Attending the news

Abstract

This article proposes a theory about how people negotiate news as a daily regimen. The theory of purposive attending proposes a feedback loop in which awareness increases relevance, which can increase attending, which can then reset awareness. This article focuses on two aspects of the broader theory: the ambivalence surrounding everyday news-attending and the role cultural identities such as gender and race might play in heightening that ambivalence. The work, influenced by Carey's call to treat news-attending in a ritual context, demonstrates how news-as-ritual and news-as-information-acquisition exist in daily tension. The work was developed using classic grounded theory methodology, which outlines protocols for building theory from data, which included interviews, participant observation with a book discussion group, and qualitative document analysis of news discussions in selected internet communities, letters to the editor, news articles, and industry reports.