Just under half (41%) of Russians deliberately refuse to watch the news. This was reported to socialbites.ca by the Economic and Sociological Research Laboratory of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University (NRU HSE).
According to scientists, in the modern world it is almost impossible to completely isolate yourself from the news. The spread of social networks has created the so-called “news find me” effect, which causes people to unknowingly come across information about the latest events in the online space or communication.
To study the impact of this effect, the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University analyzed 44 interviews with Russians aged 18 to 81, trying not to get into the news agenda.
According to survey results, passive exposure to news on social networks and other online services gives users the feeling that unnecessary and unreliable information is being weeded out, which saves both time and participants’ mental and emotional resources.
At the same time, study participants also noted the negative effects of interacting with the flow of information. For some, learning about recent events remains extremely traumatic and people cannot avoid negative content.
Participants especially criticized the inability to fully control the incoming information due to its algorithmic presentation. Viewing an interesting news often causes users to start seeing similar suggested content that does not meet their interests.
“News avoiders recognize the impossibility of completely isolating themselves from information about current events. They may not feel uninformed because they trust that they will find the most important news. However, when people accidentally hear news, they may not see the full picture of events. Sometimes these are just rumors or news with clickbait headlines that can be misleading. Moreover, this method of obtaining information does not allow to be critical of sources, so people are more likely to believe fake news. Anastasia Kazun, senior researcher at the Economic and Sociological Research Laboratory of the Higher School of Economics at the National Research University, told socialbites.ca: Simply put, such “random” news is often incomplete or distorted.
Previously offered It’s a way to make people immune to misinformation.