“Most Americans (69%) say that if their local newspaper no longer existed, it would not have a major impact on their ability to keep up with information and news about their community.”

Woah.

This information is from a report by Pew Internet and The American Life Project. Basically the report polled a group of American’s to find out how they gather news about their local communities. The report found that more and more audiences (especially more ‘tech-savvy’, younger audiences – they said it, not me) are moving away from television and print news in preference of online sources. The numbers they’re talking about  are significant. 

Yet according to the same report, “Newspapers (primarily print) rank first or tie for first as the sources people rely on most for 11 of the 16 different kinds of local information asked about – more topics than any other media source.” The topics included in these categories include government, taxes and civic affairs which I know I would class as ‘news’.

So these are the topics American’s are following less. Can we presume that Australian’s are following suit?

A study by a group of master’s students at the University of Queensland made these findings:

“Seventy-five per cent of the sample identified themselves as Internet users. Nearly 46% of these (or about one third of the sample) were using the Internet for news (9% of them had been doing this for one year or less and 57% had at least three years’ experience with online news). 

“Nearly seven in ten of those using online news did it frequently (28% several times a week and 41% every day). A 95% confidence interval reveals that as of August 2004, between 30% and 37% of the Australian population were using the Internet for news. 

“Compared to the fact that only 22% of the same sample (or from 19.2% to 25.2% of the population) subscribed to a pay television service, this suggests that the Internet can be seen as having become a major news source in Australia.”

These were only preliminary findings as there hasn’t been a lot of research into internet news consumption in Australia; however it’s interesting to note that most of the group that were polled used online newspaper sites as their main internet news sources – there’s hope yet!

Do people engage with online news?

For some time now I've been trying to come up with something interesting to blog about for #QUTOJ1 and let me tell you, ideas have not been forthcoming. So I decided to start having a look into other people's interest in online journalism and came across this gem of a thesis by Arthur D. Santana, Randall Livingstone and Yoon Cho about how audiences are able to engage and recall online and print newspapers:

http://img.slate.com/media/66/MediumMatters.pdf

The thesis begins by saying that "increasingly, newsreaders are abandoning the print newspaper in favor of online news." No 'news' there. However, the research that the trio completed about how people engage with the news yielded some very interesting results. Without going into too much details, a test group, half of whom read the New York Times in print, and half of whom read it online were questioned on "the extent to which the news stories made an impression." They found that those who read the print stories remembered much more than those who read online articles, and changes made to story formats online over the past decade had made little difference to how well the information was retained by the audience.

Interesting stuff. Personally, I find I have difficulty concentrating for extended periods when staring at a computer screen which is a challenge when reading in-depth news articles online. However, the brilliance of online sources to me is the sheer quantity of information that’s available at the touch of a button. Possibly one of the reasons online readers retain less information is because they are processing much more information all at once. For example, take a look at the home page for Melbourne’s ‘The Age’:

 http://www.theage.com.au/

Offhand I was able to count over 150 links to articles listed on their homepage alone. This didn’t include links to other news providers, nor what was available when clicking on an article link. In comparison, the front page of the print newspaper offered links to less than twenty articles.

 http://www.theage.com.au/frontpage/2011/08/25/frontpage.pdf

I think that even though print media may be retained more easily by audiences, online journalism allows audiences a much greater variety and immediacy of sources, which can only help people to be more informed, right? MAYBE...as long as the quality and accuracy of reporting is up to scratch, but that's an entirely different can of worms.

Don't agree with me? Let me know...I'd love to hear your feedback.