people watch, this will stimulate the others to watch because by not watching they automatically exclude themselves from major topics of conversation. Sjoerd (age 15, basic high school) indicates that it is important “to keep up with the times a little bit and when everybody is talking about Idols, and you’re not watching it, you’re simply unable to join in the conversation.” If anything our interviews revealed the enormous passion and eagerness with which young people talk about television programs and the individuals that appear in them. Young people all too gladly offer their opinions on the stupidity of one news anchor, the twaddle of this or that talk show host, or the boring talking heads that appear on NOS News. Television programs are celebrated as “fun,” “wonderful,” “fantastic” or slated as “trashy,” “bullshit,” or “crap.” Consider this conversation between three college students who live in the same home: Pascal (22, student): Dismissed I always find great! I really make sure not to miss it. Michiel (20, student): Yes, Dismissed is wonderful indeed. It is on MTV. You really should watch it; it is good. I don’t know when it is on…around dinner time or so. Matthijs (23, student): Yeah, It is about a woman who has a date with two fellows and has to pick one of them. It’s great. Michiel: It’s funny to see how someone gets dumped who then comments like “I don’t feel dismissed at all,“ … It’s all so childish in Dismissed, just people in their twenties, really… you should watch it! The criteria used to evaluate programs are tied to their being funny and pleasurable. Gender differences are hardly relevant here. Girls enjoy “trashing” TV characters as much as boys

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do. This is not to say that young viewers only like to watch TV to be entertained. They also indicate to be captivated by programs that encourage them to reflect, or by programs that may teach them something about their own life. Being fun and being educational do not necessarily exclude each other. Such educational element is not restricted to serious genres only. Both award-winning drama and commercial soap drama stimulate viewers to reflect on their own life. Consider the following conversation on soaps by Linda (age 16, advanced high school ) and Mirthe (age 15, advanced high school):

Linda: Then they are pregnant again or so, those teenage mothers, well, that is something to avoid. I know so of course, but of some things it is good to be reminded by seeing them. Interviewer: Can you give an example? Mirthe: In Good Times [Dutch RTL soap opera], say, they also used to have such problems or so, eh, yes, she had anorexia and, eh, that kind of thing. Linda: Yes, you see that and then you really think, oh, I really should never let things get that far or so. Mirthe: Or, eh, what else do you have... That she became handicapped and still wanted to be accepted or what not, and treated as a normal human being rather than as a handicapped one. Such things, you know. All are models, including the negative ones, of course, of which you say: no, this is very wrong, this is not acceptable. Young people derive knowledge about sexuality and relationships as much from soap operas as from their parents or teachers, and in this respect our research results agree with those of Buckingham & Bragg (2003). Soaps can even be more informative because youngsters feel less embarrassed when watching TV and soap issues are more attuned to their needs and interests. Although they claim to enjoy watching “stupid” programs, they do not shun serious topics. They are concerned with issues such as drugs, violence, AIDS and racism. They also feel that serious information does not automatically exclude humor or a light tone. Many youngsters make no essential difference between entertainment and information. In both cases, “fun” or “interesting” is a precondition to keep on watching a particular program. Function does not follow format in the experience of young adults. What can makers of informative and news programs learn from these other genres and which elements are useful in particular?

The Informative Function of Knowledge Is Subordinate to Its Communicative Function Young people indicate that they are interested in particular in shocking, bizarre, funny and abnormal events. Odd humor and strange rumors attract their attention. The particular relevance of such information to them is that it supplies them with conversation topics.

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Information has to be new, fun, exciting, odd or harsh; a program has to have some ingredient that impresses, surprises, amazes or shocks them. After all, regular topics provide little incentive for starting a chat with friends. Young people find the informative function of knowledge to be subordinate to its communicative function. Getting a so-called “aha” experience is a second incentive. When asked what is interesting information, young people mention information “on things as they are, such as why a day has twenty-four hours instead of ten or one hundred or twenty” (Bas, age 16, advanced high school). They like to get a bite of a variety of programs, which is why perhaps “snacking” is in some ways a more appropriate concept than zapping in their case. They display an interest in soaps or series with exciting narrative lines that ensure they also watch the next episode (Friends, celebrity reality soap, Idols). But they also favor stations or programming with a thematic emphasis (National Geographic, Animal Planet or Discovery Channel, or news sites such as nu.nl and fok.nl). Youngsters like to be challenged in terms of their need to discover things they did not know yet. They want to learn new things and understand how they work.

