ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the myth of young people as a homogeneous net generation of empowered actualising citizens who will receive the news they need and do not have to rely on boring mainstream media to be informed about what is important in society. It argues that this kind of digital native rhetoric can be dangerous. The chapter describes the idea that the world is an interconnected whole, but it also shows how different perceptions of global and local news emerge from various cultural angles and geographical regions. The "net generation", "digital natives" and the "Internet generation" are used to describe the way in which technology is apparently changing young people's behaviour and creating a new generation of news audiences. However, news consumption is a habit that develops with age. Generations of research into news consumption has found that young people are "just not that into news". Further, global news media help to give each generation similar collective memories across countries.
