Jovens e práticas de acesso e de consumo de notícias nos media sociais

Abstract

The transformations in the media landscape and their implications for the use of the media by the younger generations have been the object of study of several researches. Studies on this problematic document that young people are apathetic and have lack of interest in the "serious"issues of society and the world, such as lack of motivation to follow up on these issues. Assuming this theoretical framework, this paper aims to understand the ways of appropriation that young adults do social media and how these can be as means for monitoring current events, the development of media literacy and civic participation. From the methodological point of view, this research involved the development of four focus groups among 24 university students from the Coimbra and Lisbon areas, from different family and social contexts. The main conclusions reveal a passive and almost exclusive consumption of online information, scepticism and disbelief in relation to traditional media, distrust of digital media, generalization of the idea of "fake news", very reduced civic engagement and disbelief in the relevance of active participation, and perception that younger people are not audiences of the news.