Factors influencing young people’s news consumption in Switzerland during normative transitions: A mixed methods study

ABSTRACT

Several media studies have investigated the news consumption of young people and discussed where they get information and what motivates them to consume news. Little is known about the structural factors that influence young people’s news consumption behavior. The aim of this paper is to fill this research gap by focusing on structural factors that play a major role in young people’s news consumption. In a mixed-methods study, we investigated Swiss youth media behavior in news consumption from 2019 to 2020 in Switzerland. The results show that news consumption of people aged 12–20 is determined by three structural factors at home and outside: 1. access to media and internet; 2. regulation by parents and teachers, and 3. routines at home or school. These three factors shape the individual media environment and are related to young people’s news consumption behavior. Changes in news consumption behavior were evident in school transitions where young people not only change teachers and get a new peer group but are often involved in a change of location. These changes can be normative transitions which have an influence on the structural factors of the individual media environment and thus influence the news consumption behavior of young people.

Impact Summary

Prior State of Knowledge

Young Swiss people consume news via their smartphones, which are offered to them through news portals, various apps, or via social media feeds, on which they usually come across news by chance and consume it casually in their free time.

Novel Contributions

Structural factors of media environments (i.e., access, regulation, and news consumption routines) play a major role in young people’s news consumption. These structural factors can be influenced by parents, teachers, and peers.

Practical Implications

For schools in particular, the paradigm that emerges from these findings is to reduce barriers to accessing news content and to rethink certain regulations, and to make recommendations and establish routines that encourage young people to consume news.

KEYWORDS:

• News consumption behavior
• adolescents
• media environment
• access
• regulation
• news literacy
• transitions

International studies show that young people between 12 and 25 consume news online that is offered for free via social media, news portals, and other apps (Geers, 2020; Hasebrink et al., 2021; Russmann & Hess, 2020) and that news is acquired from social media feeds (Bergström & Jervelycke Belfrage, 2018) or news aggregators (Slettemeås & Storm-Mathisen, 2017). Swiss studies, such as the JAMES study (Bernath et al., 2020; Külling et al., 2022; Suter et al., 2018) or the IGEM-digiMonitor (IGEM Ed., 2019, 2020), support these findings by showing that Swiss youth can be reached via social media and that they prefer to consume news digitally via smartphone (Waller et al., 2019). Therefore, the smartphone is the most important device for accessing news all over the world (Newman et al., 2022).

These findings raise the question whether Swiss adolescents news consumption is driven by the smartphone or whether structural factors of the media environment can influence the news consumption as well, because “people do not decide whether to follow or not follow the news in isolation from their surroundings and media environments in which they are nested” (Shehata & Strömbäck, 2011, p. 111). By “structural factors”, we understand environmental or material resources that structure the news consumption context, which are a part of the individual media environment and shape the media and news consumption of Swiss youth. “Media environment” refers to the various channels, platforms, and technologies that enable communication and dissemination of information, entertainment, and other content to a wide audience. It is important to know what structural factors of the media environment affect young people’s news consumption, as young people’s current habits may differ due to growing up in a media-rich environment and may not be reflected in the habits of adults, especially those who grew up in a less rich media environment (Edgerly et al., 2018).

This paper aims to provide insight into which structural factors in the media environment influence the news consumption of Swiss youth and to what extent. To provide these insights, we investigated the news consumption of 66 young people aged 12 to 20 with a mixed-methods-multistrand approach.

Theoretical background and related studies

We are in the so-called “rich media era,” where media users can find information about their interests in numerous media options (Wang & Wang, 2020). Confronted with this fact that there is so much news content to choose from, consumers should be encouraged more than ever to actively select news sources (Diddi & LaRose, 2006). This increasing media choice results in personal motivations becoming more important for explaining what media content people are exposed to (Prior, 2007; Strömbäck et al., 2013). However, being confronted with “a myriad of media choices, the consumer lapses into habitual patterns of media consumption in order to conserve mental resources, rather than repeatedly engaging in active selection” (Diddi & LaRose, 2006, p. 195) and tends to prefer positive news about same-aged individuals (Knobloch-Westerwick & Hastall, 2010). In addition, media users select news to regulate their self-concept along with affective and cognitive states and behaviors (Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015). Young people use media to develop close and meaningful relationships (McKenna et al., 2002), explore their identity (Subrahmanyam et al., 2006), sexuality (Suzuki & Calzo, 2004) and intimacy (Smahel & Subrahmanyam, 2007), and find information about developmentally sensitive issues (Borca et al., 2015; Valkenburg & Peter, 2009). They focus on information about their in-group; because of their high identity-uncertainty (Knobloch-Westerwick & Hastall, 2010).

