"In the age of digital media, news avoidance behaviour is continually increasing. This behaviour has brought new challenges for society and democracy. Research on news avoidance has recently experienced a surge, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are many uncertainties ... on this topic, and this systematic literature review attempts to resolve them. This research uses the PRISMA framework to answer the research questions. Two databases are used for this study: Web of Science and Scopus. The study uses the inclusion criteria of research papers published in English and the exclusion criteria of review papers. The research study is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 23 selected articles from both databases. Quantitative results show a sudden increase in the number of news avoidance studies in 2023. The analysis also revealed a dominance of quantitative methods and non-probability samples. The regional distribution of the studies underlines the concentration of research in Europe and North America. The qualitative analysis highlights the causes of news avoidance, the profile of news avoiders, the connection between news avoidance and news overload, social media and engagement, the disadvantages of avoidance, and solutions to avoidance. The study concludes that trust in news, interest in news, enjoyment of news consumption, news curation and constructive news provide a solution to news avoidance behaviour." (Abstract) more

"A normative democracy presumes that citizens keep themselves informed on current events that provide them with the knowledge and capability to participate in political and civic life. Recent years, however, have seen an increasing global trend of intentional news avoidance among citizens, even doub ... ling in some countries within a few years. Based on the premise that quality journalism could be an effective strategy against this trend, this study examines the role of public service media (PSM) in news avoidance and its antecedents. Drawing on national surveys in 22 countries, the findings showed that PSM news access was generally related to news trust and perceived media independence and negatively related to perceived media cynicism across the countries. News trust was also consistently negatively related to news avoidance. The study suggests that PSM as a proxy for quality journalism could play a role in attenuating news avoidance by engendering news trust, even in countries where PSM has a relatively small market presence and low audience reach." (Abstract) more

"The watchdog role has been one of the most widely discussed normative functions of the press. In this study, we examine the public’s attitudes toward the news media’s watchdog performance and how they correlate with trust in news and news avoidance, two important phenomena for democracy and the ... health of the public sphere. We further examine how individual predispositions (e.g. political interest, ideology) and contextual variables (e.g. press freedom) moderate these relationships. Based on data from the 2019 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, and controlling for a range of factors, we find that across 38 countries, watchdog performance evaluations are positively associated with trust in news but that they are also positively associated with higher levels of news avoidance. Last, we find that evaluations of media in other functions like helping citizens understand the most important topics of the day and choosing relevant topics were more strongly associated to trust in news and lower news avoidance levels than watchdog performance evaluations." (Abstract) more