Pushing Past News Avoidance: Implications of Mobile Alerts on News Engagement Intentions

The ubiquitous presence of smartphones has led to their prominence as a dominant source of news for a vast majority of people. In this context, the impact of mobile technology’s affordances, including access, applications, and mobile alerts, on news engagement has been the subject of numerous studies. At the same time, recent research has found an increase in those who either have very low news usage or intentionally or unintentionally avoid news. Within a deliberative public sphere perspective, habitual news avoidance presents many problems, including lack of civic engagement and lack of critical information for partaking in public life. Drawing on framing theory and results from two experimental studies, this research sought to examine the intersection of the promise of mobile news alerts for enhancing news engagement intentions and curiosity among high-level news avoiders. Study 1 shows that positive frames in mobile alerts are associated with higher engagement intentions in high news avoiders, and this effect is mediated by curiosity. In study 2, the results show that positive framing with three facts is associated with higher levels of engagement intentions, and this is mediated by curiosity. Further, the results show that for moderate news avoiders, two facts, which are negatively framed, should be used.