ABSTRACT
What are people actually doing with news, and what does it mean to them? This question is answered by investigating news use as a particular range of practices, including how news use interacts with other social and cultural practices. The chapter will change how you look at news consumption. It explores what has changed in people’s news consumption by comparing patterns in news use between 2004–2005 and 2011–2020. The objective is twofold. First, it answers more precisely the question about how practices of news use have changed and diversified since the digitalization of news and the introduction of social media. Second, it expands and deepens the existing professional and academic vocabulary about journalism from the perspective of the user. We identify 24 practices of news use: reading, watching, viewing, glancing, listening, hearing, checking, snacking, scanning, monitoring, searching, clicking, saving, scrolling, triangulating, avoiding, abstaining, linking, sharing, liking, recommending, commenting, voting, and tagging. To develop a vocabulary “from the inside,” these different practices are illustrated in the words of users themselves. The practices challenge the generally taken-for-granted automatic link between media devices, media platforms, and news consumption.
