Abstract
The book Economic News: Informing the Inattentive Audience is dedicated to the topical issue of communications, media and economics. Its social, scientific, and applied importance is set out in a clear, structured and consistent manner in the Introduction by the authors Arjen van Dalen, Helle Svensson, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, Erik Albaek and Claes H. de Vreese. From the very beginning, they draw the reader into the book by explaining how economic news has become mainstream. It turns out that the supply of economic news has been growing since the 1980s, because, interest in the economy began to grow due to three factors: journalism as a profession changed, it became more autonomous and professionalized; the topic of economics has become important with the emergence of economic actors more powerful than the state as modern corporations increasingly play a significant role in the political process, set standards, create private regulatory frameworks, and advise governments (Crouch, 2011); the audience changed as the population began to take an active part in economic activities and journalists started providing financial advice.
According to the authors, economic news has penetrated the world in the traditional way, namely through the presentation of negative news and a minor focus on success stories. The authors maintain the prevailing opinion in their work that it is not necessary for the average citizen to know exactly what the main economic indicators are in order to make voting decisions. The book uses a wealth of visual and statistical information on economic development in European countries to construct a theoretical economic perception of the citizen.
The analysis of the literature showed that the level of economic literacy of the population needs to be improved, as it is considered that this is not a priority knowledge for human life. This is arguable, as it all depends on the relevance of the knowledge, as we saw with the onset of the coronavirus 2019 pandemic, economic news took a back seat. However, as the pandemic crisis accelerated, economic news returned again as issues such as unemployment, economic growth, business support, and the like became important. The authors selected a Danish case study for their further analysis. They explained this choice with four reasons: (a) the wider trends related to economic news apply to Denmark as well; (b) Denmark has a wide range of media; (c) a large number of Danes use media coverage; (d) Denmark, like other European countries, has experienced a global financial crisis.
Continuing, the authors constructively and aptly explain the differences between the different audiences interested in economic news, namely those who are named in the title of the book as inattentive and those who are highly motivated economic news users. Naturally, high motivation for economic news has an elite, rational audience or those who make decisions based on this information. The authors rely on the work of various researchers to confirm that such an audience uses the media as a major source. For an inattentive audience, in turn, economic news becomes relevant when negative news is presented, when it expands their level of knowledge, and when it makes one feel like an informed citizen.
The uniqueness of this book is that the authors were able to identify the mechanisms by which economic news informs an inattentive audience. It turns out that such news serves as an alarm bell by providing negative news to awaken an inattentive audience. Meanwhile, business media focused on attentive professionals who are late in providing information on economic development. In addition, the authors emphasize that performing a bell function creates a correct perception of economics in the audience.
It is a valuable and instructive discovery by the authors that bad economic news still has something good to offer. Negative news has been found to have a positive effect on internal economic efficiency. And this also shows the success of the whole study, because according to the authors, such circumstances are good for the media as well, because people who are not interested in economics are interested in reporting in such ways.
Van Dalen and colleagues focus on the issue of economic sophistication by measuring the objective economic knowledge of consumers, their consistency and validity. The authors have intensively relied on the experience of previous researchers in constructing their own evaluation structure that is identical to the study of political sophistication. True, they do not develop a debate on the expediency of using the concepts of sophistication or literacy. However, they argue that economic sophistication helps consumers make informed decisions about economic activities like boycotts of goods or services for political reasons (p.102).
The authors develop their research by selectively choosing new variables, for example, how economic news affects the economic assessment of government. It is assumed that when positive changes take place in the economy, the government raises the achievements of the economy to the heights of media agendas. It finds out that in a positive economic period, economic news and economic assessment of the government are affected by positive reflections. However, the authors acknowledge some of the limitations of this discovery, namely that it may have been driven by a previous long flow of negative knowledge that was affected by the 2008–2012 global financial crisis.
An empirical study by the authors provides insight into the relationship between mainstream economic news and journalists’ propensity to increase uncertainty. Based on the prevailing opinion of other researchers, there is a trend that economic news journalists are engaged in predicting the future. A content analysis was performed to confirm this assumption. However, going deeper and analyzing consumer expectations, it has been found that economic news uncertainty dampens optimism about the future of the economy. Therefore, the study reaffirmed the above-mentioned statement that people react more to negative media news.
In summary, this book is relevant to anyone interested in economic news such as interest rates, exchange rates, unemployment, stock markets, the real estate market, consumer confidence, energy prices and more. The information and data summarized in the book contribute to the growth of economic literacy and the reduction of uncertainty in each of us.