News definitions and motivations: youth and adults in Portugal and in Estonia

Authors

Keywords:

News Motivations, News Definitions, Young People, Adults, Daily Life

Abstract

How do young people and adults define news? What motivates them to consume news? These questions guide this research based on interviews with Portuguese and Estonian young and adults. The motivations for news consumption can be related to normative pressures to fulfil particular social roles and personal needs related to one’s life-world. The diversity of the definitions of news seems to be broader in Portugal, whereas in Estonia, news definitions are based on professional concepts of news and regarded as synonymous with educational content. The results indicate stronger age differences in news definitions in Portugal than Estonia. However, considering the massive changes in Europe over the past decades, including varied integration processes and the advent of the Internet, we contend that digital media are continually producing more similarities in news consumption by audiences in different countries. This influence can be relevant to understand the media options in other European countries. 

Author Biographies

Maria José Brites, Universidade Lusófona do Porto/CICANT

Assistant professor at the Lusophone University of Porto (ULP) and researcher at CICANT. She is the Portuguese coordinator of the European project Media in Action (LC-00644630; http://mediainaction.eu). She had coordinated (in Portugal) the RadioActive project (531245-LLP-1-2012-1-UK-KA3-KA3). She is a member of four research networks (COST IS1401 European Literacy Network - where she coordinates the Digital Literacy Team -, COST IS1410 DigitLitEY, CA15212: Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe and CEDAR - Consortium on Emerging Directions in Audience Research) and two projects (News as Democratic Resources: Cross Cultural Comparative Research and Young children's digital literacy and multimodal practices). She concluded her PhD in Communication Sciences in the NOVA University of Lisbon in 2013 and a post-doc (2014-2017) at the Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS/UMinho), with a grant from the Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BPD/92204/2013). Her research interests include issues such as Participatory methodologies, Youth, journalism and participation, Audience studies and News and civic literacy. She has worked as a journalist in several newspapers and magazines in Portugal (press card 3182).

Ragne Kõuts-Klemm, University of Tartu

Ragne Kõuts-Klemm is a lecturer in journalism sociology, and the programme manager of journalism MA studies (Institute of Social Studies/University of Tartu). She works for the project of the institutional research funding IUT20-38 by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research: ‘Acceleration of Social and Personal Time in the Information Society: Practices and Effects of Mediated Communication’.  

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Published

2018-12-18

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 27 (2018): Estudos em Comunicação

Section

Artigos

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