The term infotainment has disputed origins, but is associated with the concept of soft news. Soft news incorporates no- factual and subjective elements, and is in opposition to hard news, which is defined as “timely, important, and consequential”. Infotainment formerly (in the 1980s and 90s) was used as a derogatory concept associated with women’s preferences and viewership.
Contemporarily, the term no longer has gendered affiliation, nor stereotyping. Infotainment is an accepted part of living in modern day media, where the sliding scale of entertainment that is embraced by social media and apps. The mix of entertainment and news is a distracting one; often including invasive advertisements, sensationalism, news tickers, graphics, and emotive content.
https://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2016/hard-soft-news-2016/
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