Profiles of News Consumption in a High-Choice Media Environment: Evidence from Romania
Profiles of News Consumption in a High-Choice Media Environment: Evidence from Romania

Summary/Abstract: During the last two decades, media and information environments have changed in a fundamental way. Generalized low levels of trust in media sources, incidental news exposure, and higher probability to be exposed only to views similar to their own and echo chambers are just some of the most important challenges within the current, high-choice media landscape. All of them have major ramifications for the information environment as a whole and, particularly, for the way in which they could influence people in becoming informed citizens. In this paper, we explore how news consumption patterns of mainstream and social media are associated with trust in media sources and other news consumption related phenomena, such as incidental news exposure and echo chambers. Theoretically, this study starts from the idea that today, within the current media environment, people tend to consume cross-media information1. In other terms, people’s news media diet consists of different media sources and media content2. Some recent research studies investigating people’s media diets put forward “profiles” showing how people consume media content, in an attempt to find out patterns of news consumption and how they might affect various democracy related aspects.3 Drawing on a news repertoires approach, the presented study aims at investigating news media consumption patterns among Romanian people. By means of a national survey (N=1,000), this study explores the main characteristics of news media consumers in Romania, in an attempt to shed more light on people’s media diets (what they actually consume) within the current, high-choice media landscape. The main findings from our study reveal that minimalist news users are the most prevalent category among the investigated sample. Compared with all the other types of news users, minimalist news users have the lowest levels of trust in both mainstream and social media sources. At the same time, they are less prone to be accidentally exposed to news stories, but more prone to be stuck in echo chambers, in environments where they encounter information that reflects or reinforces their own views. From a socio-demographic point of view, all types of consumers share more or less the same characteristics, with an age-related significant difference. These results offer important insights into the way in which news consumption patterns are associated with certain perceptions and attitudes that might result in letting citizens be less informed or even uninformed. Implications for democracy are further discussed.

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