Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It)

Why we crave enjoyment from news, how our news use divides us, and what we can do to create better news and more informed citizens.

TikTok. Short-form reels. Late-night TV monologues. Podcasts. The way news is delivered has changed dramatically and so has the way we consume it. Now, we no longer look to the news just to learn and be informed; we expect enjoyment as well. In Enjoyment Is Breaking News, Jennifer Hoewe explains how and why this shift toward news enjoyment occurred and what we can do to address the information crisis we now face.

Evidence shows that enjoyment-driven decisions are leaving us less informed—despite what we might expect—because they lead us to ignore other news that matters. This book explains why we don’t always select the best sources of news, how we respond to the news sources we do select, and how that information impacts our political knowledge and decisions.

The author also offers solutions for how to improve news creation and news use moving forward. Specifically, she shows how news consumers can escape their “self-righteous” consumption cycles; how news and social media companies can play a role in curbing our automatic amplification of enjoyable news; and how we can all do better when it comes to the information we seek and share.

Jennifer Hoewe is Associate Professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University, with a courtesy appointment in Purdue’s Department of Political Science. She is also Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Purdue Research in Media Effects (PRIME) Lab and Associate Director of Purdue’s Center for American Political History, Media, and Technology (CAPT). She has published more than 50 scholarly journal articles and book chapters.