Furthermore news seems to find young people rather than they seeking out news themselves (Russmann & Hess, 2020). They count on this content to keep themselves updated about current affairs (Bergström & Jervelycke Belfrage, 2018) and social media are gatekeepers for news (Cetina Presuel & Martínez Sierra, 2019). This algorithm-driven news consumption, described as “news-grazing” (Molyneux, 2018) or “news snacking” (Costera Meijer & Groot Kormelink, 2015), seems to be passive (Tamboer et al., 2020) and can be described as incidental (Boczkowski et al., 2018) exposure during young people’s phone use (Antunovic et al., 2018; Christen et al., 2020). This “news-finds-me-perception” indicates that young people hold the perception that they can be well-informed, as important news will find them without them actively seeking it (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2017) and is accompanied by a new definition of news that considers any information that is of personal use to be “news” (Gnach et al., 2020; Klopfenstein Frei et al., 2022). That shifts the focus from what is news to what is experienced as “informative” (Swart et al., 2022).

Media environment and news consumption

Adolescents have only known a media environment of high-choice and hybridity where the audiences encounter information through a variety of sources (Edgerly & Vraga, 2020). A saturated news environment can close the knowledge gap between individuals who are motivated to consume news and those who are not (Elenbaas et al., 2014; Iyengar et al., 2010; Shehata, 2013). The more extensive the coverage in the media environment is, the smaller the knowledge differences between individuals is (van Aelst et al., 2017). One explanation of which channel is chosen by individuals for television consumption is the influence of structural factors, especially the medium’s availability to the audience (Cooper & Tang, 2009). This fact seems to apply in a digital age as well: Availability continues to shape news media repertoires in a cross-platform media usage and is deeply embedded in the rhythms of day-to-day life routines (Taneja et al., 2012).

Considering that a) young people consume news primarily digitally via smartphones, b) in a fragmented media environment, news perceptions and individual preferences are increasingly important in media choices, and c) a saturated news environment can close the knowledge gap between individuals, this study aims to provide answers to the following question:

RQ1:

What structural factors besides individual preferences and the incidental exposure to news in the media environment of young people in Switzerland have an impact on their news consumption?

Media socialization and parental mediation

From early childhood on, young people use various media, that become a basic part of the environment at home and outside (Milenkova et al., 2018). Media socialization is related to the impact of media content on the individual, “duration of media usage and exposure, [and] preferences for specific media genres and programming” (Genner & Süss, 2017, p. 1). The media and other actors such as family, school, and peers are involved in “primary socialization”, which encompasses the period of childhood and adolescence; but the media are involved in the formation of social consciousness and habits throughout the whole life of the individual (Milenkova et al., 2018). Therefore, media socialization can be seen as a form of social learning, which emphasizes changes in news behavior and learning through the observation and imitation of the actions and behaviors in the environment (Rumjaun & Narod, 2020). Media socialization relates to the family (Milenkova et al., 2018). Parents apply different strategies of media use regulation (Shin & Li, 2017), such as restrictive mediation (e.g., media use limitations) or active mediation (e.g., monitoring) (Collier et al., 2016). Parents’ own news consumption is the most consistent predictor of adolescents’ development of news habits (Shehata, 2016), it is not surprising that the parents’ media use and media attitudes of their children and adolescents are very similar (Lauricella & Cingel, 2020). Parents act as shapers of their children’s media environments (Nathanson, 2015) and their use of particular devices for news tends to spur their use of those same devices for news (York & Scholl, 2015).

