A new study has found that people are increasingly exhausted by the amount of news coverage in their lives.
The study, albeit a US one, found seven-in-ten Americans (68 per cent ) feel worn out by the amount of news there is these days, compared with only three-in-10 who say they like the amount of news they get.
The study was conducted by Pew Research Centre between February and March this year and you can read it in full here. It found that respondents are reporting similar news fatigue that they experienced during the presidential elections in late 2016.
It also looked at respondent’s voting persuasions and found both Republicans and Democrats express news fatigue, Republicans are feeling it more.
Some three-quarters (77 per cent) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents feel worn out over how much news there is, compared with about six-in-10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (61 per cent).
Feeling overwhelmed by the news was found to be more common among those who follow the news less closely than among those who are avid consumers. While those who thought media outlets weren’t doing a good enough job in their reporting also were the most fatigued.
While a majority of those who follow the news most of the time (62 per cent) are feeling worn out by the news, a substantially higher portion (78 per cent) of those who less frequently get news say they are fatigued by the amount of it that they see.
Most Americans – some 65 per cent– say they follow the news most of time, whereas 34 per cent say they follow only when something important is happening.
When it came to the quality of the news they were reading, 17 per cent said media outlets were doing a very good job, 24 per cent were indifferent and the remaining 58 per cent said said they were doing “fairly well”.
