When News Becomes Part of How We Feel Connected
The news is almost always on around me. That does not mean I am always sitting in front of the screen, watching every story from beginning to end. Often it is simply there: a familiar voice in the room, a headline I catch while doing something else, a change in tone that makes me look up.
I had never thought much about the distinction between watching the news and having the news on. Lately, that distinction has become interesting to me. It is a small habit, but precisely the kind of ordinary media behaviour I'd like to talk about today.
Some media habits are decisions. Others can quietly become part of the architecture of daily life.
A blind habit
Some media habits are decisions. Others become part of the architecture of one's day.
That sounds trivial, but research on news use makes habit difficult to dismiss. The Australian Communications and Media Authority recently found that, for most Australians, news consumption is shaped by habit, convenience and time constraints. Other research on everyday news use argues that media choices make more sense when we look at the rhythms around them: work, leisure, location and the small routines that organise ordinary life.
That feels closer to my own experience than the idea of news consumption as a series of deliberate choices.
From background to foreground
Background news also makes me think differently about attention. I can be aware that the news is on without attending closely to every item. Some stories pass almost unnoticed. Others pull my attention back. A new development, an unfamiliar place name, a change in the presenter’s voice or a headline that connects with something I already know can suddenly move the television from background to foreground.
Psychology makes that movement hard for me to ignore. Attention is selective. The fact that something is available in the environment does not mean I have processed it carefully, remembered it accurately or understood its context.
Keeping the wider world audible
News has a practical informational function, but research has also described news use as a form of public connection: one of the ways people remain oriented towards the wider society around them. I recognise something of that in my media consumption habits.
That is the part I am noticing differently now.
I used to think of my news habit mainly in terms of interest: One follows news because they're interested in news. I now think habit, attention and belonging are mixed into it too.
Perhaps media literacy starts earlier than checking whether a headline is true. It may also involve noticing the conditions under which news enters our lives in the first place.
