Where did you get information about the 2020 presidential election? If I asked the entire class this question, the answers would include a large variety of different news sources—with some overlap, of course. But if I asked people even 20 years older than you where they got news about the first presidential election they voted in, the answers would be much different. And the list would be much shorter.
That’s because today’s media audiences have more options for where to turn to find and consume information than ever before in history, and they also have more options for what to consume. And while this explosion in news sources sounds like a net positive, it is a little more complicated than it sounds—because this increase in news sources has made news audiences increasingly fragmented in return.
The term audience fragmentation describes the trend over time in which overall news audiences have developed more diverse consumption habits while individual news consumers have developed more specific tastes and preferences. This results in mass audiences fragmenting into smaller ones.
Even though it may feel like we have an infinite number of widely different sources to go to for information, we tend to actually interact with only a small fraction of the available options. If you are looking for information about election results, for example, you could seek out The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, BuzzFeed, a social media post from one of your friends, or tens of thousands of other sources. However, because of a wide variety of personal and technological factors, including news avoidance, selective exposure, and the way social media algorithms shape what news we are exposed to on their platforms, you may in reality experience only a tiny fragment of the available options. This is important because the news sources you seek out impact the news you’re exposed to, how much you trust that news, the amount of knowledge you gain from it, what you do with the information you gain, and a variety of other factors.
This explosion of media options is still relatively new. If you think back to not-so-distant American journalistic history—the 1960s—television dominated audiences' consumption of news. For example, broadcast news was so dominant that 96 percent of the American population watched TV news coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. And television news, for a long time, meant only three news networks to choose from: ABC, CBS, and NBC. That small number is hard to fathom compared to today’s diverse array of broadcast news options and even wider spectrum of news mediums and outlets. Today’s audiences can seek news from text-based, broadcast, radio, and digital outlets. They can watch the news through live video, social video, 360 video, and even virtual and augmented reality. They can turn to mainstream or independent outlets, partisan, or non-partisan outlets. They can choose between international, national, local, and even hyper-local coverage of a topic. The list goes on and on.
However, in terms of audience fragmentation, it is actually possible to have too many choices. The paradox of choice can make it tough for news consumers to leave their comfort zones and more likely to turn to news that supports their own points of view, a behavior called selective exposure. This can trap news consumers in echo chambers that limit their exposure to new and divergent perspectives. And this can lead to increased polarization, particularly when it comes to political news. Similarly, the paradox of choice can also result in news avoidance. How often do you sign on to Netflix to watch something, only to find yourself spending a lot of time browsing and eventually deciding you’re no longer in the mood to watch anything at all? A similar process of fatigue occurs in what can sometimes feel like an over-saturated news ecosystem.
Audience fragmentation also poses challenges for journalists and the news outlets that employ them, because they must compete against a wide variety of other media options to draw attention to their own journalism. This, in turn, can influence the practices of professional journalists, who are incentivized to attract audiences to their work. Indeed, scholars now talk of an attention economy within media industries (including journalism) because there is seemingly a greater supply of media content than there is attention to take it in. Consequently, journalistic outlets are not only competing against one another to produce good journalism, they are also competing with one another (and other media organizations) to have that content capture the attention of increasingly fragmented audiences.
Today’s media audiences have more options than ever before for where to turn to find and consume news and non-news content, and they also have more options for what to consume.
The term audience fragmentation describes the trend over time in which overall news audiences have developed more diverse consumption habits while individual news consumers have developed more specific tastes and preferences. This has resulted in mass audiences becoming a larger set of smaller audiences.
The paradox of choice can make it tough for news consumers to leave their comfort zones and more likely to turn to news that supports their own points of view through the behavior of selective exposure.