Prosuming news in an unbounded media landscape: A study of young adults

This paper explores acts of news prosumption in a landscape where traditional business models of media companies are challenged by new consumption patterns. It focuses on young adult consumers of the Internet generation, whose ways to relate to news media can be seen as symptomatic for the broader shift of news consumption from passively received, standardized news to increasingly individualised and socially shared content. This context illuminates nuances of prosumption and provides new theoretical and managerial insight into the activities that consumers engage in when consuming news. The paper draws on data from consumer diaries, followed up with in-depth interviews. A typology of six consumer profiles in news prosumption – metaphorically termed the bumblebee, the window peeker, the researcher, the sponge, the relayer and the megaphone – is presented, highlighting the variety in which consumers engage in personalized assembly, usage and spread of news content.