Pleasantly real or too fake The curiosity of young people also applies to programming that allows them to identify with views and lifestyles in other cultures or countries. Young people like to be able to imagine what it is like to be someone else. They want to be able to feel and understand how other people live and what motivates them. Even when it concerns general problems like AIDS, racism, drugs or violence, they like to see people’s individual story. For most young adults information has more impact when it is couched in terms of personal experience. Niels (age 22, college): Well, for instance, that program on BNN, This Is How You Fuck, and also how these youngsters who have AIDS or an STD or so, how they tell their experiences, eh, I actually find it interesting. Interviewer: Sure, why is that interesting to you, why is it important to know? Niels: Well, you start thinking more about it, eh, about whether it is useful to do without, say. It is just real, the people to whom it happened can just tell about their experiences I feel. Interviewer: You can learn from it. Niels: Yes. This desire for learning things perhaps also explains the popularity of reality TV among youngsters. They enjoy getting an inside look into the real lives of popular singers, the wives of famous soccer players or the participants of Temptation Island. There is a lot of truth in the claim by Steven Johnson (2006) that the pleasure and attraction of reality shows lies in the kind of involvement they organize: they challenge our emotional intelligence. By watching them, we learn to read, to assess and to respond appropriately to other people’s emotional

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signals. It is illustrative that each program in this genre is valued differently. Youngsters do not exclusively judge programs on their entertaining or informative function, but deploy a much wider evaluative repertoire: fake or real, pleasantly fake or too fake, pleasantly real or too real, detached or involved, warm or cold, one-sided or multivoiced are all relevant standards used for evaluating the flow of televised images and emotions. News and hospital documentary series are often “too real.” Patty’s Posse (a slightly kinky celebrity soap) and RTL Boulevard (an ironic daily current affairs show) are “pleasantly fake,” but similar programs like The Adams Family (nouveau riche celebrity soap) and SBS News (small news show) are “too fake.” The celebrity show about popular crooner Frans Bauer is, many youngsters feel, pleasantly real. The program shows, for instance, how the singer takes fifteen minutes to hang a small painting on the wall in his daughter’s bedroom. Hoijer (2000, p. 194) suggests that our notion of a genre creates specific expectations about programs. The recognizability of ordinary daily activities (taking children to school, cleaning the bathroom, preparing dinner) make a reality program real. Realness is also a major standard as such. It was authenticity that made the first Big Brother series (1999) a viewer spectacle. Viewers were all constantly judging the residents of the Big Brother house on their talent to be who they are (Costera Meijer & Reesink, 2000). Young people find it important that people are genuine and that they not behave in exaggerated, unnatural or fake ways. This is also why youngsters tend to enjoy programs that mock such conduct.

Multi-tasking & muli-layering Earlier generations learned about the world from texts, books, radio, magazines and newspapers, but today’s young generation in the Netherlands grew up with at least five to twelve Dutch TV channels, a video recorder, cartoon books, computers, cell phones, MTV and digital cameras. From the start these young people have been inundated with texts and images from places of which people belonging to older generations did not have the slightest clue when they were young. Unlike many older viewers, many youngsters will pick up a lot of information without watching a specific program attentively. Two decades of watching increasingly complex, multithreaded and multilayered television have honed their ”reading” skills (Johnson, 2006). They also have learned that information is only meaningful when you can use it. Which information is useful does not always follow established patterns. Lifestyle trends are of vital importance. Television, after all, has taught people how to form opinions about others (how to “read” others) by their appearance: the clothes you wear might determine whether you get a particular job or not. Furthermore, youngsters tend to engage simultaneously in multiple media activities (listening to the radio, searching for something on the internet) and other activities (doing homework, doing the dishes). Zap behavior among young viewers is mostly explained as an

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effort to control the multitude of images to which they are exposed. Young “homo zappens” would employ remote control literally as a way to control the images (De Mul, 1995). In this respect their zapping behavior is generally seen to indicate that they deal differently with information than those in older generations. The emphasis by De Mul (1995) on control does not account for why older people do not display this same behavior. Aren’t they exposed to the same number of images? If zapping may be motivated by boredom or a desire for zero brain activity, it may be more accurately described as reflective of an eagerness to know all the time what is going on, where the excitement is, in part out of fear of missing some interesting program. Zapping can create some sort of hyperconsciousness of all that is broadcasted at a given moment; it renders the brain hyperactive.

