Report “News avoidance in the UK remains high as lockdown restrictions are eased”

Year of production: 2020

Image is illustrative. Photo by Yasmina H on Unsplash

The report revisits previous research from the project UK COVID-19 news and information, looking to understand whether people are avoiding news during the coronavirus pandemic in the UK, based on a survey fielded from 16 July to 22 July.
Among its highlights:

  • levels of news avoidance grew sharply in April and May (+10pp), and have broadly remained at high levels since then
  • most of those that avoid news about COVID-19 say it is because ‘it has a bad effect on my mood’

The report is the eighth Factsheet, part of the UK COVID-19 news and information project that analyses how the British public navigates information and misinformation about coronavirus and about how the government and other institutions are responding to the pandemic.

Autores

Reuters Institute

University of Oxford

Photo of Richard Fletcher
Richard Fletcher

Richard Fletcher is a Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and leads the Institute’s research team.

Photo of Antonis Kalogeropoulos
Antonis Kalogeropoulos

Antonis Kalogeropoulos is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool and a Research Associate of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Photo of Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is the Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Professor of Political Communication at the University of Oxford.