Around 72% of Democrats say they feel a need to limit their consumption of news about politics and government, according to a recent poll by AP-NORC.
Research has highlighted the negative effects of news avoidance (resistance to, or avoidance of, news) on people’s political knowledge and civic engagement, the cornerstones of democratic thought and action.
Research also shows what prompts news avoidance generally – and the return of Trump may be increasing the percentage of people in the US who are turning away from news and current affairs.
Research from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland measured how news avoidance varied across several nations between 2016 and 2019. It also attempted to identify the drivers of news avoidance.
Researchers found the proportion of consumers who actively avoided the news varied significantly from one country to another – and for some, it was temporary.
In their sample of five countries, they found news avoidance was highest in Argentina (45%) and the US (41%) and lowest in Finland (17%) and Japan (11%), with Israel somewhere in between. The US, it seems, has always been high but there are some suggestions it is getting worse.
People made conscious decisions about what news to consume and what to avoid, given the amount of news available. News overload and cognitive fatigue (where people feel worn out by the amount of news they feel they should listen to) were especially important when there was intense national news focus on certain individuals. Examples of this could be coverage of the corruption case involving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, or Trump’s recent stream of executive orders.
But factors can vary. The study found that in Japan, the main cognitive driver was “a reluctance to discuss or be exposed to subjective and often extreme opinions”. In Argentina, it was a distrust of politicians generally.
However, emotional factors were also critical to news avoidance. Many interviewees reported feeling emotional distress, sadness, fear and anger with certain types of negative news, to the extent that it sometimes affected their mental health.
But emotional factors also affect specific behaviour. News avoidance can become “news aversion” (more emotional, more visceral), turning away from the news not because of some deliberate rational judgment (“I’ll reduce my viewing a little, according to American Psychological Association guidelines”) but because of overwhelming feelings of anxiety or disgust when confronted by certain stories or individuals.
Disgust is a powerful negative emotion linked to very quick responding, and could create a need to turn away from something immediately. Feelings of anxiety may be linked to images of political figures, for instance.
I have just finished writing a book exploring climate anxiety. For some, this can be a debilitating form of anxiety, and it is growing globally especially among young people. It can be overwhelming, affecting study, work and sleep.
The recent image of Trump yelling that “we’re going to drill, baby, drill” has been implanted in the minds of many who suffer from climate anxiety, possibly intensifying their distress.
For many Democrats, the aftermath of Trump’s victory was emotionally devastating. On October 24 2024 (two weeks before the election), an open letter was published in the New York Times signed by 233 mental health professionals with the following warning: “We have an ethical duty to warn the public that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. His symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder – malignant narcissism – makes him deceitful, destructive, deluded and dangerous. He is grossly unfit for leadership.”
For Democrats in particular, Trump may display many negative features including his lack of remorse or self-awareness, his break from traditional political norms and use of populist, nationalist rhetoric, or his rejection of civil discourse in favour of divisive and inflammatory language.
So Trump’s victory seemed, to many Democrats, to signal the triumph of ignorance, bigotry and authoritarianism. An emotional response from them was always likely, and chimes with this avoiding of news.
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that when individuals are confronted with information (in this case from Trump) that contradicts their deeply held beliefs but they still sit and listen dutifully, this can create considerable psychological discomfort.
To reduce this discomfort, people often engage in behaviour that avoids or minimises this conflict. But they can’t change their political views, and they can’t change Trump or his policies (he has got an incredibly powerful mandate), so that leaves few other options. Or perhaps just one: avoiding the relentless media cycle of Trump’s tweets, policies, pronouncements, presidential pardons, and executive orders.
By switching off, Democrats – and even some Republicans – can temporarily ease the cognitive dissonance they feel, and this may allow some emotional relief.
Moreover, this avoidance might help protect them against the further erosion of their political and social identity. They might feel that if they continue to consume news that reaffirms Trump’s power, or as if they are accepting their defeat and their misreading of the American public and, by extension, the legitimacy of his presidency.
But where will that disengagement take them? And how easy will it be for them to overcome their visceral response to reengage, to reassert themselves and fight back? It’s always more difficult when thoughts and emotion are so tightly intertwined like this.
But for US Democrats, engagement based on accurate information is critical for the ongoing democratic process, regardless of how painful this might feel right now.
Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.