Abstract

News avoidance identifies the practice of avoiding contents, sources, and channels based on personal criteria of quality or correspondence with one’s own value universe. It can be read as a response, on the part of the public, to the media ecosystem polluted by information disorders and the dynamics of information commercialisation. The article studies this dynamic through a survey that has involved 284 subjects between March and June 2022. The results suggest that the combination between a general dissatisfaction with news coverage and a high self-efficacy perception in detecting fake news could lead to a more engaged behaviour in scrutinising the media.