Nieman Lab: ” The pandemic brought a bump in news consumption that now seems to be fading away, Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) found in its 2022 Digital News Report, out this week. RISJ surveyed more than 90,000 people in 46 countries about their digital news consumption, and found evidence of a potential “leveling off” in the numbers of people who will pay for online news. RISJ has released an annual digital news report every year since 2012. The research is based on online surveys conducted in January and February of this year; the researchers also conducted focus groups and interviews in the U.S., U.K., and Brazil. The topline findings of this year’s report echo last year’s: People in wealthy countries are paying for news, but that trend is leveling off. “Across a basket of 20 countries where payment is relatively widespread, 17% paid for any online news — the same figure as last year,” the authors note.

People are also increasingly avoiding news. “The proportion that says they avoid the news, sometimes or often, has doubled in Brazil (54%) and the U.K. (46%) since 2017 — and also increased in all other markets,” the authors write. In the U.S., the increase is smaller: 42% of U.S. respondents said that they “sometimes or often actively avoid the news” in 2022, up from 38% in 2017.