When digital audiences disregard the journalistic agenda: conceptualization and evolution of the news gap

Abstract

The digital media environment, transformed by the increase in multiplatform content, reflects a growing divergence of news interests between the journalistic agenda set by the media and the real preference of audiences. This difference in criteria forces the media to compete for the attention of a fragmented and detached public by combining current news topics with other soft, spectacular or curious topics on their agenda. The international scientific literature has referred to this phenomenon as a “news gap,” although in a dispersed manner and with a lack of systematisation in its study. This paper addresses this phenomenon through meta-research, a systematic review and content analysis based on the Prisma model (N=901), with the aim of offering its conceptualisation and evolution in the academic literature from its beginnings in 2010 to 2023. The results compile the research and contributions on the news gap from the perspective of the media that produce content on demand, not always following journalistic relevance or criteria, and the audiences that consume and disseminate it. It is an object of study barely a decade old which, although not integrated in its approaches and methods and with the absence of a standardised model to address it systematically, confirms a structural, multi-platform and multi-support gap that manifests itself as an open and expanding area of study, pointing to the loss of attention of a fragmented audience on the most relevant journalistic selection in a process of disintermediation.