Beyond “News Avoidance”: New Study Reframes How Young People Disconnect from Journalism

A new article by Maria José Brites, coordinator of the MeLCi Lab, challenges one of the most widely used concepts in journalism studies: “news avoidance”. Published in Media, Culture & Society, the study proposes a more nuanced framework to understand how young people relate to news today.

Titled “Rethinking news disengagement: Epistemic disconnection from news”, the article argues that disengagement is no longer simply a matter of people actively avoiding news. Instead, Brites introduces the concept of “epistemic disconnection”, describing a deeper shift in which news itself is no longer recognised as a meaningful category in everyday life.

Drawing on over 15 years of qualitative and participatory research with young people, the study shows that traditional assumptions—such as the idea that audiences know what counts as news—no longer hold. In many cases, disengagement stems not from rejection but from a gradual erosion of the cultural and cognitive frameworks that once made news relevant and identifiable.

The article has significant implications for journalism, media literacy, and democratic participation. By moving beyond the avoidance paradigm, it calls for a rethinking of how institutions, educators, and policymakers approach youth engagement with information in increasingly complex digital environments.

Read the full article in open access here.