Maintenance and Reformation of News Repertoires: A Latent Transition Analysis

Abstract

Today’s media environment provides people ample opportunities for constructing news habits fitting their preferences, but our knowledge about the dynamics of such news habits is limited. Using a four-wave panel survey from Sweden and taking a news repertoires approach, the study identifies four groups of news users labeled Public service-oriented traditionalists, Minimalists, Engaged pluralists, and Quality-oriented explorers, which are each related to news interest, trust in mainstream news media, and socio-demographic factors in distinct ways. The news repertoires are highly stable, even during profound contextual change, showing that people most often maintain their news habits and only seldom reform them.