Regarding the use of smartphones to consume news content, young people develop the habit when their parents use that device for news consumption themselves (Edgerly et al., 2018). Kids and adolescents use the parents’ news behavior as a “model” (BANDURA & HUSTON, 1961; Bryant, 2009). Therefore, parents’ news behaviors have complex and lasting effects on kids’ news behavior (York & Scholl, 2015). During childhood, parents are the most important intermediaries in media socialization. Education and teachers also seem to play a role (Milenkova et al., 2018).

Given that device-driven media use at home and outside, together with the media environment, plays an important role in young people’s media socialization and thus in their news consumption, we ask:

RQ2:

Are there differences between structural factors of the media environment at home and outside related to the news consumption of Swiss youth?

Normative transitions in young people’s development

Children and young people develop in different contexts (Lerner & Walls, 1999) such as family, kindergarten, school and work. The transition from one context to another is called normative transition (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Normative transitions are points of consolidation of learning and development processes, in which fundamental competences are built up (Kracke & Noack, 2019). In each phase of life, there are tasks which are socially relevant for people to master (Havighurst, 1976). The major task for modern western adolescents is to create a stable identity and become complete and productive adults (Steinberg, 2005). Young people face the important task of adapting to changes during puberty, gaining a new way of closeness and trust with peers and independence from parents, developing a sense of their own identity, and gaining autonomy (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001).

In Switzerland, youngsters aged 12 to 20 must complete several compulsory school transitions from secondary level to third grade education. These transitions are determined by the Swiss school system and can vary from canton to canton. They can be considered normative transitions, since every school-aged person must go through them. We therefore ask:

RQ3:

Do normative transitions influence the news consumption behavior of Swiss youth?

Materials and methods

The study used a mixed-methods-multistrand approach (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010) of embedded qualitative and quantitative (QUAL + quan) data collection (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007) in a complementary function (Greene, 2008) and a qualitative multi-method data analysis. This study design should ensure that deeper insights are gained that capture both quantitative and qualitative data from the same participants.

First, pre-interviews were conducted to gain insight for the focus groups. Focus groups provided information about the participants’ understanding of news, attitudes towards news consumption, and news consumption motivations. The young people documented their news behavior in standardized media diaries on their smartphone. The software Evernote¹ and Screentime² were installed on all mobile phones of the study participants. The software Evernote was used to record the digital media diary. During the diary study, the software Screentime recorded the smartphone use of each participant. The participants were asked to document everything that they themselves consider news and to tag their entries with predefined categories of their possible media use behavior (Koch et al., 2021). Seven specified questions guided the participants to give further information about their news consumption: “Where have you seen the news?”, “With whom have you seen the news?”, “What medium did you use?”, “How did you use it?”, “Why did you consume the news?”, “What is your impression of content and style?” and “How did you feel?”. The participants could select matching tags (see appendix I) to answer each question. The trace interviews were used to contact each diary participant once during the media diary study to ask specific questions about peculiarities in their news consumption (new source, new channel, new format, new content). Retrospective interviews as a reflexive practice (Budach, 2012) were used to better understand why the participants responded the way they did. Even though “this type of interview does not elicit the most accurate data” (Fetterman, 2009), the retrospective approach enables us to include the participants’ perspective – what they told us in their diaries and what they did not – thus enriching the research data. To analyze the data, the diary entries in Evernote were compared with the Screentime data to validate and supplement the entries and were linked together with the 41 transcripts from the trace and retrospective interviews and were analyzed qualitatively, using a combination of structuring and summary content analysis (Mayring and Fenzl, 2019). In an iterative process, codes were inductively formed from the material. All collected data was coded (see codes in appendix II) with the software MAXQDA (2020).³

