News avoidance has been a growing topic of scholarly interest. “In a complementary effort, our work focuses on a different part of that phenomenon: those people who say they sometimes or often avoid the news, but are not extreme or consistent avoiders”, say Brita Ytre-Arne and Hallvard Moe about their new book.
According to the 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, almost four in ten people (40 per cent) say they often or sometimes avoid the news, an increase of 11 percentage points since 2017. The figures vary across countries, with around 30 per cent in the Nordic countries.
For the past ten years, Brita Ytre-Arne and Hallvard Moe, both at the University of Bergen, have studied how people use news in their everyday lives.
– People have told us all along that it is hard to keep up with the news. While trying to navigate daily life with the smartphone as a primary tool, users experience overload from an over-abundance of information. They experience what we call news saturation, says Ytre-Arne.
In their new book, Too Much News: Understanding News Saturation, the researchers develop the titular concept and what it means for our understanding of news in society.
Moe elaborates:
– We define news saturation as a tipping point, where you feel you have had enough news and cannot take in any more, at least for a while. By zooming in on that tipping point, we can better assess who returns to the news and who does not, and understand the process from an audience perspective.
The book builds on qualitative studies conducted in Norway since 2016, with in- depth interviews, media diaries and questionnaires obtained from participant samples mirroring the general population. It analyses on how key characteristics of the digital information environment contribute to news saturation, and opens an honest discussion of the challenges journalism faces in relating to audiences in a turbulent world.
– By unpacking what “too much news” means, our book also offers new insights into the continued relevance of the news media. It helps us to understand how news can cover difficult topics and still be valuable to people with different lives and resources, says Ytre-Arne.
Too Much News: Understanding News Saturation is available Open Access.