"News is too intrusive. In Chapter 2 we argue that the conditions of the digital media landscape can be analysed as an attention economy which propels the news business to create massive amounts of news. This is a quantitative problem of surplus – too much. The news business seeks to attract and retain audiences for all of its output, and it does so through measures that intrude upon everyday situations and other concerns in life, as it becomes a key component of digital information streams that are difficult to escape from. The chapter, then, focuses on the formats of news and on how key features of digital news provision, such as the push notification and the social media feed on the smartphone, contribute to news saturation.
News is too trivial. In Chapter 3, we discuss experiences of news being seen as silly, particularly in genres such as celebrity journalism, and especially when news is mixed with other forms of entertainment and chatter online. We argue that information that does not feel all that important is set against claims to societal importance, claims that are foundational to the democratic role of news. This creates a tension that news audiences feel, and which enables them to easily find reasons to disregard quite a lot of news.
News is too distressing. The trivial and silly news we focus on in Chapter 3 is mixed with the most serious and grave topics imaginable, as news informs and reminds people of horrible suffering, threats and risks. The emotional turmoil of taking it all in is a key finding across our study as well as other studies, and in need of serious attention, which we provide in Chapter 4.
News is too uncertain. It matters a great deal that news is truthful and trustworthy, but figuring out what to trust can be demanding work for news audiences. In Chapter 5, we analyse how and why the work of figuring out what and who to trust is becoming more demanding, and why doubt drives news saturation.
News is too distant. To situate news somewhere else, outside the realm of one’s everyday life and sphere of attention, is a management strategy for many of the problems we discuss in this book. In Chapter 6, we consider whether this strategy is more easily available to some audiences than to others, more applicable to some topics than to others, and that it does come with a cost – to solidarity and to making news actionable.
We have selected this list of problems because they appear particularly significant in our research on news audiences, because each connects everyday experiences to scholarly discussions on digital media and democracy, and because each constitutes a piece of the puzzle of news saturation. (There are alternatives: when presenting an earlier version of this list to a conference of academics, a leading figure in our field promptly suggested adding ‘news is too boring’.) The problems could be worded or grouped otherwise, but we find that they represent a way of analytically highlighting the most important reasons why people feel saturated by news. The list is not good news for the news media. In the conclusion to each chapter, and to the book overall (Chapter 7), we will try to alter the perspective on each problem. Importantly, the concept of news saturation does not mean that audiences abandon news altogether, or that democratic societies do not need news. Instead, news saturation represents a way of taking seriously the difficult work audiences do in relating to a shared social world through news." (Introduction, pages 16-17)