The study participants were 66 young people aged 12 to 20 from three linguistic regions (GE, FR, IT) in Switzerland. Geographical and age characteristics, social and economic background, family type, and social origin were considered in the composition of the sample. Thirty-one participants were female and thirty-five were male; they came from both urban and rural areas. In the Italian-speaking area, the participants were from the city of Lugano and surrounding valleys; in the French-speaking area, the participants were from the city of Lausanne and surrounding villages; and in the German-speaking area the participants were from the cities of Winterthur and Zurich and surrounding villages. To obtain a sample with these specific characteristics, the research teams used different methods for contacting participants (personal contact, specific internet sites and groups as well as contacts from schools and colleges, pastors, and social workers). The contact with the participants was mostly made via WhatsApp (age 15 and older) or through their parents (12–14), but also by asking other participants to alert friends and relatives about the research project. Young adults could participate in one or more sub-studies. The participants as well as the parents of the participants were informed about the data recording and had to sign a declaration of consent. These measures have been approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Italian Switzerland (USI).⁴

A monetary incentive for the participation was given to the participants in the form of vouchers. The data, collected on the smartphone and on site, was stored anonymously on protected university servers.

The focus of the analysis was on the participants’ news consumption behavior, which was captured inductively working through the material in an iterative process, considering the applied tags and codes (appendices I and II). The news consumption behavior could be described according to the following 13 criteria: provider, channel, format, product, app, social media, content, way of consumption, time, place, environment, feelings, interaction. In a further step, we systematized the criteria into six dimensions to provide a comprehensive overview of the news consumption behavior regarding the research questions: news literacy, the access to news media, regulations in news consumption, the interaction with others about news, the reasons and motivation for news consumption as well as the emotions experienced during news consumption. Personal user dossiers were created for each participant, which gave deep insights into individual news behavior. These dossiers were supplemented with information from the pre-interviews and focus groups. The datasets of the study could be systemized according to the nine dimensions and the six fields to answer the research questions RQ1-RQ3.

Results

The first research question (RQ1) asks which structural factors, in addition to individual preferences and incidental exposure to news in the media environment of young people in Switzerland, have an influence on their news consumption.

News consumption is dependent on the availability of media devices and access to the internet as well as parental, school, or workplace regulation. In addition, the routines at home and on the way to school play an important role regarding news consumption. Hence, three structural factors could be identified which influence the news consumption of young people: access to media and internet, regulation by parents/school and routines at home/school (Table 1).

Table 1. Overview of the structural factors of young people’s media environment at home and outside.

Structural factors	At home	Outside
	Access to media and internet	Access to media and internet in school/at work
	Parental regulation of media and news consumption	School/workplace regulation of media consumption
	Routines at home	Routines in school/worksplace

Access to media and internet is a structural factor that directly affects the possibility of news consumption and influences young people depending on their age. Especially for the youngest age group (12–14), this factor plays an important role. This group is affected by technical restrictions inside the home (data packages, prepaid mobile phone). Therefore, accessing online news is rather difficult for them. Between the ages of 15 and 17, access to media increases, although access at home and outside varies on an individual level. Some young people do not have access to TV or radio at home; others have several media available. The same heterogeneity can be seen in schools: some still have TV rooms and libraries with online workstations; others have tablets and laptops and free Wi-Fi available.

Younger people read more newspapers on the train than older ones. A frequently mentioned reason was that they did not have access to Wi-Fi or did not want to use up their data, so they used internet access sparingly. With increasing age, young people have their own data packages and are constantly online with their smartphones. Thus, older participants preferred to scroll through feeds of their news Apps instead of picking up a free newspaper. Moreover, they spend a lot of time on social media. When they reach the age of majority (18–20), full access to all devices and tools is given. If traditional media devices are directly available, they are still used.

News subscriptions offer an additional news service, which is often used by young people when it is available. Thus, for example, newspapers reach young people when the parents have a subscription and bring it to their children’s attention. Hence, the children are more willing to read the newspaper because they encounter it at an early age by leafing through it and embedding it in daily routines:

I read newspaper when it is just lying around. We have Zürichsee-Zeitung⁵ and WOZ⁶ at home. So, I check it from time to time to see whether something interesting is written.

(Participant 26, age 15)

The selection of analog media and digital devices as well as the access to Wi-Fi and/or data packages increase with age (Gnach et al., 2020). Hence, the environmental factor of access to media and internet becomes less important.

