The aftereffects of the Covid-19 pandemic on news consumption habits and media trust on 3rd level students in Ireland

Abstract

The public health crisis known as the Covid-19 pandemic was an unprecedented interruption of the world’s natural flow and people’s daily patterns. As a subject of frequent and sustained news coverage, the pandemic’s impact favoured the formation of alternative news & current affairs consumption habits among consumers. With the increasing and deliberate proliferation of erroneous information on social media platforms, the necessity to comprehend how and why people consume news as well as factors that influence those habits has grown significantly. Influential factors interrogated by this study incorporate media literacy and media trust. The aftereffects of the pandemic have provided a suitable environment and an opportune occasion to investigate this objective.

By employing an online survey that comprised both open-ended and closed questions, this objective was examined with data collected from 41 current and recent Irish students currently studying or with a media-related degree.

Through cross-tabulation and keyword extraction, this research identified that news consumption patterns as well as media trust in Irish news changed among the 41 questioned individuals. Additionally, it was found that there was active participation from the target audience in maintaining those patterns even after the pandemic. Lastly, the study was able to determine that media literacy has been a pivotal and influential factor in those changes.