40% of readers say they feel ‘worn out’ by the amount of news available today. This is according to the Reuters Institute Digital Media Report 2024. In South Africa this sense of news overwhelm has increased from 28% to 40% since 2019.

Surveyed respondents frequently mentioned the ‘way that coverage of wars, disasters and politics was squeezing out other things’ as a cause for the feeling of fatigue.

The result is that more people are actively avoiding consuming news products, which is adding to the pressures on major publishers who are seeing subscribers and revenue in rapid decline. In many cases this is resulting in the closure of news titles.

In South Africa, 43% of respondents said they ‘sometime or often’ avoided news. In Kenya, the number was slightly higher at 44%, while in Nigeria 34% said they avoided news.

🔗 Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 and interactive version