ABSTRACT
This chapter expands the focus on changing news use to what news use feels like. To capture material, tactile, and sensory dimensions of everyday news use that usually tend to be ignored, we developed a two-sided video-ethnography. This approach enabled us to tap into news users’ embodied, tacit knowledge but also allowed news users to look in and reflect on dimensions of their news use they had never been aware of. We found that the materiality of devices and platforms and the ways people physically handle and navigate them impacts how they engage with news in ways they themselves had not realized. Experience matters: while some participants showed fargoing mastery of their devices and platforms, resulting in optimized experiences in terms of efficiency, those less skillful struggled to get a grasp on their news media, resulting in frustration and rejection. The chapter also shows how news users actively “make” place and time through their news practices. Notable were participants’ coping strategies that mediated between the comforting, ritual character of news practices and the disruptiveness of negative news content. They expertly slalomed around disturbing news or “dampened the shock” by combining their news use with other, more lighthearted media practices.
