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It has become a feature of modern life – millions of phones simultaneously buzz or sound the alarm as users are notified of breaking news deemed too important to miss.
Now evidence is mounting that the prevalence of news alerts is giving rise to “alert fatigue”, with some mobile phone users peppered with as many as 50 notifications a day.
The rise of news aggregators such as Apple News and Google on mobile devices means some users can receive more than one alert about the same story.
Analysis by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that 79% of people surveyed on the subject around the world said they did not currently receive any news alerts during an average week. Crucially, 43% of those who did not receive alerts said they had actively disabled them. They complained of receiving too many or not finding them useful, according to the research, which covered 28 countries.
The use of news alerts has grown over the last decade. Weekly use of alerts in the US has grown from 6% to 23% of phone users since 2014 and from 3% to 18% in the UK, according to the analysis. The extraordinary power of the BBC News alert was underlined in the research, which suggested almost 4 million people in the UK will be notified every time the broadcaster sends one.
Researchers found news companies are acutely aware they are walking a delicate line between notifying users about crucial information and causing them to unsubscribe by sending them too many updates.
The study discovered that some publishers are less retrained than others. In the UK, the Times sends no more than four alerts each day. The Financial Times sends a number of general news alerts to everyone and then a personalised notification at the same time each day for those who opt in. Elsewhere, the Jerusalem Post and CNN Indonesia were found to be typically sending up to 50 alerts each day, and some news aggregator apps were sending even more.
A research tool used to monitor news alerts found that the New York Times averaged 10 a day, Tagesschau in Germany averaged 1.9, NDTV in India sent 29.1, while BBC News averaged 8.3 a day. The Guardian sends about seven a day, according to the same research tool.
“It is a tightrope that publishers have been walking,” said Nic Newman, the report’s lead author. “If they send too many, people uninstall the app, which is obviously a disaster. The classic problem is publishers know they shouldn’t send too many individually. But collectively, there are always going to be some bad actors who are spoiling the party.
“It is definitely alert fatigue. That’s partly to do with news avoidance. [Users] want to protect themselves during the day, so they are not distracted and they can get on with other things. It doesn’t mean to say they’re not interested in news, but they just don’t want news all the time, 24 hours a day, coming at you like an express train.”
The research comes amid a huge battle for the smartphone lock screen, seen as a prime location as companies seek to build a closer relationship with their audiences or customers. News alerts jostle for position alongside messages from social media companies, games and other entertainment apps.
Too many alerts could cause problems for the whole industry. The big smartphone software operators such as Apple and Google have routinely warned publishers about sending too many alerts. This has led to concerns that these platforms could further restrict or mediate their notifications in the future.