Young People and Their Experience of News Television Nearly all of the 452 youngsters whose experiences we recorded consider news a major TV genre. As Laura (20) indicated: “My parents always told me that news mattered and that it is important to be informed about current developments, at home as well as abroad.” Watching the news is good for you and everyone should do so. Although a small (well educated) group claims to be watching news out of a sense of duty – to stay informed, be able to join in the conversation and not be embarrassed – these same considerations apply less to other viewers; they feel that when something major happens, they will learn about it anyway. Young people do not watch news as part of a daily routine, as is true of many older viewers. Instead, young people watch news because TV is on and others are watching, because they happen to have nothing else to do at that moment, or out of a sense of nostalgia. If while zapping they happen to run into news, some may watch it for a few minutes, but most will move on to another station after they feel they have seen the headlines. How is it possible, we asked ourselves, that most young people believe news is very important, but that many also feel that it has little actual significance to their life? We tried to address this contradiction by putting their news consumption in the broader context of their media use. One explanation is the fact that young people only (want to) consume news if there is a specific reason to do so. As two 15-year-old high school students comment: Lisselotte: Yes, It is in fact important to know what the news is.. Jona: True, you have to know a little about what is going on at the other end of the world. … Of course things happen here as well, but not really such extreme hunger and all that.. Lisselotte: We are fortunate to be well off. Interviewer: Do you watch the news often?

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Lisselotte: Well….. Jona: Well, ha ha, not too often. Interviewer: First saying yes, like a good girl, and then, no, we actually do not watch news at all. Lisselotte: But you hear about things anyway.. Jona: Yes, You simply hear it on the radio as well and then, yes,.. Interviewer: Via friends or.. Lisselotte: Sure, and from your parents of course and when truly something big happens.. Jona: Then you automatically hear about it. Because young people are almost permanently in contact with their peers, siblings or parents through various new means of communication, they feel no need to watch the news all the time. They will soon be informed about important news anyway.

Real news and fake news & the double viewing paradox When asked how they preferred to see the news presented, invariably our interviewees responded that news should remain the way it is. Why do youngsters believe that a major TV genre should not be changed, even if they feel hardly attracted to it? First, there is the seeming sacrosanctity of the news genre’s features. Youngsters are very aware of the social status and civic importance that are attributed to quality news. Second, they use these conventions to make a distinction between real and other news, between important and trivial news, between weighty matters and light news, between quality information and entertainment. We found, as did Barnhurst and Wartella (1998), that young people do not appreciate the “soapification” of news, making it more fun and appealing to watch as a goal in and of itself. Youngsters want news to address major issues, to be reliable and not to be made more entertaining. Debby (age 19, advanced high school) admits that she hardly watches news but that when she does, she wants to watch quality news. This attitude has to do in part with young people’s awareness of brands. Generally they are very aware of when a brand signifies A-quality or B-quality. They apply this to news as well, expecting from a public news program such as NOS News that it lives up to its A-reputation. This means that the news is presented in a serious way, and that it is true, objective and reliable. It is the “real news” – a solid image commercial news broadcasts in the Netherlands can never compete with. When respondents talk about news on commercial TV they refer to it as “B-news,” but they also use disqualifying terms such as “exploitative,” “overly commercial,” “keen on sensation,” “nonsense news” and “superfluous news.” The commercial news programs are largely seen as providing “fake news.”