Regulation at home and outside affects the youngest people (12–14) the most. They must follow restrictions concerning news consumption and the use of their devices both in their private and school environment. At the same time, they receive recommendations from both sources about news they should consume. Restrictions decrease when young people enter the higher secondary school level (15–17), but their media consumption is still regulated by time limits at home or guidelines outside, and their news consumption is guided by parents and teachers. This age group still receives news recommendations from parents and teachers, but additionally from their peer group. From the age of 18, restrictions are no longer enforced from home, but recommendations are made that are passed on by young people themselves in interest groups. At university or in an apprenticeship, students consume news related to their school material to stay informed and to pass their exams (Gnach et al., 2020).

Consumption routines are well established at home. All participants use traditional news media with their relatives. In addition, routines on school journeys seem to play an important role outside. In general, spending time on public transportation provides the participants with the opportunity to consume news. Young people adopt their parents’ news consumption behavior when they live at home with them, because they are exposed to it daily. In addition, the oldest participants (18–20) used a mix of traditional and new news media sources inside and outside the home.

Differences between factors at home and outside

Looking at the structural factors of the media environment, the question arises whether there are differences between factors at home and those from outside (RQ2). When it comes to access to media and the internet, the differences are not evident: Both the private media environment and the school environment can ensure different access to media and the internet (Table 2). Both at home and outside, age/school level play a role in the extent to which access to media and the internet is given. The older the young people/the higher the school level, the freer the access.

Table 2. Overview of access to media and internet as a key structural factor at home and outside on different school levels.

School	At home	Outside
Secondary level 1 (12–14)	“I have a prepaid handy and therefore no data package to access the internet.” (Participant 25, age 13)	“A new rule has been introduced in our school. I never take my mobile phone with me because it is useless. Everyone must hand it in anyways before school.” (Participant 7, age 13)
Secondary level 2 (15–17)	“I don’t really listen to radio unless I am in the car. At home we don’t have a radio.” (Participant 8, age 16)	“The problem was that the internet stopped working and then we had to watch it (news broadcast) on our teacher’s mobile phone.” (Participant 4, age 14^7)
Third/professional level (18–20)	“We don’t have a newspaper at home, so I don’t read. We don’t have TV either, that’s why I don’t watch TV.” (Participant 9, age 18)	“Everything is only online now (in school). We have no more books and no more worksheets.” (Participant 20, age 19)

In the case of regulations, the intentions at home and outside differ: Parental restrictions are intended to regulate young people’s media use and protect them from inappropriate content at home. The restrictions refer mostly to the limitation of the usage time or to the prohibition of certain news channels and content. Furthermore, parental recommendations are intended to help young people not to miss content that is relevant to them – from the parents’ perspective. School restrictions, on the other hand, are intended to allow the teachers to conduct the lessons without disruption and to give the young people a sense of relevance. Often, news is shown in relation to the school subject matter, or the school subject matter is conveyed through news and related to previous events. Both regulations and recommendations have an influence on the news consumption behavior of young people and vary according to the age and school level. While the youngest people receive news recommendations from parents and teachers, those aged 15 to 17 are increasingly motivated to consume news by their peer group, before consumption is based on interests or obligations (Table 3).

Table 3. Overview of regulation as a key structural factor at home and outside on different school levels.

Age	At home	Outside
Secondary level 1 (12–14)	“I’m not allowed to read 20minutes^8 online, I sometimes look at the newspaper.” (Participant 5, age 12)	“I also got a lot of news at school - not consumed - but they were like stuffed into me. Especially with a teacher who always shows us what’s going on, even not so positive things.” (Participant 7, age 13)
Secondary level 2 (15–17)	“My mother sometimes sends me things like articles from 20minutes or Blick^9 on WhatsApp.” (Participant 29, age 15)	“There was someone in my class: He always got everything from the newspaper, or I don’t know where he got it from. He just knew everything and told it. And then it was exciting to be involved.” (Participant 26, age 15)
Third/professional level (18–20)	“I am in this group chat on WhatsApp with three boys where we send each other Memes about history and all that. Once they sent this news (article) which was very interesting, and I read it completely.” (Participant 22, age 18)	“I send news related to my field of study to my college colleagues. We then also talk about those topics.” (Participant 10, age 20)

In terms of consumption routines at home, it is more a matter of consuming media together than outside, where it is a matter of media use routines on the way to school as the example shows (Table 4):

“I used to walk to school, now I use public transport to get to work, that has changed my news media consumption routine.” (Participant 12, age 15)

Table 4. Overview of routines as a key structural factor at home and outside on different school levels.

