In this paper, we explore U.S. young adults’ strategies for evaluating news and information value within the rapidly changing, increasingly digitalized media environment. We draw on interviews with U.S. young adults conducted between April and November 2020. Based on our findings, we develop the concept of information cacophony to characterize young adults’ experience of the contemporary information environment. Information cacophony is characterized by the jarring noise of many, discordant voices offering up information, under conditions of low media trust and an absence of a pre-defined epistemic hierarchy of sources. We illustrate how the volume and discordance of voices circulating content online makes it difficult for young adults to know what to believe, and show that young peoples’ strategies for evaluating information are deeply entangled with the sociality and emotionality of the experience of information cacophony. We argue that existing theory is not yet well-developed to account for content evaluations and effects resulting from the novel complexities of navigating information cacophony. Existing work remains focused primarily on news exposure and effects, which misses the broader informational context within which young adults find themselves, and evolving strategies for evaluating information.

在本文中，我们探讨了美国年轻人在快速变化、日益数字化的媒体环境中评估新闻和信息价值的策略。我们借鉴了 2020 年 4 月至 2020 年 11 月对美国年轻人的采访。根据我们的发现，我们提出了信息杂音的概念来描述年轻人对当代信息环境的体验。信息杂音的特点是在媒体信任度低和缺乏预先定义的信息源认知层次结构的情况下，提供信息的许多不和谐的声音发出刺耳的噪音。我们说明了在线传播内容的声音的数量和不一致如何使年轻人很难知道该相信什么，并表明年轻人评估信息的策略与信息杂音体验的社会性和情感性密切相关。我们认为，现有的理论还没有很好地解释导航信息杂音的新颖复杂性所产生的内容评估和影响。现有的工作仍然主要集中在新闻曝光和影响，错过了年轻人发现自己的更广泛的信息背景，以及评估信息的不断发展的策略。