News and Young Australians in 2020: How Young People Access, Perceive and Are Affected by News Media

In 2017 when we implemented the first Australian national survey to examine the news practices and experiences of young Australians, we wanted to address a lack of research into young people’s news media practices at a time when news media organisations and news media engagement were being challenged and transformed. Since we published the results of that survey, we have continued to study young Australians and news media. Through our research, we have learnt that young people are not well represented in the Australian news media and neither are the issues they care most about. We’ve learnt that Australian teachers believe it is critically important to teach students about news media, but many feel they are constrained by barriers that prevent them from doing this. We have also found that young people from around the country are passionate about news media and many are already taking action to ensure it serves our society well3. Our survey findings in 2020 indicate that young people’s expectations and experiences of news have changed in many ways. No doubt, these changes are in some ways related to the two recent national crises Australia has endured. The first, the Black Summer Australian bushfires, ravaged the east coast of the country throughout the 2019-2020 summer, resulting in 34 lost lives, the death of more than a billion animals, and the widespread destruction of homes and bushland. The COVID-19 global pandemic took hold soon after and is still unfolding as we publish this report. Already its impact on the economy and on society has been profound. Both of these crises were accompanied by significant examples of misinformation and disinformation, particularly on social media platforms⁴. These crises demonstrated the repercussions of misinformation and disinformation when presented as news, and highlighted how vital high quality and accurate news media are to our individual and collective health, wellbeing and safety. The COVID-19 crisis has also provided insights into how news media can better serve and include young Australians. For example, news-focused podcasts and television programs were made just for young people to explain COVID-19 in a language and style more appropriate and appealing to them⁵. Young Australians have also featured in the news more regularly, as a result of school closures, while family homes featured more frequently in news reports as social distancing and ‘stay at home’ messaging become a temporary norm in Australian society. At the same time, COVID-19 has shown how vulnerable news organisations are given how reliant they are on advertising revenue. This may be especially true for smaller local and more niche publications, including those that aim to appeal to younger audiences as indicated by the closure of the Australian office of the online news publication Buzzfeed⁶ alongside the closure of numerous regional news rooms7. As we reflect on all of these changes to news media in the months and years to come, it is worth noting that young people are often forgotten in public discussions about the future of news. Worse still, they are often subjected to unfounded generalisations about their assumed news attitudes and practices. We hope that this report, based on findings from our nationally representative survey of young Australians aged 8-16, provides new insights that can be part of an evidence-based discussion. This, we hope, will be useful to those who care about the future of news media and therefore want to understand what news means to young Australians and how it could be made more relevant to their lives