Spaces and Places of News Consumption

If we want to understand much of what makes news use meaningful for people, it is important to accentuate not only what they consume, how and when, but also where. Simply put, the places and spaces of news consumption matter, and matter significantly, for how people choose, interpret, and attend to the news. This chapter outlines the importance of space and place when it comes to audiences/users of journalism and the gradual recognition of this in digital journalism studies, with an eye to highlighting pertinent research trajectories. It first explores how the everyday digital geographies of contemporary media flows intersect with the everywhere ‘lived’ geographies of individuals, and how this changes as we move from an era of mass media consumption to digitalized media practices. It then outlines some key conceptual aspects to consider, from the spatial politics of news consumption, to questions of geographic scale, mobile news use, and everyday life practices. Considering spatiotemporal transformations in everyday life provides a useful starting point for thinking about the changing places news is available, and the remainder of the chapter explores some prominent examples, namely the home, workplace, public, and virtual spaces.