International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

In democratic societies, “being informed” is regarded as part of the citizen's duty in order to form a political opinion and to participate in political life. The media, on the one hand, play a major role in the transmission of information about current events, and they are thought to be very influential. To fulfill its democratic responsibilities, the audience, on the other hand, is expected to consume news with a high level of attention in order to get detailed information, to learn as much as possible. Corresponding to these expectations, television is the principal source of information about current events for most people, and getting the news belongs to their daily routines. The acceptance of the civic duty to be informed is correlated with the frequency of news consumption ( Poindexter & McCombs 2001 ) and news consumption is positively related with civic participation ( Ksiazek et al. 2010 ). Television is the most popular source of news, but half of the public uses multiple news sources (→ Television News ). On a typical day the average US American in 2010 spent 70 minutes consuming news: 32 minutes watching television, 15 minutes listening to radio, another 10 minutes reading newspapers, and 13 minutes using the Internet for getting news. As a result of the increasing integration of new technologies into news consumption habits, in 2010 US Americans were spending ... log in or subscribe to read full text