Age	At home	Outside
Secondary level 1 (12–14)	“We watch Tagesschau^10 together at my grandparents’ house.” (Participant 4, age 14)	“I know Watson^11 from the bus. There are these labels sticking to the window with advertisement from Watson.” (Participant 7, age 13)
Secondary level 2 (15–17)	“Yes, (we consume news together) when my father shows me something that is on TV.” (Participant 2, age 15)	“I remember that when I was younger, I really liked reading the newspaper Blick am Abend.^12 I always looked for it at the train station. It was always my first choice until it was not there anymore. Then I started to take 20minutes.” (Participant 29, age 15)
Third/professional level (18–20)	“It is not typical for young people to tune in to SRF, I would say. But I like to watch this broadcast very much and often together with my parents.” (Participant 17, age 20)	“Waiting at the bus station I read an article (on SRF App^13), then travelling by bus I read another. It is like a time pass while being on the way to somewhere.” (Participant 10, age 20)

This structural factor is the only one that does not show differences in age groups or school levels within our sample.

The third research question (RQ3) asks if normative transitions influence the news consumption behavior of Swiss youth. Normative transitions such as changing schools, starting an apprenticeship or starting to attend a university seem to play a major role in changing structural factors of media environments at home and outside, leading to changes in news consumption behavior. Normative transitions often involve new forms of commuting, a different workload, resulting changes in time resources as well as contact and access to new groups of people and news media products. Young people seem to adapt quickly to these normative transitions and change their news consumption behavior accordingly. Thus, they include new sources, products, and formats in their news repertoire and exclude others, as the data shows:

“I did not know Watson before I went to Gymnasium. Many things have changed then. I was part of a new social network and there were new topics discussed among peers.” (Participant 20, age 19)

Also, non-normative transitions can lead to changes in structural factors. One participant mentioned a downgrade in his education from “Gymnasium” (academic high school) back to secondary school (non-academic high school):

“Last year I failed the probationary period and went back to secondary school. Then I was more on the mobile phone because I had to study less and had more time.” (Participant 24, age 15)

These transitions at home and outside resulted in changing news consumption behavior due to changing conditions within the structural factors in the individual media environment of young people (Figure 1). As students go through at least two normative school transitions between the ages of 12 to 20 in Switzerland, their structural factors vary at home and outside according to their age or school level reshaping the media environment and can lead to changes in their news consumption behavior as often as transitions occur.

Figure 1. How (non-)normative transitions influence the news consumption behavior of young Swiss people through changed conditions in the structural factors of their media environment (own illustration).

Discussion

The current media environment makes news more fluid; it can be found in multiple spaces, formats, and locations. Thus, the narrative of news democracy is being reshaped to fit the modern media environment (Edgerly & Vraga, 2020). Future media research should therefore rather ask what kind of information is consumed and to what extent it has a news value for the consumer instead of using the traditional news definition for research.

For young people, who have already a very broad understanding of what news can be (Gnach et al., 2020; Klopfenstein Frei et al., 2022), parents and teachers still have the biggest influence on news consumption in the age group of 12 to 14-year-olds, as role models, as gatekeepers to media, and by creating an environment that encourages news consumption or not. It turns out that not only active and restrictive mediation plays a role in news consumption, but also the conditions of media use at home (Naab, 2018) as well as parents’ interaction with digital media and their own news consumption (Edgerly et al., 2018; York & Scholl, 2015). Schools, with their infrastructures and restrictions (Milenkova et al., 2018), also have a strong influence on the news consumption of this age group. The older the people get, the less parents and teacher play a role in shaping the media environment (15–17) and the more adolescents increasingly choose news content which are recommended by their friends (Trültzsch-Wijnen, 2020). Due to a strong tendency towards trying varied news sources, channels, and formats, influenced by peer group recommendations, this age group presents the most substantial potential for a change in their personal media environment (Gnach et al., 2020; Klopfenstein Frei et al., 2022), which is part of the identity-discovery process (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001).

