News consumption repertoires among Finnish adolescents : Moderate digital traditionalists, minimalist social media stumblers, and frequent omnivores
Abstract
Young people are perceived as heavy consumers of social media and less avid consumers of
news. That notion, however, deserves nuance: Many factors, such as the national context,
media system, trust in news, intentionally or incidentally encountering news from different
sources, and interest in politics, influence how young people consume news. This study
explores news consumption among Finnish adolescents through a representative survey of
15–19-year-olds. We seek to answer two research questions: What are the news repertoires
of Finnish adolescents? And what factors predict different news repertoires? Latent profile
analysis reveals three distinct news repertoires: 1) moderate digital traditionalists, the largest
group, embracing traditional news in digital form; 2) minimalist social media stumblers, the
second-largest group, tending to consume news infrequently through passive social media
encounters and lacking credible information; and 3) a quite large number of frequent news
omnivores, taking an interest in diverse news forms and actively seeking them.
Main Authors
Format
Articles
Research article
Published
2022
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
Sciendo
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202212125548Use this for linking
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1403-1108
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2022-0014
Language
English
Published in
Nordicom review
Citation
- Sormanen, N., Rantala, E., Lonkila, M., & Wilska, T.-A. (2022). News consumption repertoires among Finnish adolescents : Moderate digital traditionalists, minimalist social media stumblers, and frequent omnivores. Nordicom review, 43(2), 234-253. https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2022-0014
Funder(s)
Research Council of Finland
Research Council of Finland
Funding program(s)
Strategic research programmes, AoF
Academy Programme, AoF
Strategisen tutkimuksen ohjelmat STN, SA
Akatemiaohjelma, SA

Additional information about funding
This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (Grant number 320373) and the
Strategic Research Council in connection with Academy of Finland (Grant number
327237).
Copyright© 2022 Niina Sormanen et al., published by Sciendo