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Linda (age 16, advanced high school): Each morning on SBS6 you also have, eh.. Mirthe (age 15, advanced high school): the exaggerated news, or the fake news! … I really find it to be fake news. It is really, eh.. two puppies were stolen someplace. Things like that; it is really empty. Linda: Well, you also see just everyday things there. Mirthe: That is really the B-news. Interviewer: B-news? Mirthe: Well, for instance when you.. Linda: The B-news is my level then.. Ha ha… Mirthe: It is, for example, when you, eh, about small things. For example, eh, soccer club Wiron where money was stolen and all that … It is really B-news. Similarly, Jona (15) and Lisselotte (15) claim they refer “real” news over “fake” news, although they often enjoy the latter more, watching “real news” gives you the satisfaction of doing something useful: Lisselotte: well, [they tell you] that somewhere twin sheep are born or so.. well. I just don’t need to.. Jona: Yes, sometimes it is funny to see, but, true enough, I rather watch the real news.. Lisselotte: Because then you do it for a reason. Young people do not want news to be made deliberately more entertaining because it implies that news is no longer (important) news. Still many of them mainly watch news-like programs that they find entertaining. How should we understand this viewing paradox? By collectively characterizing news as important, reliable, objective, grey, boring and “not meant for people like us”, young viewers simultaneously exclude themselves as audience group. As three students told us: “We value serious journalism but it is also boring; at the same time when they make it more entertaining – as in Hart van Nederland or Editie NL – we do not appreciate it.” Overtly entertaining news programs are not experienced as news but young people still watch them, while serious news programs are experienced as news but they are much less watched. Young people have no problem reproducing the genre conventions of news, which they learned from television itself, at school or from their parents. Similarly they also have a clear sense of what is not news: when it is popular, fast, fun, colorful etc. In contrast to results reported by the British researchers Gauntlett & Hill (1999), our study revealed that there is no automatic relationship between the importance attributed by young people to news and their actual viewer behavior. In this respect, Elisabeth Bird (2003:29) has claimed: “Thus while many people feel the obligation to be ‘well-informed’ and listen to ‘important news,’ their emotions and their attention are caught by dramatic, exciting stories.” Youngsters know quite well what news is, or rather, what news ought to be. Talking with

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young people about the form and content of news, then, leads to a quite limited, in the box story about news; after all, news ought not to be fun. The double viewing paradox is that their satisfaction about and even interest in “serious” news does not automatically cause them to watch it, while, vice versa, their contempt for light news programs (“stupid,” “junk”) does not keep them from watching and enjoying them. They feel that making news more entertaining does not work because it reduces real news to fake news. This paradoxical behavior among young people is closely bound up with how they conceive of the term “news.” News is important, educational etcetera and these associations exclude entertainment. If a news-like program allows for watching in a relaxed manner, many young people feel that it cannot be a good news program. There is no automatic correlation, then, between actually watching a program and the significance attributed to the same program.

News as Public Service and Basic Facility News thus appears to be caught up in an irresolvable paradox: when news is presented in a serious and sound way, it is perceived as the real thing but apart from natural or man-made disasters usually considered too boring to watch. When news is made more appealing and accessible, ratings are higher, but it is no longer perceived as news. We interpret this seemingly illogical viewing behavior with reference to the conviction of most young people, as we discovered through our interviews, that news is, or should be, a basic social service, comparable to social security, health insurance, or family care: you have to be able to rely on its availability when you need it, preferably free of charge, around the clock and seven days a week. This function as basic (public) service explains the discrepancy between high appreciation of news and low viewer rates. Such ratings do not say anything about the significance attached by young viewers to a good public news supply. By contrast, high ratings perhaps tell us something about the program’s entertaining character but they are no good standard for measuring its importance.

Tasty news Our study suggests various other relevant dimensions when it comes to gain more insight into this viewing paradox among young individuals. High school students, we found, consider the difference between real news and other news as less important than young people over twenty. Although those in the younger age group (15-20) notice that NOS News uses a different formula than the ironic and unconventional RTL Boulevard, they do not judge this difference and also feel less ashamed about watching “other news.” For instance, Belle (age

