More and more adolescents and young adults do not find their interests and concerns reflected in the traditional news media. They have little interest in current world events, hardly use any information offered by established media and are therefore hardly reached by journalistic offerings. Instead, social media offerings play an important role for this group of young people. They stay up to date almost exclusively via casual information contacts on TikTok and YouTube, preferring entertaining content and pursuing individual interests that they also talk about among their friends.
What their information needs, usage practices and attitudes look like was analyzed by the Leibniz Institute for Media Research in Hamburg in interview rounds with “low information-oriented” participants.
The focus of the published sub-study of the project Use the News – News Usage and News Literacy in the Digital Age was on young people who are hardly interested in current information and are not reached by journalistic offerings: the low information oriented. In the summer of 2023, interviews in ten focus groups (n=46) were conducted in four major cities in Germany with those adolescents and young adults aged 14 to 22 who could be classified as belonging to this group based on selected sociodemographic characteristics. The focus groups took place in the cities of Hamburg, Bottrop (North Rhine-Westphalia), Dresden (Saxony) and Nuremberg (Bavaria).
Wunderlich, Leonie; Hölig, Sascha (2023): „Verständlicher, nicht so politisch“ – Einblicke in die Bedürfnisse und Nutzungspraktiken gering informationsorientierter junger Menschen [More Comprehensible, Not So Political” – Insights into the Needs and Usage Practices of Low-Information-Oriented Young People]. Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut, October 2023 (Working Papers of the Hans-Bredow-Institut | Project Results No.69), https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/90067, ISBN 978-3-87296-183-9 (Open Access, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License CC BY 4.0).