News fatigue has set in in Australia.
Its currently at 41%, up 13 percentage points from 2019, according to the latest Digital News Report: Australia, by the University of Canberra’s News and Media Research Centre.
Gen Z’s interest in politics has fallen in the past year, down 6 percentage points to 28%.
Interest in economic and mental health news is up 4 percentage points since 2022..
Australians are most interested in local news (64%) but only half of them say they are getting enough.
And eight in ten (80%) say "being kept up to date" is the most important role of news, and 69% say the news is doing a good job.
Interest in news has remained steady in Australia over the past four years.
Levels of interest increased briefly during the Black Summer bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic but this was not sustained.
The proportion of respondents who say they are extremely or very interested in news is now 54%, up 1 percentage point, which is higher than the global average (48%).
However, in the past three years, the global average for those who say they are very or extremely interested in news has dropped substantially, down 12 percentage points to 48%.
News fatigue is prevalent among light news consumers and those with low interest in news.
Half of respondents who access news once a day or less (49%) and who have low interest in news (51%) say they are worn out by the news.
Only a third of heavy news consumers (34%) and those with high interest in news (31%) say they are fatigued by it.
"This is possibly because those who experience news fatigue may choose to consume less of it and those who have low interest in it have a lower tolerance for it," the study says.
News consumers who rely on social media to access news (47%) are more likely to say they are worn out by the amount of news they see these days. By contrast, those who mainly rely on television (36%) and print (33%) are the least likely to say they have news fatigue.
"On social media, people bump into news, which may be contributing to them feeling worn out about the amount of news they encounter," says the study.
People who pay for news are less likely to feel fatigued by it.
There is a strong correlation between news fatigue and news avoidance.
Almost all (91%) news consumers who are worn out by the amount of news say they sometimes, often or occasionally avoid it, compared to only 33% of those who are not worn out.
The digital news survey was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire between January 10 and February 7. The sample is drawn from an online panel of 530,682 adult Australians.
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