Growing Up with the News
Co-creating a foundation for young adolescents’ news literacy application in school with NieuwsWijzer for NOS
C.J.C. Enthoven (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
S.M. Flipse – Mentor (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
S.C. Mooij – Mentor (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Free, independent and reliable news is one of the foundations of democratic society. It helps citizens understand what is happening around them, form opinions and participate in public debate (McCombs et al., 2011). Yet young adolescents are growing up in an information environment where news increasingly reaches them through social platforms, video networks, influencers and algorithmically curated feeds, mixed with entertainment, opinion and synthetic information (Newman et al., 2026; Schut et al., 2024). For public service media, this raises a democratic challenge: if the next generation does not develop a meaningful relationship with news, democratic resilience becomes harder to sustain.
This graduation project, conducted in collaboration with NOS under NOS Lab, explores how public service news can support young adolescents aged 12 to 16 in applying news literacy in everyday life. The project was guided by the main research question:
How can designing a concept-level news experience supported by NOS stimulate young adolescents (12-16) to apply news literacy?
Four sub-questions structure the project:
RQ1: What conditions shape how young adolescents engage with news and apply news literacy?
RQ2: How do young adolescents and the stakeholders around them experience and describe news engagement, and what does news literacy application look like in practice?
RQ3: What design goal and principles can be derived from a future framing and vision of young adolescent news consumption?
RQ4: How can the design principles be developed and validated as a concept-level news experience supported by NOS?
The project develops NieuwsWijzer through a two layered final solution.
A strategic roadmap for NOS, moving toward the preferred future of Collective nourishment: a future in which young adolescents are supported by an ecosystem that helps them engage with news intentionally, repeatedly and with guidance. This future is captured in the vision that NOS helps the next generation grow up with news, as part of an ecosystem supporting them in making sense of the world around them and in shaping news themselves.
NieuwsWijzer as the first step in that roadmap: a teacher-facing platform that curates and scaffolds NOS news for classroom use, combined with NOS de Week, a recurring fifteen-minute weekly news format.
The foundation for this direction was built through research-through-design and co-creation. Literature review, context analysis, ecosystem mapping and NOS brand analysis established the theoretical and systemic foundation. Interviews, group sessions, a baseline survey, co-creation sessions and validation activities involved a total of more than 100 stakeholders consisting of young adolescents, parents, teachers, experts, NOS staff, design peers and public-service media organisations. Co-creation was central throughout: young adolescents were not only studied as a target group, but involved in exploring values, imagining future news experiences and shaping concept directions.
The research showed that young adolescents value being informed, yet news often passes by. The interviews, group sessions and survey made the application gap of news literacy visible: young adolescents may know about news and recognise reliable sources,but do not consistently apply critical behaviours such as checking sources or seeking further information. This reflects the central premise of news literacy application: knowledge and skills alone are not enough. Application also depends on motivation, social context and stable, recurring settings in which behaviour can be practised (Tamboer, 2023; Wood & Neal, 2007; Groot Kormelink, 2022). NieuwsWijzer builds these foundations by bringing news into the rhythm of the school week, positioning teachers as guides and making news literacy application a shared classroom practice.
The analogy of news as nutrition makes this direction tangible: news literacy application becomes a balanced news diet, supported by the people, places and institutions around young adolescents.
NieuwsWijzer was validated formatively across desirability, feasibility, viability and responsibility. The concept is promising, but conditional: this project cannot yet prove long-term behavioural change. It offers a concrete starting point for building the a shared, recurring context in which young adolescents can grow up with news and learn to apply news literacy.