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16, 4 Basic High School), unlike many slightly older viewers (age 20-25) is quite honest about her preference for show news: I do not watch a lot of TV and news does not interest me because the way they present it is so boring. I live with my boy-friend and together with him I enjoy watching show news, because that is fun and they offer much information in a pleasant way. Whether or not youngsters watch TV basically depends on one criterion: Is the program or station entertaining or not? Does the program offer you topics for conversation by supplying you with interesting facts, opinions and experiences? Judging programs on their power to captivate viewers is tied to the function television has for young people. By and large they watch to have fun, to be entertained. They want “to sit back and relax,” “be a couch potato and stare empty-headed at the tube for a while.” Watching TV is justified as a form of relaxation for youngsters. As Michael (age 18, VWO) claims: “To me television is important because it is where you get your daily dose of entertainment when you are tired and no longer feel like thinking anymore and want to relax.” Many girls respond that they like to see news and fashion in informative programming for youngsters. Apparently they realize that “fashion” does not belong in the same category as “news,” but they do not consider addressing “fashion” as a disqualification. When Mia (age16, advanced high school) is asked what she finds interesting information, she mentions, apart from news on world events and the weather, “news on fashion and make-up. Gossip doesn’t interest me much, but when I hear some rumor I still listen in.” If young people still distinguish between news and fashion, between serious information and light news, they also believe that both can be combined in one program. The information from programs such as What Not To Wear, Top Gear or Changing Rooms and the info from NOS News have equal significance to this group. Information does not have to be “only informative and hence grey and boring,” but can be tasty. It can be about Vivienne Westwood and about Iraq. Basically, all information can be interesting, as long as it manages to appeal to young people, whether it is about “showbiz, wars, music and what is going on in Amsterdam” (Priscilla, age 15, advanced high school) Thus, it seems, the viewing paradox among young people becomes stronger as they grow older, or, put differently, when viewers are younger, the distinction between real news and other news or entertainment plays less of a disqualifying role. Teenagers do not pull out in advance when they hear the word “news,” or when they suspect that they are watching an informative program. Conversely, entertaining genres can be informative as well. Many youngsters watch soap programs to learn more about sexuality and everyday modes of conduct. Younger viewers (teenagers) increasingly do not consider genre distinctions between information and entertainment as coinciding automatically with specific functions

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(informative or entertaining). Generally speaking, those over age forty tend to discuss their media use in different terms than younger people (which does not mean that they actually use media differently). The older group reflects on their news use in terms of care and attention and as a way trying to grasp what is happening in the world. When NOS News or the newspapers provide insufficient depth on a particular issue, they feel the urge to search for background information in news magazines and current affairs programs. Because the world is growing ever larger and more and more issues are reported on, this approach of older people tends to lead to stress and information overload (Lyman & Varian, 2000). Young people, by contrast, feel much more at ease with loads of information, because it allows them to taste from many different dishes. As a 25-year-old student put it: I enjoy it that you can pick up something from all sorts of media but that you are not stuck with only one source, so the nice thing about news is that is short-lived and that it is always available and, eh, because there is so much of everything that, eh, it is pleasurable that you can move up and down between a variety of things. Young people have learned that zapping is a good way to get a general impression of a wide variety of information. Zapping is like scanning images instead of “reading” texts attentively. Youngsters tend to make no basic distinction between facts and backgrounds. They know that the world cannot be neatly divided into categories and hierarchies. What for one student is major news (earthquake in Morocco), another one will merely see as a distant tragedy. Their world no longer speaks in one voice, but is multivoiced. Objectivity does not exist in their experience and thus they are not inclined to identify with a single standpoint; instead, they zap in order to get a flavor of multiple vantage points (cf. Huesca & Dervin, 2003). From the perspective of older people zapping is superficial, but from the angle of youngsters it is merely another way of collecting information, which is rather geared to broad and contextual insight than to in-depth knowledge. Young viewers do not just zap because they are bored with what they see. Zapping is also a way of checking whether you missed something important, of finding out if perhaps there is more to be gained from viewing. They do not so much cut themselves off, but they continuously gather bits and pieces of information from a large variety of media. Rather than reflecting zero brain activity, zapping requires a concentrated effort.

Snacking 24/7 The character of news as basic service is that news has to be available when you need it. It gives a feeling of security. This preference for a 24-hour news service is not limited to a younger audience. According to Lewis et al. (2005) audiences are increasingly moving from

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conventional bulletins to the 24-hour news channels. They refer to data in Ofcom (2004) which suggest that between 1998 and 2003 the audience shares for the early evening news programmes on BBC and ITV declined by 16 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively. Mindich (2005) discounts the internet as a source of news because the news is not the prime reason for an individual's internet use. News may not be the prime reason for an individual's internet use, but our data suggest that many youngsters use text TV (teletext) and the internet when they want to check the state of affairs in the world. They do not feel the need to be fully informed citizens, but many feel a regular urge to monitor or quickly check on the news (cf. Graber, 2003; Schudson, 1999; Zaller, 2003). The internet is a medium that perfectly lends itself for an approach that is based on zapping or monitoring. The current generation of teenagers and those in their early twenties have all grown up with the World Wide Web. When they think about informative programs for young people, they often mention the internet as alternative for television. David (advanced high school, 19) emphasizes the speed of the medium: I spend much time on the computer/Internet and that is also where I get all my news. After all news will be on the Internet before it is broadcasted on television, so it is perhaps, or likely, a vanishing medium. Almost everything on TV can also be downloaded through the internet. Other youngsters stress the greater efficiency of news sites. A 24-year-old student of Chinese descent claims that she “does watch TV but not really for news because it contains things that I hardly find interesting, while on the sites I can select the news I want to read.” A 20-year-old Dutch student says that she relies more on the internet: “It is nice and fast and comprehensive; you can quickly move on to the next topic and you also get more entertaining news.” Young people may not particularly like conventional news as genre, but they are very eager to be informed of the latest bits of news. One way of finding out is by quickly visiting a news site. Erik (age 25, of Chinese background) visits nu.nl at least ten times a day: “Well, it is very easy to check; you see immediately when something has happened. It hardly takes time; it is really a matter of a flash and you are gone again.” The advantage of internet over television is that its news is always available and updated. Moreover, you decide for yourself which news items you check in more detail. Youngsters in particular engage in this “snacking” of news. As a 22-year-old Dutch student comments: “If for instance you are watching the news and something that interests you comes last, this means you have to sit through the entire program. But on the internet you can see right away, eh, what you want to know, and what is happening.” Some students even get rid of their TV set and use their computer screen for both television and the internet. As Steven (age 21, college) comments: “I just have a computer in my living room. It is for internet and also to follow the news and

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that sort of thing. Recently I bought a TV card, which allows me to watch TV on my computer. It saves space, for otherwise I would have to buy a separate TV set.” The desire to be quickly informed of what matters to you is not just a need of well educated youngsters. The 21-year-old cook’s aid Achmed-Amin (of Moroccan background) claims to rely more on the internet than television. The internet, he argues, is more informative on his country of origin. Only when specific events are also covered by Dutch television, such as the earthquake in Al-Husima (2004), he watches TV more. Young people do not want to postpone their need for news to a fixed moment of the day or so; instead, they want to be able to satisfy this need instantly. As such the internet more closely fits their need to “snack” news than television.

A multivoiced imagination Young people also value programming that makes them feel at home by demonstrating a real understanding of them. For that reason, it is essential that news is not made from a single white perspective. News should provide a range of different views, opinions, angles, and experiences and it should equally cater to male and female viewers, urban and rural viewers, as well as viewers from all ethnicities. The concern is not pluralism, but “multivocality” (Shohat & Stam, 1994) or multiperspectival news (Gans, 1980). Instead of the conventional approach of delivering pros and cons, young people prefer a range of voices, rather than opinions, they want different experiences. If they are denied multiple perspectives, those who are interested will start zapping and scanning various media and news programs (internet, newspapers, radio, NOS, RTL, BBC, Euronews, Al Jazeera) to get a sense of what is going on. This implies that television journalism should not be focused so much on complete, finished stories that tell a single truth. Instead, the topics should be presented from multiple perspectives. As Rik (age 23, student) puts it: “I have trouble watching the main news broadcast because it is read as if it is true … with more people you get more vantage points. Everyone has a different point of view.” Young viewers want to be challenged to think for themselves and form opinions. This can be done by having them experience the news more by addressing an issue from various angles. Richel (age 19, basic high school, half Moluccan) and Els (19, basic high school, white) enjoy watching a multicultural PBS program presented by the Amsterdam lawyer Prem Radhakishun (Premtime) because he does not force opinions on viewers but makes them experience a variety of viewpoints. The girls refer to a Premtime broadcast on the issue of some Moroccan youngsters who were not admitted to a discotheque in which the problem is approached from the various angles of the parties involved. As Richel puts it, “he shows it from the angle of all parties involved.”

