A new article by researchers from the DigiDoc group at Pompeu Fabra University, Javier Díaz-Noci and Laura Pérez-Altable, confirms a worrying situation in the Spanish media system. Almost a quarter of participants in a survey throughout Spain said they avoid directly consuming news through the media because they do not trust them. The results of this survey are published in an article titled “Why we avoid the news. Some evidence from the inequality of access to digital information in Spain”, published in volume 17 of the Anuari ThinkEPI.

The survey, which was carried out within the framework of the project News, networks and users in the hybrid media system. Transformation of the media industry and the news in the post-industrial Era, 2019-2023. Reference: RTI2018-095775-B-C43, confirms trends such as a growing access to news primarily not through the media that produce it, but through social networks or personal messaging services such as WhatsApp. Almost a quarter of the people who participated in the survey stated that this was their main channel for obtaining current information, while 25% opted to seek it directly by actively going to the media. It is the youngest who prefer the news to reach them instead of actively search for them, a habit that those over 30 years of age do maintain.

Other evidence is even clearer. It is people with average incomes who most actively search for information. On the other hand, both people with lower incomes and those who are in the highest rent or income level assure that the media is not their main source of information. Thus, news consumption in Spain is concentrated in the middle classes, and in those whose ideological preferences are closer to the center or moderation, both left or right-winged.

The most worrying fact, without a doubt, is the lack of trust in the media, which, considered as a whole, and not just the digital ones, reached 29 percent of those surveyed. Only 16 percent claimed to fully trust the media. Things improve slightly when asked about the consumption of digital media, although 20 percent of those surveyed attribute unreliability to them.

More results of the study can be consulted at:
Díaz-Noci, Javier; Pérez-Altable, Laura (2023). “Por qué evitamos las noticias. Algunas evidencias desde la desigualdad de acceso a la información digital en España”. Anuario ThinkEPI, v. 17, e17a34.
https://doi.org/10.3145/thinkepi.2023.e17a34