Chapter One: Analysis by Country

In this section we publish some data tables from our 2014 survey. We start with a country-based view of the findings, which includes a brief overview of media characteristics and the most important data points in terms of digital news.

  1. United States
  2. United Kingdom
  3. Germany
  4. France
  5. Denmark
  6. Finland
  7. Spain
  8. Italy
  9. Urban Brazil
  10. Japan
  11. Comparative Brand Data Analysis

This includes an overview of consumption in each country, including details of the most popular news brands – traditional and online. The pages also contain statistics about the use of new devices such as smartphones and tablets and the role of different social networks for news. All information is drawn from the 2014 Digital News Report survey using the methodology outlined, with the exception of population and internet levels which are drawn from Internet World Statistics (2012).

Whilst most of our countries see internet penetration of 80% or more, Italy and Brazil in particular have far lower levels of access. In those countries we are looking at the habits of around (or less than) half the adult population. It should also be noted that the Brazilian sample is (uniquely) an urban-based sample (and skews far younger, with roughly half the proportion of over 55s, compared to the other countries surveyed). Many international comparisons will still be relevant in terms of understanding differences in the online sphere, but anyone interpreting these results should be careful not to suggest these figures represent the total adult population, especially when considering offline versus online consumption.

Figures around digital and cross-platform weekly reach are derived from tagging of a list of specific news sources (online and offline) – around 40 per country. This method will tend to under-report the long tail of sources.

We have not included the cross-platform figures for countries with low internet penetration such as Urban Brazil and Italy. On the other hand, we find the international comparisons between countries with similar rates of internet access to be illuminating even if the precise numbers should be treated with some caution.

In subsequent sections, we explore the key parts of our survey illustrated by more detailed charts and tables – alongside commentary to explain their significance.

The full questionnaire, additional charts and tables – plus the raw data – are available on the resources page.