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Showing multiple vantage points (multivocality) also means reaching out to a culturally more diverse audience. Living in a multicultural society has taught young people that there is no single truth. This does not imply that truth has become superfluous. Truth is more important than ever, but it cannot be reduced to a single view or standpoint. This is why young people have a preference for programs that show that multiple stories and realities can exist side by side and which do not force them into identifying themselves with one position. Bodysnatching The need for multivocality also has to do with another need for news among young people that is not geared to a particular incident or news fact, but to the experience of news, the desire to live through the event, preferably from the perspective, or more precisely, from the body, so to speak, of the protagonists. This need, which in some ways is similar to the experience of playing video and computer games, we call “bodysnatching.” Young people like to be able to imagine the exact situation of the terrorists who flew into the Twin Towers. Youngsters may not be interested in all the bomb attacks that occur in Iraq or Israel, but they are eager to understand what it is like for a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who fails to let the bomb around his waist go off. They want to know whether the boy went to school earlier that same day, what kind of sandwich he ate, how he felt and how his parents and siblings respond. This desire to be a part of the news seems akin to wanting to understand it. Although occasionally youngsters want to experience and know all the ins and outs of specific news. it is more typical that they are after the thrill of a specific news story, which they briefly want to experience for themselves. They literally want to get a feel for the emotions involved. How does it feel to escape death by drowning? What does princess Maxima feel during her marriage ceremony? Many older people consider “bodysnatching” as motivated exclusively by a lust for sensation or malicious delight. This seems to be the case only in part, though. Quite literally youngsters want to get an impression of an event, which becomes possible when a news story indeed has an impact on them. What is crucial is that news makes them aware of certain insights, that it lets them feel and experience things. Only then they begin to grasp what it means. News programs do not need to tell complete, perfect stories; they may be incomplete, and only offer preliminary conclusions, as long as the news impresses through its visual language and addresses the viewer on a cognitive as well as an emotional level. Even if the quality of images is poor, they have much more of an impact because they make “bodysnatching” easier. Via images young viewers can more easily imagine how a particular

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event occurred. For instance, Ria (age 17, basic high school) told us how precisely the TV images corrected her own reading of stories. Ria: Well, say, in the news on Iraq or so. I find they do a good job of showing through images what is going on … also by having soldiers talk about what they experience over there. They do not simply tell there is a war in Iraq and that this or that is going on; they really show images of what really takes place, such as people in the streets who are shooting with their gun into the air: that is real, so you just know what is going on over there because it is all very hard to imagine… Interviewer: So what do images add to a story? Ria: Well, just the things and the thoughts. When someone is telling something you start thinking about it on your own, but when you see images that accompany the story, you think, well, oh wow, this is not what I thought! Images really give you something that adds to the story. Interviewer: And why do you like to have images with a story? Ria: They allow you simply to know what it’s about, I believe. Yes, you have a story then and you start making up your own image of it. But sometimes your image is wrong, you think it is your way but it is very different. This is why it is good indeed to have images that go with the story! Images do not exclusively have to be provided by television. Video reports via internet may also satisfy the need of youngsters to experience an event, especially when multiple voices can be heard, meaning that several mini-documentaries are made that each present an event from a different angle.

Snack news & Slow news Young people have certain information needs that tie in with various news formats, and in this respect it is possible to distinguish between “snack news” and “slow news.” In snacking taste and calories come first, not the quality of the food. Accordingly, snack news requires a specific approach: it is fast, it possibly involves live news and often insider’s news, whereby the live aspect of the footage is more important than the quality of story and images. Images dispatched via mobile phone will be blurred and less sharp, but they raise the level of “realness” and offer a sense of being “on top of things.” Most young people emphasize that the news should be presented in a concise and factual manner, and whenever possible be “warm” and “multivoiced.” For more information they will hang on for more, or click on other sites. Snacking news we define as quickly checking the headlines out of a desire to be on top of the main issues in the news. It is a matter of wanting to be informed not as a goal in its

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own right, as Klaus Brun Jensen (1986) stated twenty years ago, but to be able to “start or join in the conversation” (information at the service of communication). Young people talk about news in an internet format, even if they refer to TV or newspaper news. Among youngsters this transitory and ”grazing” viewing behavior does not lead to solid knowledge, but to “impressions.” Only when a news topic or a program “really” makes an impression, they stop zapping and start watching in a more attentive manner. If from the angle of older age groups zap and snack behavior seems superficial, from the angle of youngsters themselves it is merely another way of gathering information. It is geared toward a broad and contextual sense of what is going on, so they are able to situate specific events, rather than toward in-depth knowledge or developed opinions. Snack news allows young people to start small talk, but for a real conversation, they rely on slow news to understand (verstehen) and experience events. Slow news calls for quality images that not just illustrate a story but add their own narrative dimension. Young people need slow news in order to get a ‘deep’ picture of something, to hear the complexities of the story of an event. How and why could it happen at all? For example, at the time of our interviews a teacher was killed in school by one of the students. Young people wanted to know all sorts of things about this tragedy: about the young student who did it, where he got his gun, with which values he grew up, what his friends and his family are like and who disliked him, why the police was not able to prevent it, but also more explanation about the specific school’s organization, its teachers, its teaching methods, its student policies etc. One student of Turkish background could not imagine that the system itself had nothing to do with this particular episode, while she was also interested in learning everything about the killer’s social background. Slow news is about getting a multidimensional picture of a story, political, personal, social, economical etc and not just one version or interpretation. Conclusion: Quality News for the Younger Generation The argument in this article focused on the role of news in the lives of today’s young viewers. If my exploration of this concern started with the question whether news organizations need to lower their quality standards and to barter their professional values – independence, factuality and trustworthiness – in order to serve this specific audience both today and in the future, it should be concluded that quality standards should be lifted and that these overall news values are still valid to young viewers. In fact, quality, truth and independence are more important than ever in news journalism. If these news values do not cause the problem, their close associations with specific genres of news formats do. Therefore, the fundamental changes in the use of information among an ever larger group of people, and young people in particular, call for a more sustained debate on the functionality of specific journalistic views of quality. If newspapers, news programs, current affairs programs and opinion magazines

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are to cater to the imagination of young people they need to be prepared to move beyond the conventional contradiction between quality and popularity, private and public sphere, emotions and reason, autonomy and situatedness. This means that journalists need to be aware that conventional quality standards as such have little appeal to young individuals because they associate them with boringness and drollness. In other words, quality information will have to be defined in new ways. First, the almost automatic response by professional journalists and other interested people that accommodating young people equals popularization equals trivialization needs critical reflection. Our research supports the suggestion by Steven Johnson (2006) that the popular media have sharpened young people’s minds by continuously confronting them with a steady stream of increasingly complex and multi-layered stories. More and more people have become accustomed to multi tasking and are able to keep up with a much higher visual pace, open endings, a broad range of characters, styles, multiple-threaded narratives and complex subject matter. News should adapt itself to the increasing media savvy and media literacy of its audience. Why should news desks, news leaders and news sites be dominated by “boring” colors like grey and blue? If you take a look at the news sites of the Dutch RTL, the German WDR, the British BBC, ITV and Channel 4, the American ABC, Washington Post, New York Times, and at the historical development of the news desks of RTL-news http://www.rtl.nl/(/actueel/rtlnieuws/)/components/actueel/rtlnieuws/rtl_reporter/nieuwsvloer_l eaders.xml it is no wonder that people automatically perceive news as grey and boring. If news programs or newspapers will not be able to meet and satisfy these more sophisticated demands, the audience will tend to move to other programs, media or sites. In short, news needs to raise its standards to accommodate the taste of a growing segment of the population. Second, it is important for news organizations to reflect on the consequences of their automatic subordination of the newsworthiness of journalistic reporting on the private sphere to the public sphere. If it is true that the look and clothing of (future) employees are of crucial importance to many businesses, why would information on lifestyles, fashion and make-up be less relevant than information on changes in social security. And, finally, a society in which communication has overriding significance needs to reflect on the dominance of its autonomous view of human identity. For young people who communicate with each other around-the-clock, questions on relationships, emotions, friendship and respect are vital. But also those in older generations hardly lead autonomous lives and their existence and identity largely take on meaning in relation to other lives. The acknowledgment that human beings are social beings who maintain relationships with others is a major component of this alternative view of the self (Costera Meijer and Van Dijck, 2000; Costera Meijer, 2001a, Harrington, 1997; Held, 1993).

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