Between the ages of 18 and 20, young people seem to build up an “information repertoire” composed, on the one hand, of traditional media or news organizations with which they were socialized at home (Notten & Kraaykamp, 2009). On the other hand, the information repertoire is composed of social media dissemination channels designed to expand access to news and help connect with their peer group in a specific area of interest (Borca et al., 2015). Young people at this age expand these media choices for a given interest area by combining special interest media resources (Reagan, 1996; Taneja et al., 2012), and they establish a very strongly habituative news media repertoire (Edgerly et al., 2018; Eisenegger et al., 2019). This type of combination of old and new news media is based on the credibility of traditional news sources, “which influence the news media choice, resulting in a different composition of the repertoire” (Yuan, 2011, p. 998). This reference by the oldest adolescents to credible news sources to which they were exposed in their early adolescence again demonstrates ” […] that the media habits, routines, and practices cultivated at home still matter for adolescents’ development of news habits, despite infinite opportunities for media choice available to young citizens growing up today” (Shehata, 2016, p. 777). Media socialization at home is an inherent part of establishing a news consumption routine of young people (Genner & Süss, 2017; Trültzsch-Wijnen, 2020) and is supplemented by the media socialization in schools and by peer groups outside (Genner & Süss, 2017; Milenkova et al., 2018). From the perspective of news media socialization, the family is a central socialization actor: Shared (news) media use, concepts of (news) media education and family role models in dealing with news media have a particularly strong influence on young people’s news consumption (Trültzsch-Wijnen, 2020).

Between the ages of 12 and 20, the structural factors at home and outside can be reshaped during youth development. As a result, the main structural factors of the individual media environment also change, especially during normative transitions, such as the transition from lower secondary school to upper secondary school and to the third level of education in Switzerland. All these changes seem to be sustainable for the newly entered life phase until the next transition happens: “Media habits exist so that media consumption behaviors may be enacted efficiently and without conscious thought when triggered by relevant external or internal stimuli. […] Media habits are subject to conscious override or may be incorporated in complex scripts that include both habitual and volitional media consumption behaviors” (LaRose, 2010, p. 217).

While the conditions of the two structural factors access and regulation change during transitions, the factor news consumption routine with the family remains fairly stable (Diddi & LaRose, 2006; Shehata, 2016). This leads to the conclusion that the news consumption of young people can be positively influenced by parents, teachers, and peers. For schools in particular, the paradigm that emerges from these findings is to reduce barriers to accessing news content and to reconsider certain regulations, as well as to make recommendations and establish routines that promote news consumption among young people. Using the mixed methods design made it possible to show that even in the highly segmented and duplicated media environment (Chyi & Lee, 2013), conditions at home and outside continue to influence the news consumption behavior of young people. These findings must be viewed critically considering the study’s limitations. First, the study design is such that participants’ news consumption could be influenced by the diary study. However, this could be elicited via the trace and retrospective interviews and was considered in the evaluation. Second, the data sample is small. Switzerland’s multilingualism and thus the varying access to news media and sources in different languages makes it difficult to compare the data and allows only limited generalization for Switzerland. In addition, the predominantly qualitative approach to the data cannot provide any information on the extent to which the characteristics apply quantitatively.^14,15

Acknowledgments

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Disclosure statement

The results presented here are one output of the Swiss research project “How to Reach Swiss Digital Natives with News,” which was conducted from June 2019 to December 2020 (Gnach et al., 2020). The project was funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Communications.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2023.2278141.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadine Klopfenstein

Nadine Klopfenstein is a PHD Candidate at the University of Zurich and works as a research associate at the Institute of Applied Media Studies (IAM) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Winterthur. She received her master’s degree in the field of digital journalism. Her research interests are youth and media, volunteer communication and sustainability communication. Address for correspondence: ZHAW, IAM, Theaterstrasse 15c, 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland.

