News repertoires in destabilised everyday lives

Traditional media consumption in the form of reading, watching or listening is being replaced ‎by ephemeral practices such as clicking, searching and scanning, where the ‘checking circle’ has become ‎a daily routine of constant browsing, checking and posting. In particular, these interrelated practices ‎are constantly present among adolescents, who skilfully switch between multiple media, contexts and ‎situations. The interdependence of such cross-media uses suggests that empirical research should focus ‎beyond a single medium. The aim of this research was to examine news repertoires from the perspective of ‎adolescents and highlight how biographical disruption during the Covid-19 pandemic had affected news ‎consumption among young audiences. This article presents the results of a research project, within which ‎focus groups on a sample of 67 adolescents aged 12–19 years were conducted. It also provides an analysis ‎of a slightly smaller sample of 59 media sketches. The aim of the latter analysis was to identify the media ‎preferences and potential interactions of young people. Six distinct news repertoires have been identified, ‎which confirms the ambivalence of teenagers in terms of their media preferences. At the same time, ‎teenagers generate their own personal ‘news media assemblies’ within their disrupted everyday lives.‎