Valery Wyss

Valery Wyss is a Research Assistant at the Chair of Media Linguistics at the Institute of Applied Media Studies (IAM) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Winterthur. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and communication sciences and her master’s degree in psychology at the University of Zurich (UZH). Affiliation: https://www.zhaw.ch/de/ueber-uns/person/wysl/, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valery-wyss-600170142

Wibke Weber

Wibke Weber is Professor of Media Linguistics at the Institute for Applied Media Studies (IAM) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Winterthur. Her research focuses on visual communication, image analysis, digital storytelling, data visualization, information design, multimodality, and virtual reality. She is co-author of the textbook Digital Communication and Media Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Notes

1. Evernote is an online service and associated software that supports collecting, organizing, and finding notes, documents, and photos in various formats. In this study, a paid version was used by researchers so that the diaries could still be analyzed after the study. Participants could install the free version and were informed in the consent form that the data from their diary study would be collected via Evernote.

2. Screentime is a screen time management and parental monitoring tool that allows parents to observe and control the usage of the mobile phones of their children. There are free and paid features. Screentime is installed by default on all Apple devices. In this study the app screentime has been used to track mobile phone movements during the diary study. Access was only for the duration of the diary study. Participants were informed in the consent form that the data from their screentime app would be collected.

3. MAXQDA is a qualitative content analysis software. It allows working with a wide range of data types and includes numerous powerful tools for coding, retrieval, transcription, and visualization.

4. The Ethics Committee oversees examining and approving, from an ethical point of view, all research projects and scientific publications that do not fall under the Cantonal Ethics Committee responsibilities. The Committee follows all national and international requirements in the field of scientific research (cf. ASS- Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences Guidelines on Scientific Integrity) and the relevant documentation for European Projects.

5. The Zürichsee-Zeitung (ZSZ) is a regional daily newspaper in the Swiss canton of Zurich. It is published by Tamedia’s Zurich Regional Newspapers publishing house in a catchment area covering the cantons of Zurich, St. Gallen and Schwyz.

6. WOZ Die Wochenzeitung is a cooperatively organized national left-wing weekly newspaper in Switzerland based in Zurich. The newspaper is published by the InfoLink cooperative; it is supported financially by the ProWOZ support association.

7. Participant 4 was 14 years old, but already on secondary level 2.

8. 20 minuten, or 20 minutes in French and 20 minuti in Italian, is a free Swiss tabloid and commuter newspaper. Compared to other titles, it is particularly popular with younger readers. No less popular is the online edition of 20 Minuten, which also has its own mobile app.

9. Blick is a German-language Swiss daily newspaper based in Zurich. Blick includes its online news website blick.ch, which is also available in French. Blick has come under criticism for tabloid reporting with poorly researched, deliberately manipulated or partly freely invented information and pictures.

10. Tagesschau is an SRF news program from Swiss Radio and Television (SRF). Next to SRF Meteo, Tagesschau is the program with the highest audience rating on Swiss television.

11. Watson is a Swiss news portal that has been online since January 22, 2014. The majority shareholder is AZ Medien AG of Aargau publisher Peter Wanner, who also secured the start-up financing of 20 million Swiss francs. A content partnership with Zeit Online and t-online.de has been in place since 2019.

12. Blick am Abend is a Swiss internet newspaper. It belongs to the Blick Group together with the tabloid Blick and SonntagsBlick. From 2008 to 2018, Blick am Abend was also a tabloid. It appeared Mondays to Fridays from 4 p.m. and was distributed in newspaper boxes at train stations, bus and streetcar stops and from hand-held distributors in the Bern, Basel, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Zug and Zurich conurbations.

13. The SRF app offers everything that is broadcast on Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) as a livestream or for re-watching or re-listening.

14. Partners of the Project “Reaching Digital Natives with News” are the IAM Institute for Applied Media Studies at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in collaboration with the Universities of Lugano (USI) and Lausanne (UNIL).

15. The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) is responsible for telecommunications, media and postal services in Switzerland and ensures a stable and advanced communications infrastructure. It is part of the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC).