Reuters Institute Digital News Report

tv-watching

simonl — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 06:40:24 +0000

reading

simonl — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 06:41:05 +0000

Claire Enders - Competitive Pressures on the Press

jock — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:55:48 +0000

Pew - Where People Got News Yesterday

jock — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:59:02 +0000

Interest in foreign news stories 2010-11

jock — Sat, 04 May 2013 12:55:54 +0000

Categorisation of online news users

jock — Sat, 04 May 2013 13:39:08 +0000

7

simonl — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:35:03 +0000

22

simonl — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:35:05 +0000

70

simonl — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:35:07 +0000

infographics-01-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:54:26 +0000

infographics-01-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:54:30 +0000

infographics-01

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:55:52 +0000

infographics-02-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:57:59 +0000

infographics-02-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:01 +0000

Interactive Application

simonl — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 15:05:23 +0000

Report Information

simonl — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 11:32:11 +0000

Publication

simonl — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 15:17:37 +0000

Highchart Tool Box

simonl — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 11:16:24 +0000

Additional Meta

simonl — Sun, 27 Mar 2016 13:49:02 +0000

Event Info

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:25:17 +0000

infographics-02

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:03 +0000

infographics-03-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:04 +0000

infographics-03-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:07 +0000

infographics-03

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:09 +0000

infographics-04-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:10 +0000

infographics-04-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:13 +0000

infographics-04

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:14 +0000

infographics-05-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:16 +0000

infographics-05-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:18 +0000

infographics-05

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:20 +0000

infographics-06-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:21 +0000

infographics-06-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:24 +0000

infographics-06

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:26 +0000

infographics-07-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:27 +0000

infographics-07-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:29 +0000

infographics-07

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:31 +0000

infographics-08-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:32 +0000

infographics-08-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:35 +0000

infographics-08

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:37 +0000

infographics-09-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:38 +0000

infographics-09-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:41 +0000

infographics-09

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:43 +0000

infographics-10-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:44 +0000

infographics-10-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:47 +0000

infographics-10

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:49 +0000

infographics-11-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:50 +0000

infographics-11-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:53 +0000

infographics-11

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:55 +0000

infographics-12-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:56 +0000

infographics-12-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:59 +0000

infographics-12

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:59:01 +0000

infographics-13-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:59:02 +0000

infographics-13-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:59:05 +0000

infographics-13

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:59:07 +0000

infographics-14-hi

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:59:08 +0000

infographics-14-low

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:59:10 +0000

infographics-14

simonl — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:59:13 +0000

bbc

simonl — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:48:11 +0000

google

simonl — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:48:13 +0000

newsworks

simonl — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:48:14 +0000

ofcom

simonl — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:48:15 +0000

city-logo

simonl — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:53:48 +0000

france-television

simonl — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:16:28 +0000

Reuters Institute Digital Report

simonl — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:16:25 +0000

The Reuters Institute Digital Report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a representative survey of online news consumers in the UK, US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan and Denmark. The report contains unique data and analysis about the move to mobile, paying for news, social media and more.

An opposition supporter lifts a placard at the front line near Tahrir Square in Cairo

jock — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:13:02 +0000

An opposition supporter lifts a placard at the front line near Tahrir Square in Cairo February 7, 2011. Protesters, barricaded in a tent camp in Tahrir Square in the heart of Cairo, have vowed to stay until President Hosni Mubarak quits and hope to take their campaign to the streets with more mass demonstrations on Tuesday and Friday. The placard reads, "Thanks Egypt youth" (top) and "we will not leave till we get the 70 billion dollars". The word "Facebook" is written in English. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis (EGYPT - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS) - RTXXKMT

A protester holds an Egyptian flag as he stands in front of water canons during clashes in Cairo

jock — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:13:15 +0000

A protester holds an Egyptian flag as he stands in front of water canons during clashes in Cairo January 28, 2011. Police and demonstrators fought running battles on the streets of Cairo on Friday in a fourth day of unprecedented protests by tens of thousands of Egyptians demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak's three-decade rule. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis (EGYPT - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS IMAGES OF THE DAY) FOR BEST QUALITY IMAGE SEE: GM1E7AO1KUV01 - RTXX7EN

A man is reflected on a glass panel as he looks at stock market prices on computer monitors inside a securities company in Taipei

jock — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:13:29 +0000

A man is reflected on a glass panel as he looks at stock market prices on computer monitors inside a securities company in Taipei November 21, 2008. Waves of selling in global stock markets crashed into Asia on Friday, with gains from the region's 5-year bull run now erased, and investors seen camping out in government bonds and cash for the rest of the year. REUTERS/Nicky Loh (TAIWAN) - RTXAT5U

The last edition of News of the World newspaper goes on sale alongside other British Sunday newspapers in London

jock — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:13:41 +0000

The last edition of News of the World newspaper goes on sale alongside other British Sunday newspapers in London July 9, 2011. The final edition of the newspaper engulfed in a phone-hacking scandal was published on Sunday as Rupert Murdoch headed to London to try to save the bigger prize of his takeover of the British broadcaster BSkyB. REUTERS/Paul Hackett (BRITAIN - Tags: POLITICS MEDIA CRIME LAW SOCIETY BUSINESS) - RTR2OP13

British newspapers are displayed at a newsagent's stand in central London

jock — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:13:47 +0000

British newspapers are displayed at a newsagent's stand in central London January 22, 2011. The British prime minister's media chief quit on Friday over phone hacking allegations when he was a newspaper editor, a move that will embarrass the prime minister and could complicate News Corp's bid to buy BSkyB. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor (REUTERS - Tags: BUSINESS CRIME LAW POLITICS) - RTXWX2M

Commuters read copies of the Evening Standard newspaper, featuring a front page headline about the engagement of Britain's Prince William to Kate Middleton, at Victoria rail station in London

jock — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:13:51 +0000

Commuters read copies of the Evening Standard newspaper, featuring a front page headline about the engagement of Britain's Prince William to Kate Middleton, at Victoria rail station in London, November 16, 2010. Britain's Prince William is to marry his long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton next year, after an on-off courtship lasting nearly a decade, bringing months of speculation about his intentions to an end. REUTERS/Paul Hackett (BRITAIN - Tags: ROYALS ENTERTAINMENT SOCIETY PROFILE) - RTXUPTX

bbc

simonl — Tue, 28 May 2013 10:06:05 +0000

ofcom

simonl — Tue, 28 May 2013 10:06:07 +0000

city-university-london

simonl — Tue, 28 May 2013 10:06:08 +0000

yougov-logo

simonl — Tue, 28 May 2013 10:06:10 +0000

Egypt-Protest-Placard-Facebook-watermarked

jock — Wed, 29 May 2013 20:13:59 +0000

Market-Global-watermarked

jock — Wed, 29 May 2013 20:14:11 +0000

Commuters-Reading-Evening-Standard-watermarked

jock — Wed, 29 May 2013 20:14:23 +0000

top-brands-ent-news-03

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 11:41:32 +0000

top-brands-ent-news-04

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 11:41:34 +0000

top-brands-ent-news-01

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 11:41:40 +0000

top-brands-ent-news-02

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 11:41:45 +0000

intl-news-source-03

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 12:42:18 +0000

intl-news-source-04

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 12:42:21 +0000

intl-news-source-01

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 12:42:24 +0000

intl-news-source-02

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 12:42:29 +0000

apple-logo

jock — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:16:05 +0000

live-blog-guardian

jock — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 16:51:29 +0000

guardian-tv-news-app

jock — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:45:28 +0000

couple-watching-smart-tv

jock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:29:57 +0000

mcc-members-read-newspapers-watermarked

jock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:31:25 +0000

live-news-blog

jock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:32:29 +0000

german-newspapers-watermarked

jock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:33:29 +0000

paying-for-news

jock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:44:24 +0000

buying-a-newspaper-watermarked

jock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:52:16 +0000

watching-smart-tv-watermarked

jock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:56:25 +0000

digital-revolution

jock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:01:57 +0000

hans-bredow-institut

simonl — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:50:56 +0000

roskilde-university

simonl — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:50:57 +0000

bbc-global-news-logo

simonl — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:24:36 +0000

alison

nic — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:22:41 +0000

nic2

nic — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:27:00 +0000

Reuters Institute Digital News Report Survey Data 2012

jock — Wed, 21 May 2014 01:38:22 +0000

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2012

jock — Wed, 21 May 2014 01:53:59 +0000

Figure 2-3c

jock — Fri, 23 May 2014 12:53:56 +0000

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013

jock — Mon, 26 May 2014 03:53:39 +0000

Richard Sambrook

jock — Mon, 26 May 2014 04:22:55 +0000

BBC Breaking News

jock — Mon, 26 May 2014 04:34:00 +0000

Selfie

jock — Mon, 26 May 2014 04:34:17 +0000

Shaun Austin

jock — Mon, 26 May 2014 04:35:03 +0000

Alison Preston

jock — Mon, 26 May 2014 04:35:09 +0000

Figure 5-4d

jock — Mon, 26 May 2014 07:37:34 +0000

Figure 5-4e

jock — Mon, 26 May 2014 07:41:50 +0000

ridnr__graphs-01

jock — Tue, 27 May 2014 01:49:30 +0000

ridnr__graphs-02

jock — Tue, 27 May 2014 01:49:47 +0000

ridnr__graphs-1

jock — Tue, 27 May 2014 01:52:55 +0000

ridnr__graphs-2

jock — Tue, 27 May 2014 01:53:01 +0000

Paywalls - tristanf_300x187

jock — Tue, 27 May 2014 03:59:12 +0000

Richard Sambrook - Doc Searls_300x187

jock — Tue, 27 May 2014 03:59:16 +0000

Twitter - Jeff Turner_300x187

jock — Tue, 27 May 2014 03:59:22 +0000

Edelman Logo

simonl — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:42:41 +0000

University of Nvarras School of Communication

simonl — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:49:28 +0000

Media Industry Foundation of Finland

simonl — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 10:12:36 +0000

Figure 5-4a

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:03:35 +0000

Figure 1-11ci - France

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:03:38 +0000

Figure 1-11cii - Finland

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:03:40 +0000

Figure 1-11ciii - Denmark

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:03:42 +0000

Figure 1-11civ - US

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:03:44 +0000

Figure 2-2a

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:03:46 +0000

Figure 4-1di - Japan

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:03:49 +0000

Figure 4-1dii - Denmark

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:03:51 +0000

Figure 2-3c

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:47:56 +0000

Figure ES10

jock — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 12:03:29 +0000

Interactive grab

nic — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 17:06:35 +0000

Interactive 2014

nic — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 22:06:32 +0000

interactive__372-232@1.5x (1)

nic — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 11:01:56 +0000

Screenshot 2014-06-18 13.59.03

nic — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 13:02:27 +0000

Journalism, media and technology predictions 2015 l-r FINAL

nic — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:15:58 +0000

Journalism, media and technology predictions 2015 FINALo

nic — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 11:47:57 +0000

Broadcasting Authority of Ireland

nic — Tue, 26 May 2015 11:57:30 +0000

2013_BW

nic — Tue, 26 May 2015 11:57:49 +0000

Screenshot 2015-05-26 12.59.09

nic — Tue, 26 May 2015 11:59:31 +0000

Screenshot 2015-05-26 13.03.19

nic — Tue, 26 May 2015 12:04:42 +0000

Who are the traditionalists - 2015

jock — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 18:46:36 +0000

Who are the traditionalists? Tend to be female, older, poorer, and less well educated 58% are female 45% are aged 55+ 72% do not go to university/have a degree 81% low or medium incomes

Segmentation by frequency of access and interest in news - 2015

jock — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 19:02:54 +0000

More about news lovers - 2015

jock — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 19:05:06 +0000

More about news lovers 60% male 81% have bachelor or masters degree 2X more likely to pay for news than casuals 2X more likely to share news than casual users

Amount people prepared to pay for online news

jock — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 15:39:48 +0000

46 percent access news weekly

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 11:04:47 +0000

BBC News app

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 11:21:29 +0000

Fox News app

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 11:22:06 +0000

Spiegel Online app

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 11:22:44 +0000

ABC app

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 11:23:15 +0000

Smartphone icons

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 13:19:37 +0000

WhatsApp icon

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 13:23:02 +0000

Smartphone video

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 13:38:03 +0000

NYT Now

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 14:29:06 +0000

Future likelihood to pay - selected countries

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 14:30:34 +0000

Regularly use adblocking software

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 14:36:33 +0000

Device overlaps - Japan

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 16:06:14 +0000

Device overlaps - Australia

jock — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 16:06:24 +0000

Facebook shares - NewsWhip

jock — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 11:11:40 +0000

Gender split

jock — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 11:24:41 +0000

January's most tweeted sites - NewsWhip

jock — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 13:26:55 +0000

January's most shared sites on Facebook - NewsWhip

jock — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 13:27:00 +0000

Guardian - Unilever

jock — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 15:50:50 +0000

NY Times - Orange Is The New Black

jock — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 15:51:14 +0000

BuzzFeed - tequila

jock — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 15:51:18 +0000

Apps table

nic — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:26:33 +0000

Likelihood to pay

nic — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:08:56 +0000

2015 cover

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 10:51:12 +0000

2015 Digital News Report questionnaire

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 10:55:46 +0000

BBC News logo

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:31:30 +0000

Harding

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:37:06 +0000

Director of BBC News

Mobile and social

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:57:47 +0000

Mobile and Social News

Device overlaps - Japan - 2015

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:18:46 +0000

Device overlaps - Australia - 2015

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:18:52 +0000

Top new apps 2015

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:21:14 +0000

IRL

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:31:47 +0000

AUS

nic — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:32:12 +0000

DNR US social

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 09:54:33 +0000

DNRgensplits

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 09:54:35 +0000

DNRsmartphonegrowth

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 09:54:36 +0000

dnrtrust

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 09:54:37 +0000

Advertising attitudes

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:24:29 +0000

DNRadspendUK

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:24:30 +0000

DNRadvertising

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:24:31 +0000

DNRMAIN GLOBAL

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:24:32 +0000

DNRTwitterFacebook

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:24:32 +0000

DNRvideo

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:24:33 +0000

DNRSocialtrust

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:10:17 +0000

DNR top SNS by coutnry

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:34:58 +0000

DNR US social

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:34:59 +0000

DNT whatsapp

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:35:52 +0000

Top social networks

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:35:53 +0000

DNR top SNS by coutnry

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:42:07 +0000

DNR US age profile SNS

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:42:08 +0000

DNR alerts2

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:50:32 +0000

Segmentation

nic — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 11:19:51 +0000

Segmentation

DNR Segmentation1

nic — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 11:26:32 +0000

DNR segmentation 2

nic — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 11:41:48 +0000

Harding

simonl — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 10:15:34 +0000

Director of BBC News

Mobile-and-social

simonl — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 10:15:37 +0000

Mobile and Social News

DNR bump into facebook

nic — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 12:02:09 +0000

bbc-news-logo

simonl — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 12:07:07 +0000

turkey-twitter-screen-shot

simonl — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 13:02:26 +0000

turkey-tweets-grapho

simonl — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 13:02:28 +0000

turkey-social-media

simonl — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 15:55:53 +0000

hannah.marsh — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 10:17:50 +0000

turkey-twitter

simonl — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 10:21:47 +0000

smartphone-addiction

simonl — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 10:50:04 +0000

messaging-new-social-media

simonl — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 11:59:19 +0000

shareable-content

simonl — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 13:19:42 +0000

smartwatch

simonl — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 13:42:36 +0000

Ad blocking

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:19 +0000

Ad blocking

augmented leap

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:25 +0000

bbc money spend

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:27 +0000

bbc money spend

data important

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:29 +0000

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:30 +0000

Distributed content examples

Drones amazon

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:36 +0000

Drones amazon

Emotions

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:39 +0000

Emotions

fake audience

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:40 +0000

FB vs YouTube

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:43 +0000

FB vs YouTube

Forevery Blippar

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:48 +0000

Future phone

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:51 +0000

Guardian join

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:53 +0000

Guardian join

leap motion

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:55 +0000

M assistant

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:55:57 +0000

M assistant

Messaging growth

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:00 +0000

Messaging growth

Netflix growth

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:02 +0000

Netflix growth

newsflame

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:05 +0000

Notifications

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:07 +0000

Notifications

Paris attacks

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:12 +0000

Paris attacks

peak cable

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:15 +0000

peak cable

questions

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:17 +0000

questions

Refugee smartphones

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:20 +0000

Refugee smartphones

Responsive video

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:23 +0000

Responsive video

Screenshot 2015-12-21 11.35.11

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:27 +0000

Screenshot 2015-12-30 10.09.45

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:29 +0000

Screenshot 2015-12-31 13.35.02

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:32 +0000

Screenshot 2016-01-02 15.37.22

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:37 +0000

Screenshot 2016-01-03 20.46.21

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:41 +0000

Screenshot 2016-01-04 18.54.15

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:43 +0000

Screenshot 2016-01-05 17.01.12

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:45 +0000

SF quakebot

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:47 +0000

SF quakebot

slack

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:48 +0000

Social buy buttons

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:51 +0000

Social buy buttons

Survey - engagement

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:53 +0000

Survey16 revenue

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:55 +0000

Survey16 revenue

Syria 360

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:56:57 +0000

Syria 360

Top apps

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:57:00 +0000

top apps

Vertical orientation

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:57:02 +0000

Vertical orientatio

view times

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:57:05 +0000

view times

Zuckerberg note

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:57:07 +0000

Zuckerberg note

Paris

nic — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:20:25 +0000

Paris visual format

Addiction

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 09:47:05 +0000

Addiction

new phones

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 16:39:06 +0000

new phones

Screenshot 2016-01-08 16.43.52

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 16:44:49 +0000

tag watch

proximity payments

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 16:47:20 +0000

proximity payments

Ericsson mobility

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 16:56:28 +0000

Ericsson mobility

video invest

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 16:58:26 +0000

video invest

Facebook video file

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 17:02:21 +0000

Facebook video

Screenshot 2016-01-08 17.01.57

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 17:02:46 +0000

Mentions

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 17:08:09 +0000

Mentions

Screenshot 2016-01-08 17.38.01

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 17:38:14 +0000

peak cable

podcasts

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 23:14:46 +0000

podcasts

Line

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 23:24:55 +0000

Line services

Snapchat SB

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 23:27:23 +0000

Snapchat SB

Local News

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 23:32:09 +0000

Local News

fraud

nic — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 23:41:22 +0000

adfraud

Blendle

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:09:51 +0000

Blendle

Brigade

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:13:22 +0000

Brigade

vervid-screenshots-1129x753

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:16:10 +0000

vervid-screenshots

newsflare

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:19:57 +0000

newsflare

The-Quint

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:22:48 +0000

The-Quint

Ola

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:25:09 +0000

ola

Leap Motion

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:26:37 +0000

Leap Motion

Forevery Blippar

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:27:13 +0000

Forevery Blippar

VR headsets

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:30:33 +0000

VR headsets

HTC Hive

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:40:53 +0000

HTC Hive

Screenshot 2016-01-09 00.43.31

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:43:46 +0000

augmented

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:44:04 +0000

augmented

Samsung display

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:46:49 +0000

Samsung display

blockchain

nic — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:48:54 +0000

blockchain

digital-news-project-2016

simonl — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 08:28:45 +0000

Newman-Predictions-2016-FINAL

nic — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 17:17:40 +0000

Fig 1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 14:55:39 +0000

Fig 2.2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 15:46:04 +0000

Figure 2.2. Slide from the presentation by Jimmy Maymann, President, Content and Consumer Brands, AOL and former CEO, Huffington Post, at the Reuters Institute Memorial Lecture 2015 (23 Nov. 2015). As with the guardian and the Financial times, the Huffington Post is working very consciously to tailor its publication schedule around audience behaviour and to promote content also after first publication.

3_LogoLarger

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 15:52:24 +0000

1_LogoLarger

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:55:54 +0000

2_LogoLarger

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:57:45 +0000

Fig 3.3

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:59:57 +0000

Fig 3.4

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:02:31 +0000

Fig 3.5

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:04:19 +0000

Fig 3.6

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:05:38 +0000

Fig 3.7

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:07:32 +0000

Box 4.1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:38:21 +0000

Box 4.1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:43:56 +0000

4_LogoLarger

hannah.marsh — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:56:18 +0000

List of interviewees

hannah.marsh — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 09:06:28 +0000

Table 1

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:47:56 +0000

Table 2

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:54:11 +0000

Image 3

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:14:47 +0000

Image 4

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:17:17 +0000

Image 5

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:20:05 +0000

Table 3

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:24:29 +0000

Image 5

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:28:05 +0000

Image 6

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:28:15 +0000

Interviewees

hannah.marsh — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:35:00 +0000

Thumbnail

hannah.marsh — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 12:21:21 +0000

Fig 1.1

hannah.marsh — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 10:34:40 +0000

Fig 1.2

hannah.marsh — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 10:48:04 +0000

Fig 1.3

hannah.marsh — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 10:51:27 +0000

Fig 2.1

hannah.marsh — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 11:12:27 +0000

Fig 2.2

hannah.marsh — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 11:14:18 +0000

List of terms

hannah.marsh — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 11:40:54 +0000

Thumbnail

hannah.marsh — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:20:08 +0000

methodology

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 10:43:43 +0000

methodology

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 10:45:40 +0000

Screenshot 2016-05-27 14.09.50

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 13:11:11 +0000

Screenshot 2016-05-27 14.12.35

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 13:13:27 +0000

US pay

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 13:18:37 +0000

US trust

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 13:26:15 +0000

US brands

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 13:55:48 +0000

Top brands US

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 13:59:46 +0000

sources US

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 14:41:02 +0000

trust2

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 16:43:47 +0000

trust

money2

nic — Fri, 27 May 2016 16:47:58 +0000

economics

google-logo

simonl — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 18:50:38 +0000

BBC-Global-News

simonl — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 18:54:51 +0000

universite-laval

simonl — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 19:15:12 +0000

fritt-ord

simonl — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 19:15:14 +0000

korea-press-foundation

simonl — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 19:15:16 +0000

you-gov-logo

simonl — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 19:15:17 +0000

Screenshot 2016-06-09 19.36.25

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 18:38:20 +0000

BuzzfeedSnapchat

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 22:16:56 +0000

Korea

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 22:26:15 +0000

Japan

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 22:29:13 +0000

Selection

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 22:36:49 +0000

Frequency

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 22:45:40 +0000

PARIS ATTACKS

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 22:59:24 +0000

brands

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 23:09:40 +0000

Brands1

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 23:20:31 +0000

Brands2

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 23:20:59 +0000

main source

nic — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 23:30:22 +0000

Screenshot 2016-06-10 00.27.34

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:45:44 +0000

UK pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 09:30:20 +0000

UK trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 09:30:29 +0000

Germany trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 09:44:11 +0000

Germany pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 09:44:13 +0000

France trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:06:18 +0000

France pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:09:10 +0000

Italy pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:17:43 +0000

Italy trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:18:04 +0000

Italy pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:22:02 +0000

Spain pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:23:00 +0000

Spain trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:26:56 +0000

Portugal sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:45:29 +0000

Portugal devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:49:22 +0000

Portugal pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:49:48 +0000

Portugal trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:50:22 +0000

Portugal trust2

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:54:10 +0000

Ireland devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:02:43 +0000

Ireland sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:03:29 +0000

Ireland pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:03:57 +0000

Ireland trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:04:23 +0000

Norway devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:15:21 +0000

Norway sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:15:55 +0000

Norway pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:16:18 +0000

Norway trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:16:48 +0000

Sweden devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:05:35 +0000

Sweden sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:06:08 +0000

Sweden pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:15:03 +0000

Sweden trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:15:29 +0000

Finland pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:22:21 +0000

Finland trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:22:49 +0000

Denmark pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:38:16 +0000

Denmark trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:38:40 +0000

Belgium devices2

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 13:51:37 +0000

Belgium sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 13:52:12 +0000

Belgium pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:01:47 +0000

Belgium trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:02:20 +0000

Belgium sources2

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:06:49 +0000

Netherlands devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:11:10 +0000

Netherlands sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:11:58 +0000

Netherlands pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:19:53 +0000

Netherlands trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:20:20 +0000

Swiss devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 16:42:57 +0000

Swiss sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 16:43:36 +0000

Swiss pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:06:56 +0000

Swiss trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:07:24 +0000

Swiss device2

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:09:53 +0000

Austria devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:14:15 +0000

Austria sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:14:47 +0000

Austria pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:19:59 +0000

Austria trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:20:38 +0000

Hungary devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:25:12 +0000

Hungary sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:25:36 +0000

Hungary pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:30:08 +0000

Hungary trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:30:29 +0000

Cz devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:37:03 +0000

Cz sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:37:44 +0000

Cz pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:42:39 +0000

Cz trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:42:57 +0000

Poland sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:47:17 +0000

Poland devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:47:37 +0000

Poland pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:52:26 +0000

Poland trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:52:49 +0000

Greece sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:56:59 +0000

Greece sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:57:34 +0000

Greece pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:01:22 +0000

Greece trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:01:44 +0000

Turkey devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:05:28 +0000

Turkey sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:07:04 +0000

Turkey pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:13:24 +0000

Turkey trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:13:56 +0000

Korea devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:19:18 +0000

Korea sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:19:53 +0000

Korea trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:24:58 +0000

Korea pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:25:53 +0000

Japan pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 21:59:54 +0000

Japan trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:00:19 +0000

Aus devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:03:30 +0000

Aus devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:04:07 +0000

Australia pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:08:59 +0000

Aus trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:09:24 +0000

Aus sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:11:11 +0000

Canada devices

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:15:09 +0000

Canada sources

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:15:55 +0000

Canada pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:22:24 +0000

Canada trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:26:20 +0000

Brazil trust

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:36:31 +0000

Brazil pay

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:37:05 +0000

Canada device3

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:41:43 +0000

Canada source2

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:42:20 +0000

Canada trust 2

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:47:33 +0000

Canada pay2

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:48:00 +0000

Segmentation

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:55:27 +0000

Traditionalists

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:57:49 +0000

Frequency segment

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 23:01:08 +0000

Newslovers

nic — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 23:05:04 +0000

traditionalists2

nic — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 08:25:32 +0000

Top brands2

nic — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 08:32:21 +0000

digital born age

nic — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 08:44:08 +0000

gender

nic — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 08:48:12 +0000

hard soft

nic — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 08:52:00 +0000

Participation

nic — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 08:56:57 +0000

why comment

nic — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 09:01:51 +0000

payment table

nic — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 09:06:33 +0000

Reuters Institute 2016 Questionnaire UK270144

nic — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 11:26:11 +0000

dnr-2016-cover

simonl — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 11:57:01 +0000

dnr-2016-cover

simonl — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 11:57:12 +0000

dnr-2016-cover

simonl — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 11:59:44 +0000

Irish devices

nic — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 16:34:20 +0000

Korea pay2

nic — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 17:48:16 +0000

Pay Korea 3

nic — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 17:49:48 +0000

Slide11

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:52:49 +0000

Slide8

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:56:18 +0000

Slide12

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:57:47 +0000

Slide13

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:59:22 +0000

Slide14

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:00:16 +0000

Slide15

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:01:38 +0000

Slide1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:02:46 +0000

Slide2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:03:19 +0000

Slide4

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:04:17 +0000

Slide2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:26:25 +0000

Slide1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:28:33 +0000

Slide3

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:29:26 +0000

Slide4

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:30:26 +0000

Slide5

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:32:48 +0000

Slide6

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:33:53 +0000

Slide7

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:34:28 +0000

Slide8

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:35:19 +0000

Slide9

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:36:12 +0000

Slide10

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:36:29 +0000

Slide11

hannah.marsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:37:51 +0000

Trust news

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:30:14 +0000

Trust news organisations

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:30:38 +0000

Trust journalists

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:30:56 +0000

Interest in environment

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 20:10:23 +0000

Age

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 20:22:29 +0000

Q2_NEW2016. How interested are you in news about the environment? Base: Under 45s/Over 45s: UK = 719/1305, US = 881/1316, France = 901/1261, Poland = 1014/986, Germany = 790/1245, Spain = 1059/1045

EDUCATION

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 20:25:37 +0000

pay

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 22:54:33 +0000

trust

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 22:54:55 +0000

mobile tipping point uk

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 22:56:00 +0000

Algorithms trump editors

nic — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 22:56:36 +0000

politicsinterest

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:51:42 +0000

ageinterest

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:53:04 +0000

educationinterest

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:53:52 +0000

mainsource

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:55:52 +0000

ukbrands

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:56:50 +0000

usbrands

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:57:54 +0000

interestbysubject

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:59:11 +0000

interestbycountry

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:00:37 +0000

hardsoft

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:01:38 +0000

hardsofttopics

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:01:51 +0000

vulnerability

hannah.marsh — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:02:40 +0000

Fig 1.1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:40:56 +0000

Table 1.1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:44:16 +0000

Fig 1.2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:45:49 +0000

Fig 2.1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:53:56 +0000

Fig 2.2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:55:53 +0000

Fig 2.3

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:57:24 +0000

Fig 2.4

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:58:12 +0000

Fig 2.5

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:02:08 +0000

Fig 2.6

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:10:44 +0000

Fig 2.7

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:12:06 +0000

Fig 2.8

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:21:21 +0000

Fig 2.10

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:22:56 +0000

Fig 2.11

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:24:19 +0000

Fig 2.12

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:28:10 +0000

Fig 2.13

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:29:33 +0000

Fig 2.14

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:31:28 +0000

Fig 2.15

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 08:54:15 +0000

Fig 2.16 and 17

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 08:55:14 +0000

Fig 2.18

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 08:59:24 +0000

Fig 2.19

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 09:01:59 +0000

Fig 2.20

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 09:03:24 +0000

Fig 2.21

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 09:04:54 +0000

Fig 2.22

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 09:06:10 +0000

Fig 2.23

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 09:08:17 +0000

Fig 2.24

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:09:13 +0000

Telegraph

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:16:29 +0000

Guardian

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:20:46 +0000

WSJ

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:26:40 +0000

Washington Post

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:29:36 +0000

Die Welt

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:37:46 +0000

Economist

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:40:04 +0000

Table 3.1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:41:36 +0000

ITV

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:45:28 +0000

Fox

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:48:25 +0000

CNN

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:52:19 +0000

Table 3.2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:55:54 +0000

AJ

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:18:11 +0000

Fanpage

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:20:39 +0000

NowThis

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:23:02 +0000

Table 3.3

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:24:09 +0000

Fig 3.1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:38:05 +0000

Fig 4.1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:54:44 +0000

Fig 4.2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:59:42 +0000

Fig 4.3

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:17:06 +0000

Fig 4.4

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:19:38 +0000

Table 4.1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:27:57 +0000

Thumbnail

hannah.marsh — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 16:59:03 +0000

Fig 2.10

hannah.marsh — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 10:20:21 +0000

Finland trust2

nic — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 11:10:08 +0000

Finland trust3

nic — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 12:51:47 +0000

essay-fig-1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 15:59:13 +0000

essay-2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 16:02:50 +0000

table-1-1

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:36:40 +0000

table-1-2

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:39:19 +0000

table-2-1

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:47:43 +0000

table-2-3-contd

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:50:21 +0000

table-1-2

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:50:45 +0000

spark

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:52:20 +0000

table-2-1

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:56:35 +0000

bild

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:57:56 +0000

table-2-2

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:59:15 +0000

table-2-3

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 14:00:10 +0000

table-2-3-contd

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 14:01:17 +0000

la-voix-du-nord

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 14:04:14 +0000

il-pika

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 14:13:45 +0000

table-4-1

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 14:23:33 +0000

new-vid-formats

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:39:35 +0000

finland

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:47:10 +0000

france

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:47:24 +0000

germany

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:47:37 +0000

germany-two

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:47:48 +0000

italy

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:48:06 +0000

poland

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:48:19 +0000

uk

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:48:38 +0000

fig-2-1

hannah.marsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:59:46 +0000

fig-1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:09:44 +0000

fig-2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:14:09 +0000

fig-3

hannah.marsh — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:18:29 +0000

fig-4

hannah.marsh — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:20:21 +0000

fig-5

hannah.marsh — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:27:51 +0000

fig-6

hannah.marsh — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:30:06 +0000

interviewees

hannah.marsh — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 12:04:45 +0000

fig-1

hannah.marsh — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 11:38:46 +0000

fig-2

hannah.marsh — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 11:39:31 +0000

fig-1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:45:24 +0000

pic-1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:46:09 +0000

fig-1-2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:46:46 +0000

fig-1-3

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:43:44 +0000

fig-1-4

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:44:47 +0000

fig-1-5

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:47:03 +0000

fig-1-6

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:48:30 +0000

fig-1-7

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:49:09 +0000

fig-2-1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:51:09 +0000

fig-2-2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:51:31 +0000

fig-2-3

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:52:30 +0000

fig-2-4

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:53:42 +0000

fig-2-5

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:54:12 +0000

fig-2-6

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:54:38 +0000

fig-2-7

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:55:03 +0000

fig-2-8

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 15:55:40 +0000

fig-2-9

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 15:56:55 +0000

fig-2-10

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 15:58:09 +0000

fig-2-11

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 15:58:53 +0000

fig-3-1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 16:27:55 +0000

fig-3-2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 16:28:38 +0000

fig-3-3

hannah.marsh — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 12:53:01 +0000

fig-3-4

hannah.marsh — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 12:53:35 +0000

pic-1-a

hannah.marsh — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 12:59:31 +0000

table-11

hannah.marsh — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 11:31:27 +0000

table-1-2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 11:31:58 +0000

table-2-1-cont

hannah.marsh — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 11:32:10 +0000

table-2-1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 11:34:16 +0000

table-2-1-cont

hannah.marsh — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 11:37:24 +0000

interviewees

hannah.marsh — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 11:53:12 +0000

fig-1-1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 10:48:58 +0000

fn2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 10:49:55 +0000

fig-1-2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 10:55:52 +0000

image-1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 10:58:28 +0000

fig-2-1

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:01:43 +0000

image-2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:03:34 +0000

fig-2-2

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:08:28 +0000

fig-2-3

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:11:49 +0000

fig-2-5

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:19:53 +0000

image-3

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:27:30 +0000

fig-2-6

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:29:42 +0000

fig-2-7

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:30:09 +0000

image-5

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:33:42 +0000

fig-2-8

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:34:56 +0000

image-7

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:40:09 +0000

image-8

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:41:13 +0000

fig-2-9

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:43:58 +0000

image-9

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:45:23 +0000

image-10

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:46:11 +0000

image-11

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:47:49 +0000

image-12

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:49:17 +0000

image-13

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:50:12 +0000

imaghe-14

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:51:20 +0000

image-15

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:52:38 +0000

image-16

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:56:18 +0000

image-17

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 12:04:52 +0000

newman-predictions-2017-thumbnail

hannah.marsh — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 12:24:43 +0000

Fig 1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:22:02 +0000

Fog 2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:28:00 +0000

Fig 3

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:32:37 +0000

Fig 4

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:33:53 +0000

Fig 5

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:35:55 +0000

Fig 6

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:36:34 +0000

Fig 7

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:38:50 +0000

Fig 8

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:39:18 +0000

Fig 9

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:40:03 +0000

Fig 10

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:42:59 +0000

Fig 11

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:44:01 +0000

Fig 12

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:48:52 +0000

Thumbnail

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 16:40:18 +0000

Fig 1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 14:30:27 +0000

Fig 2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 14:31:34 +0000

Fig 3

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 14:32:30 +0000

Fig 4

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 14:34:05 +0000

Fig 5

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 15:12:20 +0000

Fig 6

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 15:13:44 +0000

Fig 8

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 15:14:40 +0000

Fig 8

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 15:22:53 +0000

Table 1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 15:31:50 +0000

Thumbnail

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 16:00:44 +0000

July 20, 2016: News Rewired, Reuters HQ, Canary Wharf

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:26:35 +0000

Fog 7

hannah.marsh — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 16:08:03 +0000

Fig 1

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:05:14 +0000

Fig 2

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:06:09 +0000

Fig 3

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:16:59 +0000

Fig 4

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:19:36 +0000

Fig 5

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:23:21 +0000

Fig 6

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:24:30 +0000

Fig 7

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:25:43 +0000

Fig 8

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:27:37 +0000

Fig 9

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:29:34 +0000

Fig 10

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:32:09 +0000

Fig 11

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:35:43 +0000

Fig 12

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:37:32 +0000

Fig 13

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:41:38 +0000

List of interviewees

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:54:43 +0000

Table two FINAL

freya.stanley-price — Tue, 16 May 2017 15:45:06 +0000

Table one FINAL

freya.stanley-price — Tue, 16 May 2017 15:45:08 +0000

Figure two FINAL

freya.stanley-price — Tue, 16 May 2017 15:45:09 +0000

Figure one FINAL

freya.stanley-price — Tue, 16 May 2017 15:45:10 +0000

September 5, 2016: Digital News Report Norway

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:28:03 +0000

September 8, 2016: Digital Editors Network (DEN)

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:29:12 +0000

September 13, 2016: Westminster Media Forum, The future of news content: curation, distribution and monetisation

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:37:04 +0000

September 15, 2016: Social Media Week

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:38:33 +0000

September 16, 2016: Public Service News Forum

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:39:16 +0000

September 20, 2016: News Impact Summit, Athens

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:39:59 +0000

September 22, 2016: News Impact Summit, Zagreb

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:40:38 +0000

October 27, 2016: Medientage München

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:41:34 +0000

November 30-December 1, 2016: News Xchange

simonl — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:42:08 +0000

November 9-12, 2016: ECREA 2016

hannah.marsh — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 16:02:54 +0000

March 23-24, 2017: Legacy news organisations looking for new sources of revenue: a comparative study on the business of digital news in six countries

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 10:06:17 +0000

March 23-24, 2017: “We need to go where the audience is”: A cross-national and cross-organisational comparative analysis of institutional isomorphism in news organisations’ digital strategies

hannah.marsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 10:07:05 +0000

15 June, 2016: Digital News Report Launch, London

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 10:07:02 +0000

June 15, 2016: Digital News Report Launch, Helsinki

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 10:08:24 +0000

June 16, 2016: Digital News Report Launch, Vienna

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 10:10:29 +0000

June 21, 2016: Digital News Report Launch, New York

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 10:12:23 +0000

June 21: Digital News Report Launch, Madrid

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 10:14:01 +0000

July 6, 2016: Digital News Report Launch, Lisbon

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 10:14:54 +0000

October 11, 2016: Trust in a fragmented news environment

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 10:17:28 +0000

April 25-26 2017: Digital Media Europe

hannah.marsh — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 15:00:27 +0000

Contact Us

simonl — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:04:31 +0000

Overview 2012

simonl — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:48:15 +0000

The report contains unique data and analysis about the move to mobile, paying for news, social media and more.

table test

simonl — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:26:13 +0000

One Column
Two Column
Four Column
Extra Wide

Market share of Smart TVs by country

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Smart TV	3%	6%	11%	12%	11%	8%	4%	13%	5%

Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who use these devices for any purpose UK (n=1949) US (n=1943) Spain (n=922) Japan (n=871) Italy (n=863) Germany (n=1012) France (n=836) Denmark (n=895) Urban Brazil (n=960)

Likelihood to pay by frequency of use

	Several times a day	Once a day	Less often
Have ever paid	7%	5%	2%

Q16 Have you paid for digital news content?

Base UK (n=2173)

Market share of Apple devices by country

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
iPhones	39%	26%	25%	33%	34%	47%	43%	28%	56%
iPads	63%	48%	42%	45%	51%	80%	58%	39%	70%

Q8a: Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use for any purpose? (Multiple answers allowed).

Base: All smartphone users UK (n=1037) Germany (n=462) Spain (n=538) Japan (n=255) Italy (n=404) France (n=398) Denmark (n=617) Urban Brazil (n=418), US (n=913) All Tablet users UK (n=585) Germany (n=188) Spain (n=220) Japan (n=123) Italy (n=222) France (n=189) Denmark (n=360) Urban Brazil (n=295), US (n=545)

TV news vs newspaper/magazine websites by age

Scroll data area to see more

	16-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
TV news	51%	52%	61%	71%	79%
Newspaper sites	48%	40%	38%	37%	34%

United States

Scroll data area to see more

Device	Several times a day
ALL News users	56%
Computer users	65%
Smartphone users	76%
Tablet users	77%
All three	89%

Denmark

Scroll data area to see more

Device	Several times a day
ALL News users	76%
Computer users	79%
Smartphone users	83%
Tablet users	84%
All three	93%

Q1b: Typically, how often do you access news (in any way).

Base: US (n=2028) Denmark (n=1007)

Newspaper winners

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Offline	Online	Gain
Guardian	4%	40%	+6%
Der Spiegel	12%	17%	+5%
New York Times	6%	9%	+3%
Le Monde	6%	13%	+7%

Broadcasting losers

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Offline	Online	Gain
ZDF (Germany)	45%	9%	-36%
TF1 (France)	48%	11%	-37%
NHK (Japan)	50%	10%	-40%
ITV News (UK)	33%	3%	-30%

Q5: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week (various)

Extra Wide - Internet penetration, gender and age breakdown by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Internet pop	52.73m	67.48m	31.61m	35.80m	52.23m	4.99m	245.20m	88.49m	101.23m
Male	48%	48%	49%	48%	49%	50%	48%	49%	49%
Female	52%	52%	51%	52%	51%	50%	50%	51%	51%
18-24	12%	10%	11%	9%	12%	13%	9%	21%	9%
25-34	17%	14%	21%	18%	17%	16%	18%	24%	15%
35-44	17%	18%	19%	19%	18%	19%	19%	21%	17%
45-54	19%	18%	15%	16%	18%	21%	15%	16%	15%
55+	36%	39%	33%	38%	35%	31%	37%	18%	44%

Online news access by device by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	US	Urban Brazil	Japan
Computer	67%	71%	56%	58%	50%	58%	71%	81%	68%
Smartphone	29%	22%	35%	25%	24%	43%	28%	23%	19%
Tablet	16%	10%	13%	14%	11%	25%	16%	114%	6%
E-book reader	2%	1%	2%	1%	1%	1%	2%	4%	1%
Smart TV	3%	5%	10%	10%	9%	7%	4%	12%	4%

Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

NOTE: Data has been rebased to account for the total sample size but is not an accurate indication of ownership levels and will not be wholly comparable with last year.

Types of online news content accessed by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	US	Urban Brazil	Japan
Lists, articles and blogs	52%	58%	63%	71%	46%	58%	64%	66%	67%
Video and audio	47%	43%	52%	48%	48%	39%	55%	64%	35%
Live pages	11%	8%	16%	16%	19%	8%	11%	15%	35%
Pictures and graphics	15%	24%	21%	23%	15%	16%	23%	32%	27%
Apps	19%	13%	24%	17%	17%	25%	19%	20%	13%
Other	1%	0%	2%	1%	2%	1%	2%	3%	0%
None of these	15%	17%	7%	6%	14%	13%	4%	4%	8%

Q11: Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?
Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Technology, media and journalism predictions 2015

nic — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

or a brief mobile friendly summary

Smartphones cement their place as the single most important place for delivering digital journalism and become hubs for other devices
Messaging apps continue to drive the next phase of the social revolution
Visual personal media explodes fuelled by selfie sticks and selfie videos
Chinese and Indian companies begin to threaten Silicon Valley dominance of global tech
Television disruption hits its stride with over the top players (OTT) gaining ground
We’re going to worry even more about our privacy and online security in 2015
Ad blocking goes mainstream. Court cases ensue. Native advertising grows
Media becomes more driven by context (location, history, preferences) less by platform
Rebirth of audio driven by internet driven delivery to mobile devices
Digital and social media will be one of the defining factors of the UK election
UK goes code crazy with schools embracing computing and new cheap kits

Companies or technologies you’ll have heard of this time next year include Thunderclap, Slack, Vessel, Plague, Reported.ly, Moment and Maker studios Download the full 40 page PDF here

Overview 2015

simonl — Thu, 14 May 2015 18:35:18 +0000

This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 20,000 online news consumers in the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Brazil, Japan and Australia. This year's data shows a quickening of the pace towards social media platforms as routes to audiences, together with a surge in the use of mobile for news, a decline in the desktop internet and significant growth in video news consumption online.

simonl — Thu, 14 May 2015 18:51:34 +0000

Summary of Findings

simonl — Thu, 14 May 2015 18:57:46 +0000

Technology, media and journalism predictions 2015

simonl — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

or a brief mobile friendly summary

Smartphones cement their place as the single most important place for delivering digital journalism and become hubs for other devices
Messaging apps continue to drive the next phase of the social revolution
Visual personal media explodes fuelled by selfie sticks and selfie videos
Chinese and Indian companies begin to threaten Silicon Valley dominance of global tech
Television disruption hits its stride with over the top players (OTT) gaining ground
We’re going to worry even more about our privacy and online security in 2015
Ad blocking goes mainstream. Court cases ensue. Native advertising grows
Media becomes more driven by context (location, history, preferences) less by platform
Rebirth of audio driven by internet driven delivery to mobile devices
Digital and social media will be one of the defining factors of the UK election
UK goes code crazy with schools embracing computing and new cheap kits

Companies or technologies you’ll have heard of this time next year include Thunderclap, Slack, Vessel, Plague, Reported.ly, Moment and Maker studios Download the full 40 page PDF here

Interactive

nic — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Explore the 2016 data. Compare between or within countries using the drop down menus below..

April 5-9 2017: International Journalism Festival, Perugia

hannah.marsh — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 15:01:27 +0000

January 14, 2017: Congress of Portugese Journalists

hannah.marsh — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 15:02:15 +0000

November 28, 2016: Nordvision Social keynote

hannah.marsh — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 15:03:06 +0000

November 23, 2016: Dutch Editors-in-Chief Forum

hannah.marsh — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 15:03:58 +0000

March 23 2017: AdWeek Europe - Future of TV consumption

hannah.marsh — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 14:12:20 +0000

November 3, 2016: Trust and Public Service Broadcasters in a Distributed Digital Environment, Engaging Innovation Conference

hannah.marsh — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 14:35:51 +0000

March 23, 2017: Journalism under Fire. Challenges of our times

hannah.marsh — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 14:38:34 +0000

March 21, 2017: Mobile news alerts and the battle for the lockscreen, Digital Innovator’s Summit

hannah.marsh — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 14:39:29 +0000

May 10, 2017: VR for News: The New Reality?

hannah.marsh — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 10:49:45 +0000

June 22 2017: 2017 Reuters Institute Digital News Report: Essential Data on the Future of News

freya.stanley-price — Fri, 12 May 2017 11:54:59 +0000

June 28, 2017: Reuters Institute 2017 Digital News Report UK launch

freya.stanley-price — Fri, 12 May 2017 11:52:06 +0000

About Us

simonl — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 13:03:57 +0000

The Digital News Project marks an expansion of the Digital News Report into a full‐scale series of research pieces, thanks to the support of Google via the Digital News Initiative. Eight new reports were released in 2016. The new series builds on the success of the Digital News Report as the world’s largest comparative international survey of changing news habits, and will continue to track the transition of the news industry towards an increasingly digital and multi‐platform future. The Digital News Project sees expanded team of researchers, sponsors and collaborators explore trends and developments across 26 countries. Increased support from Google, co-sponsors of the initiative since 2013, allowed the Institute to extend the report’s coverage of Europe to 20 countries in 2016. The new countries to included were Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. These were added to the countries covered in the 2015 report; UK, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Japan and the US. Other sponsors for the Digital News Report 2016 were: the BBC, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Edelman UK, Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland, Hans-Bredow-Institut, Korea Press Foundation, Laval University, The University of Navarra, Ofcom, the University of Canberra and the Fritt Ord Foundation.

Demo SVG, Hi and Low res images

simonl — Wed, 15 May 2013 23:40:12 +0000

Terms of Use

simonl — Sat, 21 May 2016 09:19:41 +0000

This page carries details about the general use of this website, the licensing of the data and charts in this website, along with details of the type of personal information that may be gathered. Please note that although this website provides links to other websites, this policy only applies to pages with a URL which includes http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/.

Licensing of charts and images

We encourage reuse of the data, charts and text published on this website under the terms of this Creative Commons 3.0 licence. You are free to share, remix and make commercial use of this work as long as you attribute the Reuters Institute Digital News Report as set out in the terms of the licence. Please note that some images on this website are from copyright-protected sources (for example, Reuters). Before copying, distributing or displaying those images you may need to seek a licence from the copyright holder.

Personal information

On some parts of the site, you may be asked to provide some limited personal information in order to enable the provision of certain services e.g. enquiries. We may store this information manually or electronically. By supplying this information you are consenting to the Reuters Institute holding and using it for the purposes for which it was provided. Personal information will not be sold to third parties, or provided to direct marketing companies or other such organisations without your permission. Information provided will be kept for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it was provided. Personal information collected and/or processed is held in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998. Any queries or concerns about privacy on this website should be sent to the Data Protection Officer.

Cookies

When you visit some pages on the site, your computer may be issued with a small file (a ‘cookie’) for the purposes of managing and improving the services on the website. Cookies do not contain any personally identifying information. You can set your browser to refuse cookies or warn you before accepting them (see http://www.aboutcookies.org for more information).

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting its users’ needs and to understand how we could do it better. Google Analytics stores information about what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data. You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies by visiting this page on Google.

Changes to these terms of use

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism reserves the right to change these Terms of Use from time to time by updating this page. You understand and agree that if you use the Digital News Report website after the effective date of the updated Terms of Use, you indicate that you accept those updated Terms of Use and you agree to abide by them.

Overview 2013

simonl — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:01:20 +0000

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a representative YouGov survey of online news consumers in the UK, US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan and Denmark.

This website contains unique data and analysis about the rise of tablets and smartphones, generational and country based differences in media usage, the growth in digital news payment and the role of brand and trust in an increasingly competitive multi-platform world.

Previous report 2012

simonl — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:39:04 +0000

UK shows the most interest in celebrity news, least interest in political news

Digital News Report 2012

Latest Report

simonl — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:54:42 +0000

There is more interest in business and economic news in the UK and the US than in the European countries surveyed

Digital News Report 2014

test-highcharts

simonl — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:33:00 +0000

Top gateways – social media vs search by age (all countries)

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: All markets (n=11004)

Impact of device on the discovery of news: US

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: All US=2028 Tablet and Smartphone users US (n=187) News Lovers US (n=557)

Percent using news apps and web browsers by device (UK)

QS11a/b Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE/TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you?

Base UK : All who have accessed news via a smartphone in the last week (n=612) All who have accessed news via a tablet in the last week (n=340)

Previous report 2013

simonl — Sun, 18 May 2014 07:25:44 +0000

Those paying for online news doubles in many countries - albeit from a low base

Digital News Report 2013

Overview 2014

simonl — Sun, 18 May 2014 07:58:25 +0000

This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 18,000 online news consumers in the UK, US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, Denmark and Finland.

This website contains data about the growth of tablets and smartphones, generational and country based differences in media usage. Also analysis on the role of impartial news in a digital world and the role of social media in finding and distributing news.

Interactive 2015

simonl — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 15:22:06 +0000

Explore the 2015 data. Compare between or within countries using the drop down menus below..

Previous report 2014

simonl — Fri, 15 May 2015 08:13:48 +0000

The use of smartphones and tablets has jumped significantly in the past year, with fewer people using their computers for news

Digital News Report 2014

Interactive 2014

simonl — Mon, 26 May 2014 17:16:58 +0000

Explore the 2014 data. Compare between or within countries using the drop down menus below.

About Us

simonl — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 10:21:47 +0000

Terms of Use

simonl — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 10:29:55 +0000

Licensing of charts and images

Personal information

Cookies

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

Changes to these terms of use

Media, Journalism and Technology Predictions 2015

nic — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 10:41:13 +0000

This year, we've gone number crazy. There's a look back at the 10 key trends of 2014, 10 significant predictions for mobile, 10 for journalism, 6 for the digital election + many more on social media, television, radio and advertising. Finally there are 7 emerging technologies and 10 start-ups to watch. But before all that, the key points: Wearables, hearables, nearables and payables will be some of the buzzwords of 2015 as the mobile revolution takes the next great leap. Mobile and social trends will continue to drive technical, product and content innovation with subscription and rental models increasingly driving digital revenues.

My New Barchart

In other news...

Smartphones cement their place as the single most important place for delivering digital journalism and become hubs for other devices
Messaging apps continue to drive the next phase of the social revolution
Visual personal media explodes fuelled by selfie sticks and selfie videos
Chinese and Indian companies begin to threaten Silicon Valley dominance of global tech
Television disruption hits its stride with over the top players (OTT) gaining ground
Move from page views/UVs towards attention and long term value
Media becomes more driven by context (location, history, preferences) less by platform
Ad blocking goes mainstream. Court cases ensue. Native advertising grows
We’re going to worry even more about our privacy and online security in 2015
Rebirth of audio driven by internet driven delivery to mobile devices
Digital and social media will be one of the defining factors of the UK election
UK goes code crazy with schools embracing computing and new cheap kits Companies or technologies you’ll have heard of this time next year include Thunderclap, Slack, Vessel, Plague, Reported.ly, Moment and Maker studios.

With thanks to; Jasper Jackson (Media Briefing), Andrew Betts (FT Labs), Madhav Chinnappa (Google), Jon Block (ITV), Richard Sambrook (Cardiff University), Paul Bradshaw (Academic, Help Me Investigate), Kevin Anderson (Gannett publishing), Steve Herrmann, Robin Pembrooke, Richard Cooper, Dmitry Shishkin, Amanda Farnsworth (BBC), James Haycock (Adaptive Labs), Mark Coyle (BT Sport), Sarah Marshall (Wall St Journal), Jason Mills (ITN), Max Gadney (After the Flood), Steve Schifferes, George Brock (City University), Peter Bale (Center for Public Integrity in Washington), Claire Wardle (Eyewitness Media Hub), Stephen Pinches (Pearson), Me Investigate), Jonathan Marks (Critical Distance), Kevin Hinde, Jonathan Austin (Macmillan Publishing)

Ten things we learnt in 2014

1. Levels of smartphone addiction and distraction have reached new heights. We spent more and more time with our extended social networks, less and less quality time with our real friends and families. People will look back and laugh at the way we walked down the street with our heads in our phones, at how we attached them to sticks and also at how large these devices have become. [caption id="attachment_3525" align="alignnone" width="776"] How many people did you bump into in 2014? Better selfies via the so called Narcistick but will people still be laughing at large smartphones in 2015?[/caption] We can expect something of a backlash to all this in 2015 but the truth is that there is no stopping the mobile and social revolution. Over half of the global adult population will own smartphones by the end of this year and will increasingly rely on them for communication, information, entertainment and commerce. Almost all the most important media developments of 2014 happened at the intersection of mobile and social.

2. Messaging has become the new social media: As we predicted last year, messaging apps like WhatsApp (600m users), WeChat, Line, Snapchat are starting to threaten 'traditional' social media players and have become the new focus for digital innovation (see more in 2015 predictions below). These networks are all growing at a quarterly rate of 15% or more as they aim to become hubs for everything smartphone audiences do on mobile. As Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson points out Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp in February was the transaction that defined this trend [1. http://avc.com/2014/12/whatcjustchappened/]

3. Mobile apps are eating the web: Mobile apps now dominate the proportion of time spent online in the US c according to this chart from analyst Benedict Evans. This extraordinary growth has huge significance for the open web and the companies that depend on it (Google etc). The immersive experiences that are created in apps partly explains our growing addiction (#1) and is driven by popularity of social networks and messaging apps (#2) as well as streaming video and games. In news, media companies have been investing more heavily in apps that do not simply replicate the web experience. The New York Times Now, Economist Espresso and Yahoo News Digest are part of a new wave of offerings trying to create a new loyal relationship with smartphone audiences. The Guardian launched its new apps in 2014 and the BBC is overhauling its smartphone and tablet offerings early in 2015. 4. We've seen explosion of visual, sharable formats like number driven graphics, data visualisations, graphically treated pictures, and short videos. The popularity of these has been partly driven by the algorithms of Facebook (which favour visual hooks) and changes to Twitter and partly by the growth of easy tools to edit and upload multimedia content [2 Paul Bradshaw says this adoption of these techniques partly because news organisations are hiring more specialists in social media optimisation].

Predictions for 2015

Mobile, wearables, nearables and payables

Mobile phones are now outselling TVs four times over and the majority of these are smartphones. Prices are falling, networks are becoming faster and more reliable and the platforms have matured into a stable duopoly (iOS and Android [14. http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/15/tablet-sales-growth-plummets-in-2014-as-android-smartphones-continue-to-soar-gartner/]. The conditions are set in 2015 for an unprecedented amount of innovation around hardware, software, services and content. Here are ten mobile related predictions for the year ahead. 1. Tablet sales take a dive as smartphones continue to get bigger: People who already own tablets are happy with them but generally aren’t planning to upgrade. Growth has already slowed - only 11% global growth compared with 55% in 2013 - and will remain flat in 2015. With the industry focus on game changing large-screen smartphones[15. The 6-inch plus screen smartphone, which looks set to become the standard as 2015] - as well as wearable extensions and multimode laptops - the tablet is in for a hard time. 2. Smartwatch wars: Google and Apple will go head to head in the emerging wearables market in 2015 with Vogue magazine putting the Apple Watch on its front cover as the most anticipated new device of the year. Given the level of hype, it will be almost impossible to meet expectations. The Apple Watch will NOT repeat the monster success of the iPod, iPhone and iPad – certainly not overnight. Not everyone will want or need a computer on their wrist though the early adopters – and fashionistas c will inevitably rush out and buy [16. Expect the Apple watch in early spring in the US with a European release to follow].

Social media and messaging

Social networks and messaging are changing fast, with image/video sharing on the rise and people engaging more with groups and close contacts (WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc.) and less with large audiences (via Facebook, Twitter, etc.). See chart below for the move from nodes to edges.23 As Facebook, Twitter and YouTube move into comfortable middle age are they losing their edge?

Disruption to Television

We continue our love affair with the content (Broadchurch, Strictly etc) but not with the technology. No matter how much we dream about simplicity, television distribution and consumption gets more complex and expensive every year. Multiple standards around broadcast (SD, HD and now UltraHD) and then myriad ways to catch up on programmes you may have missed (+1s, PVRs, internet connected boxes and HDMI connectors). So will anything give in 2015? 1. Video on demand content migrates back to the TV: Until now, the majority of professionally produced VOD content has been consumed on laptops, tablets and smartphones but both BBC and Decipher data shows a small but significant move back to the big screen27. There are two reasons for this. a) Big providers Virgin, Sky and BT have improved the interfaces speed and visibility of VOD content and b) New smart adapters like Apple TV, Now TV, Fire TV and Chromecast (below) have enabled content to played via smartphones or tablets but watched on the TV.

Rebirth of audio

Overview 2016

simonl — Thu, 26 May 2016 13:05:53 +0000

This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 50,000 online news consumers in 26 countries including the US and UK.

The report suggests that publishers across the world are facing unprecedented levels of disruption to business models and formats from a combination of the rise of social platforms, the move to mobile and growing consumer rejection of online advertising.

Previous report 2015

simonl — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 19:32:58 +0000

This year's data shows a quickening of the pace towards social and mobile news along with a rise in online video consumption

Digital News Report 2015

Interactive

simonl — Tue, 31 May 2016 20:03:23 +0000

Explore the 2016 data. Compare between or within countries using the drop down menus below..

About Us

nic — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 10:26:37 +0000

Contact Us

nic — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 10:29:24 +0000

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Helloooooooooo

Draft

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Private sector media and digital news

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Executive summary

In this report, we examine how private sector legacy news organisations like newspapers and broadcasters in six European countries (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom) are adapting to an evolving digital media environment. The analysis is based on 54 interviews conducted between April and July 2016 primarily with executives, senior managers, and editors from a strategic sample of 25 newspapers and commercial broadcasters across Europe, as well as on survey data from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report and secondary sources. We show that:

Newspapers and broadcasters, sometimes criticised for their conservatism, are investing in a wide variety of new digital initiatives to reach new audiences and generate new revenues. All the organisations covered see audiences moving from offline media to online media – quickly in the case of print to digital, and (thus far) more slowly in the case of television to digital. All aim to make a similar move to retain the audience connection upon which both their editorial impact and their business models depend.
In all the countries covered, private sector legacy news organisations reach more people with news than public service media, and more people get news online from newspapers and commercial broadcasters than get news via social media.
Despite their growing online reach, our interviews suggest 80 to 90% of revenues in most newspapers still come from print – even after years of decline in print advertising and circulation and almost 20 years of investment in digital media. Broadcasters generally have an even smaller share of digital revenues, primarily because their legacy operations have not yet been affected by the rise of online media to the same extent, but also because they have often been less focused on building a business around digital news.
As revenues from legacy operations are generally declining (print) or at best stable (broadcast) and digital revenues still limited, the resources for investments in digital initiatives generally continue to come from cross-subsidies and/or cost-cutting elsewhere in each organisation.
In terms of the business of digital news, interviewees highlight the following challenges when it comes to advertising:

the dominant role of large technology companies like Google and Facebook that attract a large share of online advertising;
the low average revenues per user, especially on the mobile web;
the growing number of people who use ad-blockers.

The challenges around advertising mean that more and more newspapers are moving to various forms of pay models, with the exception of a few high-profile titles with very large audiences. Only a minority of online news users have been willing to pay so far, but interviewees are cautiously optimistic that the number will grow.
Commercial broadcasters are generally seeking to replicate the television model of advertising supported content free at the point of consumption in their approach to digital media. For many, news is a very small part of their overall business.
Beyond the turn to pay models, private sector legacy news organisations (especially newspapers) are exploring other alternative sources of revenue to supplement display advertising and subscription, including:

the launch of new verticals (content offerings beyond the organisations’ main brands), repackaged content products, and sections aimed at cultivating specific audiences more effectively;
investment in native advertising and branded content activities that are more effectively differentiated from generic display advertising;
diversification with a move into e-commerce, business-to-business services, and offline activities including events and merchandising.

Social media enable news organisations to reach a wider public, in particular younger people and other audiences who do not normally come direct to their sites or apps, but also imply a number of challenges related to editorial control, brand recognition, audience data, audience loyalty, and monetisation.
Many news organisations covered here are experimenting with distributed content formats (e.g. Facebook Instant Articles and Snapchat Discover), and see potential for synergy between publishers and platforms. Most selectively engage but want to evaluate the first results in term of reach and revenue before they decide how much to engage and with what. Other news organisations, in particular in France and Germany, have been more reluctant so far to distribute their content through third-party platforms and aim to be more self-reliant.
News organisations are addressing the growth of smartphone use by adapting their content to mobile devices, creating dedicated teams, adopting mobile-first approaches and focusing on the development of their news apps. However, the mobile advertising market is still much less developed than the desktop advertising market, and this represents a central challenge for the business of mobile news.
Online video advertising is growing fast and several news organisations are therefore investing in online video production and curation, strengthening their online video teams, experimenting with new formats and technologies (e.g. virtual reality, 360-degree, and social video), and seeking new ways to monetise online video news.
All our interviewees expect to see audiences and advertising continue to move from offline to online media, and expect to see the digital media environment itself continue to change, driven by evolving forms of use, new technologies, and initiatives from large technology companies. Individual organisations are adapting to this with varying degrees of success, but no clear generally applicable model(s) for sustainable digital news production have been developed so far. Every organisation examined is experimenting and forging its own path, seeking a balance between exploiting legacy operations, building digital operations, and exploring the opportunities ahead. Experimentation and exploration are an uncertain business, but encouraging in themselves – it is because of their decision to invest in the future that newspapers and commercial broadcasters continue to be central to an increasingly digital media environment.

This report is the first of a series of annual reports that will focus specifically on how European private sector legacy news organisations are adapting to the rise of digital media.

Introduction

The continued development and use of digital media technology present private sector media with a range of evolving challenges and opportunities. How they deal with them is important not only for their own development, but also for news production and distribution more broadly. Private sector legacy news organisations – newspapers and broadcasters – have significant audience reach across their offline and online platforms and invest more in news production than anyone else, including public service media and digital-born news operations. Data from the 2016 Reuters Institute Digital News Report show that newspapers and commercial broadcasters together reach more people with news online than public service media, and that more people say they get news online from private sector legacy news organisations than get it via social media (Newman et al. 2016). One relatively recent analysis from the UK suggests the newspapers alone account for 68% of all editorial investment there, and commercial broadcasters a further 10% (Mediatique 2012). Clearly, private sector legacy news organisations continue to be of central importance to our media environment (Nielsen 2012). In this report, we focus on how a sample of 25 different private sector legacy news organisations in six European countries are adapting to an evolving digital media environment, especially in terms of dealing with the business of digital news, the rise of social media, the move from desktop internet to an increasingly mobile web, and the growing importance of online video. The countries covered are Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom. Together, they represent a range of different European media systems. The report is based on interviews conducted between April and July 2016 with 54 people, primarily executives, senior managers, and editors at private sector news organisations with a background in television broadcasting and newspaper publishing (see the list of interviewees in the appendix). In each country we selected four private sector media companies: one commercial television broadcaster, two national newspapers (one upmarket daily and one mid-market or tabloid newspaper, when possible), and one regional newspaper (two in Germany, where regional newspapers make up much of the industry). Table 1.1 shows the list of organisations covered. The purpose of the sample is to cover a wide range of different types of private sector legacy news organisations operating in different contexts. In a previous report, we have analysed how public service media in the same six countries are adapting to the same changes in the media environment (Sehl et al. 2016). The focus of the report is on how these different newspapers and commercial broadcasters are responding to the evolving challenges and opportunities of digital media. We analyse them together here because they have two things in common. First, unlike digital-born news organisations, they have engaged with the rise of digital media from a legacy starting point that gives them resources including brand reputation, loyal audiences, and revenues to invest in news production, but also means that they have set ways of doing things and are more constrained by tradition than pure players operating only on the internet (Boczkowski 2004, Christensen et al. 2012, Küng 2015). Second, unlike public service media, they will only survive if they continue to operate a sustainable business. It is important to underline that these organisations face this digital future from very different starting points, depending on the individual organisation and the country in which it operates. Print newspaper readership and advertising are in clear decline, whereas television viewing and television advertising markets have, until recently, seemed more stable. Countries differ in terms of the pace of print decline, trends in television, and the development of digital media. Table 1.2 shows a number of key indicators in terms of the structure of media use and advertising markets in each country to provide some context for the analysis. As is clear from Table 1.2, the countries covered represent quite different media systems. All have higher levels of internet use, smartphone use, and social media use than the global average, though Italy and Poland have significantly lower levels of internet penetration than the other four countries. Print newspaper circulation is declining in all six countries, but from very different levels. Television viewing varies too. These differences in media use in turn also influence the advertising market across platforms. The basic business issues faced by private sector legacy news organisations in this environment have been clear for more than a decade. Revenues from print are in decline, television so far has been more stable in most countries (but news is marginal to the business), and while the overall digital economy is growing rapidly, digital gains do not make up for print losses for newspapers, and digital revenues are very small compared to legacy revenues for television. Advertising has so far been the most important source of digital revenue, but publishers have struggled to build a sustainable business on this alone, because of their cost structure, because dominant international players like Google and Facebook capture a large share of the overall market and because supply outstrips demand, leading to low advertising rates and commodification of content. Three developments in particular represent further challenges and opportunities for private sector news organisations, namely the growing importance of social media, the rapid move to a more mobile-centred media environment, and the promise of online video. All of our interviewees see this as a radically different environment from the desktop and search-dominated internet of the past and highlight the pace and the profound nature of the change under way as a major challenge – even as many are optimistic that they are well positioned to seize the opportunities ahead. The question is how to respond as the situation continues to evolve. As Jason Mills, Head of Digital at ITV News, told us:

There is continuous change in digital journalism … just staying even in touch is a challenge in itself for any newsroom with limited resources. Where do you focus? You can’t be everywhere … and the focus of six months ago might be a completely different focus now, and it might change again in six months’ time. [1. Jason Mills, head of digital, ITV News, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 26 May 2016.]

The rest of this report focuses on how different private sector legacy news organisations like newspapers and broadcasters are dealing with these challenges and opportunities. In section 2 we review the search for new business models. Then, we turn to new sources of digital revenues. In section 4, we discuss approaches to social media. In section 5, we turn to mobile strategies. Finally, we discuss approaches to online video. Throughout, we provide examples of some of the initiatives our interviewees from across Europe have shared with us.

The search for new business models

Legacy revenues from print and television remain critically important for all the organisations covered here, as they do more broadly across the news industry. Despite years of decline in high income democracies, 93% of global newspaper revenues still come from print, and in many newspapers print operations still subsidise digital operations (WAN-IFRA 2015). Similarly, revenues from traditional television far outstrip digital revenues for the broadcasters we cover. Managing legacy operations while simultaneously developing new digital operations remains a central challenge. Private sector legacy news organisations thus need to operate as what management scholars call ‘ambidextrous organisations’ (O’Reilly and Tushman 2004), simultaneously attending to the products and processes of the past, while also preparing for a very different future. In newspapers, the balance between past and future is generally based on a combination of eroding legacy revenues, across-the-board cost-cutting, and investment in digital operations with the aim of moving beyond traditional business models to a digitally sustainable future. So far, the rapid decline in legacy revenues and the much slower growth of digital revenues has been accompanied by very significant cuts in most organisations and in many cases sharp declines in the market value of news media. Catherine Joly, general secretary of the Le Monde Group, argues that organisations such as her own need to continually rationalise legacy operations and cut printing, distribution, and production costs to remain sustainable and be able to invest in digital opportunities. Despite the declining figures, the traditional print business still represents around 80% of Le Monde revenue. [2. Catherine Joly, general secretary, Le Monde Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.] An 80–20 or 90–10 split between legacy and digital revenues is common across the newspapers covered and most titles are seeing total revenues fall year-on-year as legacy declines continue to outpace digital growth. The main difference here is the pace of change and the implications for how urgently a given organisation needs to change to ensure longer term sustainability. As Magdalena Chudzikiewicz, chief digital officer and member of the board of Polska Press Grupa, says, ‘[news organisations in] countries like Poland that have experienced a big drop in press revenues in recent years have had to develop much more quickly online than in countries that still enjoy stable press revenues’. [3. Magdalena Chudzikiewicz, chief digital officer and member of the board, Polska Press Grupa, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Warsaw on 8 June 2016.] In contrast, in markets like Germany, where the decline in print circulation and advertising has been less severe, publishers have ‘a bit more time for the transformation’ says Stefan Plöchinger, digital editor Süddeutsche Zeitung and editor-in-chief of SZ.de. [4. Stefan Plöchinger, digital editor Süddeutsche Zeitung and editor-in-chief SZ.de, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Munich on 20 May 2016.] In television, in contrast, the balance is generally based on the belief that legacy revenues will continue to be stable for the foreseeable future and investment in digital operations is more aimed at maintaining brand awareness, enhancing image, and connecting with younger audiences with the aim of drawing them to traditional television, rather than at developing independently profitable digital operations. [5. Television has been more stable than print in terms of audience and advertising, but some argue the sector still faces a ‘slow crisis’ as average audiences are rapidly growing older, television viewing amongst younger people is rapidly declining, and other players seem better positioned to dominate online video (see Nielsen and Sambrook 2016).] A representative of a broadcasting organisation explained off-the-record:

Television hasn’t yet had the same decline that newspapers saw. … So, in many ways that presents a challenge because the necessity is not quite so ... the time span is much longer so there isn’t like a [situation where] we have to sort it out now. [6. Quote not for attribution.]

Łukasz Dulniak, social media and new projects manager at the Polish channel TVN24, says that their ‘core business is still traditional television’, but they ‘keep up with digital developments’ not only to ‘chase the audience’, but also to market the company brand and ‘to keep the image of the company as an innovator’. [7. Łukasz Dulniak, social media and new projects manager, TvN24, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Warsaw on 8 June 2016.] Similarly, Jason Mills, head of digital at ITV News, highlights how the digital strategy of ITV News ‘is more about brand than it is about monetisation; … News is not there to perform a revenue-generating opportunity, it’s to create a good brand as part of the wider ITV brand.' [8. Jason Mills, head of digital, ITV News, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 26 May 2016.]

Building digital audiences

Because of the different trends affecting legacy revenues in the newspaper and television sectors, newspapers and broadcasters have so far developed diverse perspectives on the urgency to change and very different approaches to digital. Across all the six countries covered, leading newspapers have invested more aggressively in digital than most commercial broadcasters have. As Figure 2.1 shows, the investments seem to have helped them build bigger digital audiences. Most of the newspapers we cover here have higher reach online than offline, and also in many cases have higher online reach than broadcasters with far higher offline reach. In contrast, most broadcasters still have much higher offline than online reach. The question is, then, what kind of business can be built around these audiences? Traditionally, the news business was based primarily on advertising and sales (Hamilton 2004, Picard 2011), with readers’ and viewers’ attention sold to advertisers and news content made available either free at the point of consumption (for broadcast television) or for pay (most newspapers and some cable/satellite television). With the exception of some specialist brands (such as business newspapers) and a few outliers, the general approach to digital news in the 2000s converged on an advertising-supported model with news made available free of charge to users with a view to growing audiences to a size where it was hoped advertising revenues alone would sustain the business. While some news organisations have succeeded in attracting very large audiences online, the business has continued to be difficult as many advertisers prefer alternative online options and the abundant supply means advertising rates are generally very low. As Malcolm Coles, Director of Digital Media at the Telegraph, explains:

A newspaper reader on average tends to give more revenue to the company than a digital reader. Most news markets around the world have seen a sort of long-term decline in the sale of print products, and the rise in digital for most of them has yet to replace that revenue. So I guess the big opportunity is being able to get your brand in front of many more people, and the big challenge is how do you make money out of doing that? [9. Malcolm Coles, director of digital media, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 9 June 2016.]

The underlying shift here is from a situation in the 1990s where media organisations had considerable market power because advertisers had few alternatives to print and television, to a situation in the 2010s where media organisations have far less market power because advertisers have many alternatives, including both highly targeted search and social advertising, advertising on digital-born content sites, specialised sites for classified advertising (real estate, automotive, jobs, etc.), and the rise of ‘content-less advertising’ around auto-generated services on price comparison sites and the like. The abundant supply and intense competition has driven down advertising rates, and the situation publishers face is effectively captured by Kevin Beatty, CEO of dmg media, the consumer publishing part of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DMGT plc), who says: ‘In digital media everybody is your competitor. … There is more competition for advertising in digital than advertising to go around.' [10. Kevin Beatty, CEO, dmg media, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 10 May 2016.]

The difficulties of digital advertising

Interviewees point to three main reasons why the digital advertising market is getting more difficult for news media, supported by the data in Table 2.1.

The dominant positions of large US-based technology companies like Google and Facebook in the digital advertising market, due to their attractive products and very high number of users, which enables them to sell larger audiences, more targeted advertising, and at lower rates than those of traditional news providers. Their position varies by country, but, globally, Google is estimated to attract over 30% of all digital advertising, and Facebook over 10% (Seetharaman 2016). Donata Hopfen, publishing director and head of management board of the BILD-Group, clearly explains how these developments in the digital advertising market have led the group to adopt a new business model: ‘Large platforms take out large portions of the money [in the digital market], so we have concluded that we will not succeed with advertising revenues alone to finance the digital business. [So] we are looking for new business models.’ [11. Donata Hopfen, publishing director and head of management board, BILD-Group, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Berlin on 21 July 2016.]
The rapid move from desktop to mobile in digital news consumption. Many of the organisations we have spoken to already get a large majority of their traffic from mobile devices, and the mobile advertising market is challenging because rates are low, as there is less space on the screen for advertising and advertising slows down load times, driving readers away. Antti Haarala, head of digital services at the tabloid Iltalehti in Finland, comments: ‘People are using mobile more and more, but we are not yet getting the revenue out of it that we would like to get’. [12. Antti Haarala, head of digital services, Iltalehti, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 2 June 2016.] Furthermore, technology companies, especially Facebook, are even more dominant in mobile advertising than in desktop advertising.
The rise in the use of ad-blocking software is also threatening the digital advertising revenues of news providers. Table 2.1 shows how the use of ad-blockers is particularly high in some countries: France, Germany, Finland, and, especially, Poland. Marek Kopeć, product manager of Fakt24.pl, online asset of the Polish tabloid Fakt, stresses the relevant implications of this trend: ‘We know that there is no future in display advertising.’ [13. Marek Kopeć, product manager of Fakt24.pl, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Warsaw on 10 June 2016.] Although the rise of ad-blocking software is a worry in many news organisations, only a few have adopted concrete actions to combat it. Among the news organisations covered in this report, BILD is the first national brand to adopt a ‘no ad, no content’ strategy to combat the use of ad-blockers (see the box).

The move to pay models

Increasingly, newspaper publishers are experimenting with various alternatives to the free, advertising-supported model that has been the standard approach for so long. Starting with experiments in France and Germany in 2010 and later in the United States from 2011, various pay models have been developed, ranging from hard paywalls where only paying readers can access content, or ‘freemium’ models where some content is only for paying readers with the rest being freely accessible, to metered models where users can read a set number of articles per month or week before they are asked to pay. Some publishers report they are making progress. Donata Hopfen highlights BILD’s ‘freemium’ approach, a strategy pursued since 2013, and says: ‘BILDplus, our paid content offer, actually duplicates our successful print business in the digital space. We currently have over 320,000 subscribers on a monthly basis’. [14. Donata Hopfen, publishing director and head of management board, BILD-Group, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Berlin on 21 July 2016.] Table 2.2 shows the percentage of internet users who say they have paid for online news in the last year (in the form of a digital subscription, combined digital/print offer, or one-off payment for an article or e-edition) as well as the average amount people say they have paid. Higher median figures in some countries suggest more subscriptions, lower median figures in others suggest more one-off payments for individual articles or issues.

Differences in Strategies and Adopted Business Models

Though pay models are increasingly widely used, newspapers have not converged on any one approach and many still operate free models. Table 2.3 illustrates the basic business models adopted by the news organisations we cover. It also provides information on the news organisations’ main sources of digital revenues and on the digital contribution to their overall revenues. The table is based on information collected during interviews. In many cases, the table provides only general information, rather than precise numbers, because data on news brands’ revenues and revenue composition are not necessarily public information. These data have therefore to be treated with caution but provide a general indicator of the different approaches adopted. Two trends emerge from Table 2.3. First, all the broadcasters covered in this study rely on advertising for their digital revenues, in line with their historic reliance on a free, advertising supported model. Not a single commercial broadcaster pursues a pay model for digital news. Andrea Delogu, deputy general director of the information directorate at Mediaset in Italy, explains that offering news free of charge is almost a natural choice for commercial broadcasters:

We are aware that our TgCom24 system (TV, radio, internet and mobile) is doing so well on digital not only because of our high quality news, but also because our offer is free of charge (except for a SMS news offer that is active from several years). Furthermore, our business model for television broadcasting is based on free content. As a result, we are consistently inclined to transfer the same business model also on the other media. [15. Andrea Delogu, deputy general director of the information directorate, Mediaset, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 28 Apr. 2016.]

Second, newspapers increasingly rely on pay models. As the table illustrates, 13 out of 19 newspapers where we did interviews operate a pay model. In France, Germany, and Finland all the national and regional newspaper organisations covered are pursuing some kind of pay model (or are planning to do it soon). [16. In these countries, many news providers introduced one of these paid models years ago; some, such as the Finish Iltalehti, the French Le Figaro, and the German Süddeutsche Zeitung, have recently introduced them, and some others, such as the German Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, plan to introduce one in 2016.] Metered paywalls and freemium models are the most common approaches. Stefan Plöchinger explains why Süddeutsche Zeitung chose to adopt a metered paywall in 2015:

We want to attract new people. People who come to our website should feel so good about it that they come back. When they come back they often return many times and it is up to us to define a limit of five or six times a week. And then we say: ‘Okay, now it would be really nice if you would pay’ … So a very classic funnel logic. [17. Stefan Plöchinger, digital editor Süddeutsche Zeitung and editor-in-chief SZ.de, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Munich on 20 May 2016.]

One of the strategies adopted by Süddeutsche Zeitung in order to activate the funnel logic is to offer trial access to their best news stories to convert readers into subscribers. Plöchinger reported that the most successful case was a story on Afghan refugees that generated 1,600 subscriptions. [18. Ibid.] Catherine Joly, general secretary of the Le Monde Group, explains that since they had already reached a big audience base with their free offer, Le Monde decided to adopt a freemium model some years before their main competitors implemented any form of paywall. They have established two different homepages, one addressed to non-subscribers and one, with a better selection of news and premium content, that is accessible only to those who pay. They have established special teams within their newsroom to focus on this content and services, working closely with the marketing department in order to develop better offers for subscribers. According to Joly, subscriptions are growing fast and generate approximately half of their digital revenue. [19. Catherine Joly, general secretary, Le Monde Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.] Also the French regional newspaper La Voix du Nord adopted a paywall solution (see the box).

“[We chose a metered model] because it is simpler. We asked our readers, and we found it was hard for them to understand the freemium models, to understand which content is free and which is premium. We therefore decided to make the offer as simple as possible. [This way, we can] allow readers to access our news directly and focus our attention only on customers who have a real value for us: those who use our brand regularly and who are ready, or may be ready, to pay for this frequent use.” [20. Bruno Jauffret, director of digital development, La Voix du Nord, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, via Skype on 23 June 2016.]

The situation in Poland, Italy, and the UK is more mixed. In Poland, both the national quality newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and the regional paper Dziennik Zachodni have some kind of paywall, but the tabloid Fakt has opted for a free-access model. Danuta Breguła, head of business development at Gazeta Wyborcza, says that they used to be part of the Piano National System, a platform allowing subscribers to access the content published by several news brands. When they realised that their news accounted for most of the content available within that system, they ‘discovered that [their] content has a value’, and decided to build their own metered paywall instead, which they successfully launched in 2015. This is based on their in-house technology. [21. Danuta Breguła, head of business development, Gazeta Wyborcza, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Warsaw on 9 June 2016.] Fakt is instead pursuing scale and relying on advertising. In Italy, Il Corriere della Sera is the first of the main Italian news providers to have adopted a paywall, having launched a metered paywall at the end of January 2016. Michela Colamussi, marketing director responsible for the digital products of Il Corriere della Sera, is satisfied with the first results: four and a half months after the introduction of the paywall, Il Corriere della Sera had already generated 30,000 digital subscriptions. [22. Michela Colamussi, marketing director, digital product and video, RCS, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 12 May 2016.] The Italian news brand with the widest online reach, La Repubblica, considers keeping free access to news as a main component of its digital strategy. Like Fakt in Poland, they are going for scale and relying on advertising. As Alessio Balbi, head of online at La Repubblica, explains:

We believe that only a limited number of big media organisations today have the opportunity to reach a big audience of millions of daily visitors. … La Repubblica is the leader in the Italian digital market and therefore it is natural that we want to play this game, which is only open to a small number of players. … So far, our digital revenue has been able to sustain this strategy, and therefore we don’t want to change our business model. [23. Alessio Balbi, head of online, La Repubblica, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Rome on 29 Apr. 2016.]

As for the UK, the Daily Telegraph is the only title covered here that has adopted a pay model (a metered paywall). The Mail Online relies on different forms of advertising (display, programmatic, native, branded content, and affiliate advertising), as does the Manchester Evening News. Kevin Beatty from dmg media explains that keeping free access to its digital content is part of their longer-term investment in expanding the Mail brand’s reach through Mail Online internationally and in particular in the UK and the US. [24. Kevin Beatty, CEO, dmg media, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 10 May 2016.] The site has built very high global reach and generated £73 million in revenues in the year ending in September. (By comparison, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday combined legacy revenues were close to half a billion in 2015.) [25. http://www.dmgt.com/~/media/Files/D/DMGT/reports-and-presentations/100-51070.pdf.] Beatty also says that the market activity in the digital media space is carefully tracked and observed and although there may be some instances of an increased acceptance of pay models, free access is and will remain an essential component of their digital strategy:

Online paid content? We are not prescriptive about this: we watch what everybody else is doing, we watch what works and what doesn’t. We see things that haven’t worked in the past becoming a little bit more acceptable now, but we have set out very clearly that we are in the process of building large audiences and high engagement levels with that audience, and in doing that we need to be free to access. … Digital is still an investment for us… an investment that has given us the opportunity for the first time in our history to generate a customer base which is truly international. [26. Kevin Beatty, CEO, dmg media, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 10 May 2016.]

Finally, Table 2.3 shows clearly how digital activities still only account for a minority of overall revenues in all the organisations covered, despite the large national, and in some cases international, audiences that some news brands reach and the gradual growth in subscriptions and pay models. As pointed out at the beginning of this report, print and television still represent a large majority of overall revenues in all the news organisations covered. Whether one considers digital advertising and the pursuit of scale, the move to pay models and smaller but more engaged audiences of subscribers, or various combinations of these, the traditional, basic model of relying on advertising and content sales is clearly difficult to replicate in an abundantly supplied online environment dominated by large technology companies with appealing products, better data and technology, large numbers of users, and economies of scale. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy at TheTelegraph, is worth quoting at length on why digital advertising and sales will not generate the kinds of revenues many newspapers became used to in this environment in the 1990s:

The internet has obviously made access to content much easier, and has also enabled many new organisations and individuals to create content. That’s particularly true of written content, and this can make it more difficult to signal which content is worth paying for…This is a fundamental change from print, when the basic economics and fixed costs involved put a limit on the amount of content that was out there; it has been difficult to adjust to for an industry which was used to an automatic association between journalism and paying customers. One solution publishers are exploring is to more strongly demarcate between breaking news and live content, on the one hand, and in-depth commentary, perspectives and insight, on the other. … The expectation is that there is a value inherent in expert, well-researched perspectives and insight, and that this can therefore be charged for. Despite this, as long as digital content is as widely produced and available as it is today, the lack of scarcity is always going to be a risk to the long-term sustainability of digital subscriptions for publishers. [27. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 21 June 2016.]

New Sources of Digital Revenue

Motivated by declining legacy revenues and the challenging digital advertising and sales environment, news media are increasingly looking for new sources of revenue. Three strategies are particularly widespread among newspaper publishers. First, they are developing new projects to increase existing digital revenues by, for example, investing in ‘verticals’ (i.e. new content offerings beyond their main brand) to attract new audiences. Second, they are also increasing their efforts to produce and sell native advertising and branded content to supplement more traditional forms of advertising. Third, they are diversifying their business activities into completely new areas (e.g. digital marketing services, events, and e-commerce), building on their existing audience and brand value to create alternative revenue streams. Because of their more stable legacy revenues and their lower emphasis on developing digital operations into an independently sustainable business, most commercial broadcasters are engaged in fewer experiments of this sort.

New Strategies to Increase Existing Digital Revenues

First, a growing number of newspaper publishers are developing new content-based projects with the aim of drawing in new audiences and advertisers. This approach is well-known from past print products like automotive sections and the like and is increasingly used for digital products too. Some of these are verticals with distinct brands, others are sections of the main brand with a high degree of marketing and promotion. Le Monde is an interesting example of a legacy news organisation developing new content offers to strengthen their digital revenue. The French newspaper is focusing on two projects, among others: Pixels, launched in 2015, and Les Décodeurs, launched in 2014 and enlarged in 2016. Pixels is a content section focusing on new technologies, digital culture, and online gaming, addressing an audience that is younger and ‘more geeky’ than Le Monde’s traditional readership. [28. Nabil Wakim, director of editorial innovation, Le Monde, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.] From the beginning, the project was conceived on the basis of a sustainable business model and close cooperation between the editorial and the business parts of the organisation. Catherine Joly, general secretary of Le Monde Group, explains that the strategy behind Pixels is to reach new and more targeted audiences (young users who are interested in new technologies), therefore attracting new digital advertising revenue (investments coming from technology companies). [29. Catherine Joly, general secretary, Le Monde Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.] The second project, Les Décodeurs, is a content section produced by a team of 12 journalists that focuses on fact checking, data journalism, and busting hoaxes, providing explanations, context, and verifications on the topics that are most discussed in digital environments. Nabil Wakim, director of editorial innovation at Le Monde, highlights that Les Décodeurs is a good example of how Le Monde is gaining significant audience reach by adapting its journalistic approach, marked by a strong focus on hard news and a rigorous process of verification, to new web formats:

[With Les Décodeurs] we adapt our journalism to a bigger audience. This doesn’t mean we focus on stupid subjects; it rather means that we use new formats, native web formats, to explain complicated topics in the simplest way possible. When we were working on the project development, we called it for fun ‘the serious version of BuzzFeed’. … The Les Décodeurs team also worked on the Panama papers, … and they were successful in explaining this difficult topic in an understandable way. The public response was very good. It may generate between 10% and 15% of Le Monde traffic. [30. Nabil Wakim, director of editorial innovation, Le Monde, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.]

Compared with Pixels, Les Décodeurs follows a more traditional digital strategy of expanding its general audience, rather than focusing on niche topics to attract more targeted audiences, Joly explains. [31. Catherine Joly, general secretary, Le Monde Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.] Le Figaro is also investing in the development of new content to expand its digital audience reach and to attract new advertisers. For example, the French newspaper has recently created a gardening section, has strengthened its digital sports offer, and has launched a website in Chinese, Figarochic.cn that focuses on French tourism, fashion, and culture. The Le Figaro Group is also expanding its audience base by acquiring digital companies, such as CCM Benchmark. Jean-Luc Breysse, deputy general director of Le Figaro Group says that, with these operations, the group ‘continues to invest in quality and added-value content, a strategy at the core of its past, present and probably future success’. He reports that, with 25 million unique visitors per month generated by all the group’s websites, they are now able to reach half the French population. He also points out that, in France, they are now the fourth player in terms of digital audience reach, just after Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. In order to better monetise this large digital audience through programmatic advertising and real-time bidding (RTB), [32. Real-time bidding means the buying and selling of online ad impressions through real-time auctions while a webpage is loading. If the bid is won, the buyer’s ad is instantly displayed on the publisher’s site.] Le Figaro recently established a team of 30 people, within their business sector, who use big data to foster their advertising and ecommerce revenues. Finally, Breysse explains that Le Figaro Group’s digital strategy requires a large and qualified audience base to remain positioned in the digital advertising market race:

Everybody is kind of piling into the advertising market, and that’s a big threat for the media. So, our priority is to be strong and to have enough data. The key is just to be a major actor in this sector. … Facebook, Google, and Amazon are becoming stronger, because they have huge databases and huge power. We need to accelerate in this sector, because at the moment targeted advertising is growing at the expenses of both print and display. In times of economic crisis, advertisers tend to favour targeted advertising spent with return they think they can measure precisely. [33. Jean-Luc Breysse, deputy general director, Le Figaro Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 2 June 2016.]

Beyond the launch of verticals and sections, news organisations are investing in new repackaged content products (see the box). [34. Antti Haarala, head of digital services at Iltalehti, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 2 June 2016.]

Focusing on Native Advertising and Branded Content

Second, many news organisations are also investing in strengthening their native advertising and branded content activities. Native advertising has been a part of many news organisations’ strategies for some time but the growth of ad-blockers, the rise of distributed content, and the threat to digital revenues from social media platforms have all led to renewed interest. Some research suggest users have reservations about native advertising unless very clearly and carefully marked as such, especially when it comes to hard news (Newman et al. 2015). But news organisations searching for new sources of revenue are increasingly investing in developing appropriate formats for native advertising. The overall demand is still hard to establish, but a number of news organisations are already reporting that native advertising and sponsored content account for a majority of their digital advertising revenues, and industry observers expect the market to grow in the future (Boland 2016). Stefan Betzold, managing director digital at BILD, explains that native advertising is one of the main priorities for BILD in 2016 and that they have just created the BILD Brand Studio, a team fully dedicated to native advertising:

We need to find additional ways to monetise our reach and refinance our operations, and branded content and native advertising are definitely key components in that strategy…The BILD Brand Studio team creates brand stories and branded content videos for our advertising partners in BILD’s tonality and Look & Feel. … That’s definitely growing, maybe the biggest and best-growing advertising product this year. [35. Stefan Betzold, managing director digital, BILD, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in vienna on 21 Apr. 2016.]

The Telegraph is also strongly focusing on native advertising and has recently created Spark, a special division to work on branded content (see the box). Similarly, the Daily Mail Group (dmg media) has created a division, Mail Brands, to work with their commercial partners on branded content and cross-media advertising solutions. Our interviewees did not provide figures on the contribution of native advertising to the organisations’ digital revenues. In many cases, they provided just general information, describing it as a growing but still marginal source of revenue. Only in the UK do a few interviewees describe native advertising as already being a significant source of revenue. For example, Kevin Beatty, CEO of dmg media, says:

[Branded content] is a significant part of our digital revenue. Programmatic is growing very fast and will continue to do so. In the UK we work closely with our advertisers and their agencies to create the type of marketing content that work most effectively with that audience. This is an important part of our digital revenues and one where we really do have a competitive advantage. [36. Kevin Beatty, CEO, dmg media, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 10 May 2016.]

Similarly, Peter Lindsay, director of strategy at the Telegraph, reports that the revenue generated by their branded content division Spark is a ‘growing and sizeable chunk of both print and digital advertising revenue’. He also highlights that sponsored content involves high production costs, but nevertheless is considered a sector where it is easier for news organisations to capitalise on their storytelling skills and compete with the big technology companies that dominate other sectors of the digital advertising market:

Unlike display advertising, [with content marketing] there is a significant cost to us to provide that service. We have a team of people who produce that content. Nonetheless, it’s an area where we’re competitive versus Facebook and Google because we actually have expertise in writing content, something we can add value to. [37. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 21 June 2016.]

In Italy, as in other countries, native advertising is also growing, but Italian interviewees refer to some degree of resistance to native advertising and branded content within newsrooms. Pier Paolo Cervi, general director of the digital division at Gruppo L’Espresso, illustrates that ‘in Italy native advertising is growing, but slower than in the Anglo-Saxon countries because of market reasons, but also because a cultural resistance within Italian newsrooms, where the distinction between editorial and branded contents probably represents a more sensitive issue’. [38. Pier Paolo Cervi, general director of the digital division, Gruppo L’Espresso, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 23 May 2016.] Michela Colamussi, marketing director responsible for the digital products of Il Corriere della Sera, reports that when, in 2015, RCS established Numix Studios, a creative team dealing with branded content and multimedia storytelling projects, at first journalists were cautious about the introduction of native advertising, but after being reassured about the clear distinction between branded and editorial content they accepted it:

It has not been easy for us to focus on branded content because, traditionally, content production is within the newsroom’s sphere of activity. ... There were some initial reservations but, when we found a way to clearly label branded content, the newsroom accepted it and the marketing division started to sell it. [39. Michela Colamussi, marketing director, digital product and video, RCS, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 12 May 2016.]

Diversification Strategies

Third, many news organisations have adopted diversification strategies to explore new sectors outside their core market. The aim is to look for alternative revenue streams by starting ecommerce activities or providing business companies with a wide range of services, from digital and cross-media marketing solutions to event organisation. Peter Lindsay explains that, for too long, many newspaper publishers have been trying to rely on the same revenue streams online: display advertising and digital subscriptions. The Telegraph Media Group has therefore diversified its business by moving into new areas, such as travel, events, and financial services. Even if these business areas are far away from their core business, the newspaper’s assets (the perspective it shares with its public and its reputation) are considered key factors for expanding into new markets. As Lindsay explains:

What we provide as a business is a perspective on the world. That perspective on the world isn’t just about politics, it’s about any topic, and it allows us to form loyal relationships and ties with certain types of individual who share that perspective. … Therefore, we are expanding more dramatically into other business areas such as travel, events, and financial services, where we give customers … [curated recommendations], a curated view on what they should be doing or buying or where they should be going on holiday. [40. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 21 June 2016.]

The results of this diversification strategy are seen as promising at the Telegraph. Lindsay says that the revenue generated by these auxiliary activities is still smaller than their legacy print business, but is already rivalling the amount of revenue they generate from digital subscriptions and is expected to form a series of strong pillars that sit alongside both subscriptions and digital advertising in the near future. At the Finnish tabloid Iltalehti, which has moved into new areas such as dating and travel services, they are also satisfied with the initial results and plan to expand into new digital services, reports Antti Haarala, head of digital services. [41. Antti Haarala, head of digital services, Iltalehti, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 2 June 2016.] Several national and regional newspaper publishers have recently expanded into events and sponsorships, auxiliary activities that link online and offline operations. Both Le Monde and the Manchester Evening News, for example, have created new website sections and niche publications aimed at students and their families. The goal is to attract new advertisers who are interested in these specific targets, as well as to organise educational events that will generate alternative revenue through sponsorships. Other news organisations are investing in digital marketing services. The German regional newspaper Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, for example, has established an agency offering small- and medium-sized business companies operating at the regional level a wide range of services, from Google AdWords and search engine optimisation (SEO) support to website construction. As with e-commerce, service sales, events, and sponsorship, this is another example of how newspaper publishers are pursuing new sources of revenue beyond advertising and sales but still based on the audience and brand of their main news operations (in contrast to, say, standalone classified advertising sites or the like). [42. Some media conglomerates are performing well overall but in part by diversifying beyond publishing and news to services, classified advertising, business-to-business and the like with no direct connection to the business of news.]

Different Approaches to Diversification

Three different approaches to diversification and business innovation emerge from our analysis. First, some interviewees consider diversification strategies and experiments with new sources of revenue as opportunities that can be fully exploited only by strongly investing in them. This approach seems to characterise the Telegraph’s strategy in moving into new e-commerce areas, for example. Peter Lindsay explains:

I think the mistake that publishers have made in the past is that they’ve tried to grow these auxiliary businesses on the side, in a corner somewhere. … So, our philosophy from the start has been: if we intend to play in these markets, we have to invest in actually competing, genuinely competing. Not as a publisher, but as a travel competitor, as a financial services competitor… i.e. we’re going to be a business that’s going to operate in multiple markets. Therefore, we need to have people who know what they’re doing in those markets. So our number one priority has been to hire the talent and the teams who understand those markets … We’ve been investing significantly in growth for those areas. [43. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 21 June 2016.]

A second approach is still to consider business innovation and diversification as opportunities, but opportunities that have to be pursued with caution and with incremental investment. This approach emerges, for example, in the way Joly explains the method used to launch and run Le Monde’s new products such as Pixels and Les Décodeurs:

Regarding the method we used for our new products, they all are very agile projects that we can scale [based on the results they are producing]. We don’t hugely invest in them before seeing what they can return to us, we go into these areas in an incremental way. … The same applies to online videos: we don’t start by immediately establishing big teams before seeing if the project works and produces revenue… When we develop new projects we start by experimenting and we see the level of revenue they produce. [44. Catherine Joly, general secretary, Le Monde Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.]

Commenting on how La Repubblica is organised for producing and selling native advertising, Balbi points out that the way news organisations approach innovation is one of the main differences between the Italian market and other international contexts:

In other international markets, in particular in the UK and US, when a new development emerges our competitors tend to go into it heart and soul, by establishing big teams working on it and big budgets. The Italian market is much less dynamic and is characterised by a stronger resistance. … Our approach to new developments is much more cautious. This approach also characterises our group and I think it presents strengths and weaknesses. For example, when tablets were a new development, some years ago, some international newsrooms created big teams to work on that area, and after a couple of years most of these people were fired. On the one hand, this approach is exciting because it demonstrates a greater ability to deal with risk and innovation. On the other hand, it is true that, in the Italian context, this approach would have led to a huge catastrophe. The Italian approach is more cautious and perhaps also wiser. [45. Alessio Balbi, head of online, La Repubblica, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Rome on 29 Apr. 2016.]

The third approach views business and editorial innovation as an opportunity but, at the same time, believes that journalism should focus on its core business and media organisations should not experiment with products that have little to do with journalism. This approach emerged in a few conversations where our interviewees commented on lessons learned from previous experiences with diversification strategies. For example, describing some previous attempts at introducing special portals and apps aimed at niche audiences, Stephan Marzen, managing director of Rheinische Post, concluded that news organisations should stay focused on their core business:

The basic idea was that we can win additional user groups and this way get further reach that we can monetise. But that did not work out at all. Now we have integrated them into our large portals. We call this focusing on the core business. Here, the bet did not pay off. [46. Stephan Marzen, managing director, Rheinische Post, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Düsseldorf on 17 May 2016.]

Similarly, Eva Messerschmidt, manager of sales and digital products at n-tv, explains that n-tv ‘only diversify in terms of platforms, but not in terms of products’. [47. Eva Messerschmidt, manager of sales and digital products, n-tv, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Cologne on 19 May 2016.] As they seek to develop new business models and search for new sources of revenue, private sector legacy news organisations have to deal with a broader ongoing transformation in the whole media environment. Not only does the general move from legacy platforms to digital continue apace, the way in which people use digital media is also evolving rapidly. The three central contemporary trends our interviewees highlight as most important are (1) the growing importance of social media, (2) the move from desktop to mobile, and (3) the potential of online video. We will deal with social media in the next section before moving on to mobile and online video.

Approaches to Social Media

The growing importance of social media is a central driver of a broader change in how people find and access news online. Direct access via websites and apps is becoming relatively less important, and search and especially social media are becoming more important. Table 4.1 shows how online news users across the six countries covered in this report say they come across news online. Direct entry is still important in some countries, such as Finland and the UK (both of which have very popular public service media and some newspapers with high reach online), but search and social media are important across the board, and more important than direct access in several countries. With the rise of distributed discovery, news organisations have had to come to terms with an environment where they have less and less control over how people find and access their news. Discovery is already distributed across direct entry, search, social media, and for some messaging apps. The next step is from distributed discovery to distributed content, as popular platforms increasingly offer formats for off-site consumption of news content, including YouTube Channels, Facebook Instant Articles, Twitter Moments, SnapChat Discover, and the like. We discuss distributed discovery first, the rise of distributed content next.

Distributed Discovery

From the point of view of individual news organisations, the relative importance of direct entry, search, and social media as sources of traffic varies greatly. Some strong brands still get most of their traffic from people coming direct. But many get a majority from search and social referrals, increasingly especially social. [48. The percentage coming from social varies by organisation, some say about 20%, some as much as 80%. For some, search is still more important than social, but social is generally becoming more and more important.] All the organisations covered work to various degrees with search engine optimisation and social media optimisation to increase their referrals. Some make major investments in these activities to maximise reach and visibility. The rationale is clear. As Jochen Herrlich, managing director of digital at Funke Medien – which publishes the major German regional newspaper Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung – says: ‘news publishers have to go where the audience is’. [49. Jochen Herrlich, managing director digital, Funke Medien, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Berlin on 13 May 2016.] Google is overwhelmingly the most important source of search referrals, and Facebook equally overwhelmingly the most important source of social traffic. Our interviewees’ experience is broadly in line with the overall picture provided by audience analytics companies, which suggests search remains an important source of referrals but has been overtaken by social media – especially Facebook. In late 2015, Parse.ly, for example, estimated that 45% of referrals across their sample of nearly 400 publishers come from social media (39% from Facebook alone) and 32% from search (vanNest 2015). (Yahoo and Twitter were next, both under 5%.) Search has been central for years by now, whereas the role of social media and especially Facebook has evolved rapidly. Across Parse.ly’s sample, the percentage of referrals coming from Facebook was around 10% in January 2014, around 20% in January 2015, and around 40% by the end of 2015. As one interviewee put it when asked about the most important sources of traffic: ‘Facebook. Then comes Facebook. And then Facebook.’ [50. Quote not for attribution.]

Distributed Content

In the course of 2015 and 2016, we have seen the beginning of a move beyond distributed discovery to distributed content as some large technology companies have developed new products such as Snapchat Discover (launched January 2015), Facebook Instant Articles (launched May 2015), and Apple News (launched June 2015) to host news on their own platforms. In each case, news organisations publish directly into a format created by the platform, and in return normally get reach as well as a share of the advertising revenue generated. For platforms, these initiatives aim at making the wider service more attractive to users by offering a way of accessing news that is more appealing than that offered by the mobile web, where pages often load very slowly and are cluttered with intrusive advertising, or are perhaps not optimised for mobile use at all. In response to the same problems of poor user experiences on the mobile web, Google has in 2015 launched the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project in collaboration with a range of publishers and technology companies to help create standards for mobile optimised content and advertising able to offer as attractive a user experience as that offered by new off-site formats (WAN-IFRA 2016b). Unlike, for example, Facebook Instant Articles, AMP is not a format for off-site content, because it is still hosted by each publisher. But it is tied in with distributed discovery as it is one way of helping articles perform well in search rankings that increasingly prioritise mobile optimised sites. While many of the organisations covered here are working with one or more of these new formats for distributed content, it is important to underline that they have limited experience with them. Most of these initiatives have launched first in the United States and with a select set of launch partners, only gradually opening up to more publishers. They are also in most cases made available to users in different markets step by step. This means that media users in much of Europe have so far had limited exposure to most of these formats and that news organisations have little practical experience with them. Most interviewees anticipate that distributed discovery will continue to become more important, and distributed content accessed via off-site formats too. But the development is still surrounded by much uncertainty and little robust evidence. One interviewee says about the experience of working with Facebook Instant Articles and Google’s AMP format in 2016 that, so far, ‘the impact they’ve had has been much less material than we expected’. [51. Ibid.] Another interviewee has a broadly similar view of the current situation, but also says this will probably change rapidly:

I think where we’ll end up in a couple of years’ time is we’ll have two sources of traffic. There’ll be distributed traffic which never comes near our site and people may care about the brand, they may not. And then there’ll be the brand loyal traffic which is already what we’re spending more of our time focusing on as well. [52. Ibid.]

Opportunities and Challenges for News Organisations

Distributed discovery and the rise of distributed content presents news organisations with a range of opportunities and challenges. All the people we interviewed see search engines and social media as simultaneously intermediaries they need to work with to extend their reach and as potential competitors seeking control over distribution channels, audience data, and opportunities for monetisation. The central reason for working with search engines and social media is very clear: reach. Facebook in particular increasingly enables news organisations to reach a wider public, in particular younger people and other audiences who do not normally come direct to their sites or apps, let alone their legacy products. Michel Floquet, deputy director of information at TF1, says that ‘the main opportunity is to get in touch with a specific audience, younger people, who don’t rely on television newscasts anymore’. [53. Michel Floquet, deputy director of information, TF1, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 3 June 2016.] Social media in particular is seen as a necessary part of the fight for attention and reach. As noted in Table 1.2, between 50 and 70% of all online news users in the six countries covered are on Facebook. Anu Kuistiala, editor-in-chief, digital, at MTV News in Finland, explains the implications:

Well, in my view it would be stupid to not to go there. Because why would you fight against such giants? You can only lose by doing that. So it’s better to cooperate. … In Finland, a small country, there are around two million people who use [Facebook] daily. So if we don’t go there, [the audience] doesn’t come to us. That would be ridiculous. I mean, the biggest mistake would be not to go there. [54. Anu Kuistiala, editor in chief, digital, MTV News, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 1 June 2016.]

This opportunity, however, also comes with a number of challenges that all our interviewees underline to various degrees. The most important challenges include:

How do news organisations ensure editorial control and brand recognition in a more distributed environment?
How do news organisations capture audience data to inform decision-making?
How do news organisations design onward journeys from one piece of content to the next if people come across it via third-party platforms?
How do news organisations monetise search and social media traffic effectively to ensure they can cover the cost of producing news content?

The risk, as some see it, is that publishers become what Bruno Jauffret from La Voix du Nord calls ‘content providers for Facebook’. [55. Another interviewee says the danger is that ‘you’re on a social media platform and [people] can’t tell the difference between the information that’s there and they believe it’s all created via Facebook or via Google, etc.] Another interviewee says the danger is that ‘you’re on a social media platform and [people] can’t tell the difference between the information that’s there and they believe it’s all created via Facebook or via Google, etc. [56. Quote not for attribution.] For advertising-based businesses, referral traffic is useful as long as the advertising rates are high enough, but, with low rates especially on mobile, as one interviewee, who understandably does not want to have the quote attributed, says: ‘Honestly, now, I think there is no business model’. [57. Ibid.] For off-site, distributed content, while the current revenue split may seem attractive, many worry about whether the terms will change over time. For organisations developing pay models, search and social are seen more as marketing tools for attracting people and raising brand awareness with the clear goal of converting them to subscribers. Kaius Niemi, senior editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat, explains their approach, focused more on conversion than on traffic:

[Social media] is not only creating more page views but also [helping us reach] segments that we are not reaching so much with subscriptions. … We’re really trying to get people to stay more within our system, so that they do not just come in and quickly read an article and go back out again. … There’s a lot of people who are not really paying for anything although they keep coming back … We think that we are learning how to convert them little by little but it’s still really challenging, it’s not easy. [58. Kaius Niemi, senior editor-in-chief, Helsingin Sanomat, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 31 May 2016.]

The Link between Analytics, Editorial Priorities, and Organisational Imperatives

All the organisations covered work to different degrees with search engine optimisation, social media optimisation, and other strategies to leverage distributed discovery. Most of them are at least experimenting with distributed content formats. (Though all are conscious of the cost implications of potentially having to build teams to publish directly into different bespoke formats with different specifications all ultimately controlled by a third-party platform.) But their approach, and what they aspire to achieve, varies. News organisations’ approach to the rise of a more distributed media environment can be broadly categorised into those organisations that seek synergy across as many platforms as possible, those that engage with intermediaries on the basis of their ambition to be as self-reliant as possible, and those that aim to be more selective in their engagement. First, some news organisations are aggressively seeking synergy across as many platforms as possible with as much content as possible. The most important examples of this are US-based digital start-ups like BuzzFeed and to various degrees the Huffington Post, Mic, Quartz, and Vox (WAN-IFRA 2016b). But some private sector legacy news organisations have adopted a similar approach, in the US most prominently perhaps CNN and the Washington Post, who have both invested heavily in distributed discovery and distributed content, and in France Libération, which publishes all of its roughly 150 daily pieces on Facebook Instant Articles (Southern 2016a). None of the organisations we cover here have adopted a similarly aggressive pursuit of synergy. Second, some news organisations seek self-reliance first and foremost, and have not embraced the new formats offered by digital intermediaries. Several of the organisations we cover here, particularly in France and Germany, are reluctant to distribute their content through third-party platforms. Many define their approach as a ‘wait and see’ tactic, explaining that, before taking a decision on whether or not to adopt this strategy, they prefer to wait for the first results produced by competitors that started experimenting earlier. Other organisations are more direct in saying that they reject these solutions because the risks are much greater than the benefits. This is the case, for example, of Le Figaro. Anne Pican, digital director of Le Figaro’s website, says that they refused to take part in Facebook Instant Articles and defines their approach to distributed content as ‘conservative’ and ‘hyper-pragmatic’:

We are aware that our only exit strategy is our brand. If we distribute our content just anywhere, after a while people won’t come to our own sites any more. [59. Anne Pican, digital director of Figaro.fr, Le Figaro, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.]

Jean-Luc Breysse, deputy general director of Le Figaro Group, adds that Le Figaro Group also decided to adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach to Google AMP, due to the risk of losing control over their monetisation strategies and their audience data:

Obviously there is a risk that eventually, when the majority of the media companies’ audience is generated by dominant social media platforms, which is already the case in some countries, our ability to leverage that audience is not in our favour. It is a risk, all the more so, since these social media platforms have a track record of changing frequently and often radically their content promotion policy. [60. Jean-Luc Breysse, deputy general director, Le Figaro Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 2 June 2016.]

Similarly, Le Monde refuses to be part of Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP. Instead, they started a project with Snapchat Discover because this platform addresses an audience, younger people, that is completely different from Le Monde’s average readership. Snapchat is seen as an opportunity to reach new audiences rather than a competitor in the advertising market. [61. Catherine Joly, general secretary, Le Monde Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.] Similarly, the German commercial broadcaster RTL is not taking part in Facebook Instant Articles and uses social networks only ‘to draw attention and direct users to the content of our offers’, says Frank Müller, editor-in-chief of RTL interactive, who also explains that the reasons for using social media platforms only as teasers are to ‘market the content ourselves and monetise the reach’. [62. Frank Müller, editor-in-chief, RTL interactive, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Cologne on 20 May 2016.] This points to the third, and most widespread, compromise approach, where news organisations aim to be selective. Every new form of distributed discovery and distributed content requires upfront investments of scarce resources, and many organisations are determined to evaluate early results in terms of reach and revenues delivered by new formats like Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP before they decide how much to invest. Here, news organisations make minor commitments when opportunities present themselves, evaluate, and then decide which formats to pursue. Dmg media in the UK is one example. Kevin Beatty explains that the Mail Online ‘continues to enjoy large numbers of people coming directly to the homepage’, and they are ‘really focused on that’. The CEO of dmg media also explains that Martin Clarke, the publisher of Mail Online, participates in many of the third party distribution/partnership options, but they ‘don’t rush into it’:

We work with all of the major providers … [but] we just don’t rush into it. We are not on Apple News in the UK, for example… [but] we do participate in Facebook Instant Articles and we are on Snapchat. We will continue to work with the social media platforms to see how best we can make that business model work for us, whilst having to work for them. [63. Kevin Beatty, CEO, dmg media, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 10 May 2016.]

The Telegraph is also experimenting with distributing content offsite via Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News, and also works with Google AMP. Peter Lindsay says they ‘are happy to experiment’, but they ‘are also happy to pull back if they are not working’. He also comments on the first results of these experimentations:

[Results] are fine. I would say with all of them they’re not yet fundamentally changing the dynamic of our audience, but there’s potential promise there… I think we have to be careful about ensuring we continue to have direct access to our own customers. [64. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 21 June 2016.]

Similarly, the Italian national newspapers Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica are experimenting on both Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP. Although they say that other Italian publishers have adopted an enthusiastic approach and distribute all the content they can on third-party platforms, they preferred to adopt a cautious approach. For example, Michela Colamussi says that Il Corriere della Sera publishes only a small proportion of the digital news they produce on Facebook Instant Articles. [65. Michela Colamussi, marketing director, Digital Product and video, RCS, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 12 May 2016.] A key concern here is whether engagement with distributed discovery and distributed content will generate a reasonable return on investment and with the longer term implications of embracing new distributed formats. This is tied to each news organisations’ digital business model. For advertising-based models, there may be concerns over the revenue split between publisher and platform, and over the longer term implications if the terms change over time. For pay models, a lot rests on whether a given format enables subscription models and the like. Süddeutsche Zeitung, for example, is sceptical of Facebook Instant Articles because it does not offer good solutions for publishers with a paywall. As Stefan Plöchinger explains:

We do not feel badly treated. But you can become disillusioned very fast when you realise that for a project like Facebook Instant Articles, there is no effort, for example, to enable a subscription model. Therefore, we will not be part of it because subscription is an important part of our business model. … We realise that communication with them immediately stops when we want to discuss business models that also work for us. [66. Stefan Plöchinger, digital editor Süddeutsche Zeitung and editor-in-chief SZ.de, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Munich on 20 May 2016.]

Dealing with Large Technology Companies

Some interviewees explained off-the-record that the need to keep good relationships with social media and search engines affects the choice of many news organisations to take part in new initiatives, whether around distributed discovery or distributed content. One interviewee said: ‘Often news organisations participate in these experiments because they fear that not taking part might lead to them being penalised, e.g. they might be pushed down the search rankings.’ [67. Quote not for attribution.] Another media manager explained that their news organisation decided to be involved partly because they cannot have conflictual relationships with a platform that currently drives a large share of the overall traffic to their website. The underlying asymmetry is clearly and explicitly recognised by some interviewees, like one senior digital editor from a major news organisation who told us frankly:

Facebook is not dependent on us. At a very basic level. If [we] would not be here now, that would not be a problem for Facebook. Facebook needs publishers as a group, because people share their content and that is why Facebook is keen to have good relations with publishers. But they do not need us. [68. Ibid.]

Approaches to Mobile

The second current trend all interviewees focused on is the growth in the use of smartphones to access news. As Peter Lindsay states: ‘it’s old news to say that mobile is growing: mobile is already the dominant platform of choice’, the ‘number one platform for access’ to digital news. [69. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 21 June 2016.] News organisations are perfectly well aware that changing news consumption habits have a direct impact on their business. Nabil Wakim, director of editorial innovation at Le Monde, for example, explains that while their desktop traffic is quite stable, on their mobile apps it is growing between 5% and 10% per year and, especially on their mobile website, it is growing at a rate that can vary from 50% to 100% per year. [70. Nabil Wakim, director of editorial innovation, Le Monde, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on19 May 2016.] A large share, in some cases even a majority, of the overall news brands’ page views already comes from mobile devices. [71. This statement is based on figures provided by our interviewees.] The growth of mobile is certainly driven by the increasingly important role of social media and search engines in mobile news consumption behaviour. Malcolm Coles, director of digital media, Telegraph Media Group, explains:

Mobile platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and increasingly Google have given us bigger reach than ever before. … We know that most Facebook traffic is about 80 to 90% mobile. [72. Malcolm Coles, director of digital media, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 9 June 2016.]

Therefore, the growth in mobile use surely represents a great opportunity for news organisations to extend their digital reach. However, mobile use also involves the challenge of monetisation. Andreas Fettig, head of online at DerWesten, the website of Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, says:

About half of our reach is mobile now. So it is very, very important as a distribution channel and probably … will be even more important in the future. But, honestly, publishers have not yet developed a convincing business model for it. [73. Andreas Fettig, head of online derwesten.de, DerWesten, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Essen on 18 May 2016.]

A central challenge in the search for sustainable business models for mobile news is that the mobile advertising market is much less developed than the desktop advertising market. This is a major issue emphasised by all the organisations covered here. Although mobile devices account for 56% of Le Figaro’s traffic, for example, mobile may generate only 13% of the French newspaper’s digital revenues, says the group’s deputy general director Jean-Luc Breysse. [74. Jean-Luc Breysse, deputy general director, Le Figaro Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 2 June 2016.] Similarly, Emanuele Callioni, director of multimedia contents and technologies at Mediaset, reports that their traffic is almost equally split between desktop and mobile, but mobile generates only 10% of their digital turnover. [75. Emanuele Callioni, director of multimedia contents and technologies, Mediaset, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 11 May 2016.] Stefan Betzold, managing director digital at BILD, explains that the shift in consumers’ behaviour from desktop to mobile internet use is challenging the news industry because of the lower yields in the mobile advertising market, where the dominance of intermediaries is even greater than in the desktop internet advertising sector:

The relevance of mobile is growing, but there are two side effects. First, there is mobile monetisation, which is still much less than it is on online [desktop] – so the advertising ARPU [average revenue per user] in mobile is still much lower than the ARPU for an online visitor. Besides, there is a discrepancy between time spent [on mobile] by users and advertising spends from the clients. … [Second,] the dominance of the US platforms on mobile is even stronger than it is online. So if you look at the online competition, more or less 50% of the advertising spend goes to big US platforms – being the Apples, Googles, Facebooks, etc. If you look at the mobile market, according to eMarketer data, already two thirds of it is going to the big platforms. [76. Stefan Betzold, managing director digital, BILD, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in vienna on 21 Apr. 2016.]

This is compounded by the smaller amounts of screen space and the poor user experience of most existing advertising formats when transferred to mobile. The most profitable desktop digital advertising formats simply do not work on small mobile screens.

Strategies towards Mobile

Despite these challenges, the rapid growth in smartphone use for news strongly motivates news organisations to invest in mobile. Marek Kopeć, product manager of Fakt24.pl, explains that they consider investment in mobile an investment in the future:

Our strategy is to be the leading publisher in every channel, including mobile. We are fulfilling our strategic objectives, but … the Polish market is not yet ready for mobile campaigns. It’s growing about 300% year on year, but the base is still small. We want to be the leader and we need the reach. … It is an investment for the future. [77. Marek Kopeć, product manager of Fakt24.pl, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Warsaw on 10 June 2016.]

How are legacy news organisations responding to the growth of mobile? Many news organisations are working on a range of solutions to adapt their content to mobile devices. Andreas Fettig, head of online at derwesten.de, for example, explains that they plan to switch their website to a responsive design to ensure their news is optimised for both desktop and mobile internet. [78. Andreas Fettig, head of online derwesten.de, DerWesten, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Essen on 18 May 2016.] Other news organisations such as Rheinische Post, Le Figaro, and Il Corriere della Sera have created dedicated teams that are working on adapting their content presentation to mobile devices. Stephan Marzen, managing director at Rheinische Post, explains that different platforms involve different kinds of usage by the audience, and so they adapt text length and photo size to optimise their news for mobile consumption. [79. Stephan Marzen, managing director, Rheinische Post, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Düsseldorf on 17 May 2016.] Similarly, the Telegraph’s strategy focuses on adapting their content to the specific requirements of mobile use. However, Peter Lindsay explains that, rather than establishing a team dedicated to mobile, they ask all their journalists to ‘think mobile-first’. [80. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 21 June 2016.] Alessio Balbi says that La Repubblica has started a redesign of their websites and that they are doing so adopting a mobile-first approach: this time they did not start by changing the desktop homepage, as they had done many times in the past; rather, they started by designing the news pages for mobile devices, then they will work on the mobile homepage and, finally, they will work on the homepage for the desktop site. [81. Alessio Balbi, head of online, La Repubblica, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Rome on 29 Apr. 2016.] Other news organisations have already adopted a mobile-first approach. Jason Mills, for example, explains how they rebuilt the ITV News website some years ago:

When we rebuilt the website, four and a half years ago, it was built mobile-first. So that’swhy it’s a stream of news (because it’s adapting the thumb-down thumbing behaviour, soyou go down the stream); that’s why it’s very short little updates for short mobileconsumption; and we will subtitle almost every video now for mobile consumption; andthat’s why it’s a very simple website. It’s very simple on desktop because it’s built withmobile in mind. All content should be mobile first, so articles shouldn’t be too long, shouldbe picture rich, the video is short for clips. Video exists as part of the native storytelling, notas a side bar of video. [82. Jason Mills, head of digital, ITV News, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 26 May 2016.]

Mobile web and app users have different profiles. Jason Mills explains that ITV News registers a strong return rate and a high page view per user on the ITV app, whereas on the mobile browser they register a high bounce rate and a low rate of page views per user. This is because of the high number of visitors arriving on their mobile website from the Facebook app. [83. Ibid.] Similarly, David Higgerson, digital publishing director at Trinity Mirror (Regionals), points out that although the Manchester Evening News’s app users account for only 1% of their total users, they generate 30% of the total page views. Therefore, app users are ‘the most loyal and engaged’ audience for the brand. [84. David Higgerson, digital publishing director, Trinity Mirror (Regionals), interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Manchester on 1 July 2016.] Since the news apps are most likely to be used by the most loyal audiences, both ITV News and the Manchester Evening News have focused strongly on the development of their apps. Mills explains that ITV’s heritage is around regional news, and therefore personalised content and personalised notifications are key features differentiating their news from the competitors’ offers:

Apps allow you to identify where people are. So we have an app that gives you the news that’s local to you. We divided the country up into about 75 different areas and therefore you can get the news that’s local to your area, or any area you want. … We basically personalise alerts so you can get them around a story you’re interested in or around a local area that you are interested in. [85. Jason Mills, head of digital, ITV News, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 26 May 2016.]

Similarly, the Manchester Evening News segments its audience to deliver personalised notifications on the basis of different audience interests. Higgerson says:

People respond very well to push notifications when we target it around the things that they have chosen to be interested in. … One of the challenges we had in Manchester is [that there are two rival football teams:] Manchester City and Manchester United. If we send a blanket push notification for football, we just upset people. So we can segment them. [86. David Higgerson, digital publishing director, Trinity Mirror (Regionals), interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Manchester on 1 July 2016.]

Personalisation of content does not work well in every context and for every news organisation. Anu Kuistiala, editor-in-chief for digital at MTV News, for example, points out that they have experimented with personalised news, but only a limited part of their audience used this feature. [87. Anu Kuistiala, editor-in-chief, digital, MTV News, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 1 June 2016.] In addition, MTV’s app allows users to upload user-generated content (UGC), mainly pictures and videos. [88. Jyrki Huotari, managing editor, MTV News, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 2 June 2016.] Similarly, TVN24 in Poland, in addition to their general news app and website, have launched Kontakt24, a new platform (app and website) devoted to the gathering of UGC. The platform receives more than 100 contributions (news) per day from more than 70,000 citizen journalists, and a dedicated team verifies the information before publication, says Mateusz Sosnowski, TVN news portals unit director and TvN24 portal editor-in-chief. [89. Matrusz Sosnowski, TVN news portals unit director and TvN24 Portal editor-in-chief, interviewed by Annika Sehl via phone on 14 July 2016.] The next step many organisations are focusing on is getting mobile notifications to work better in terms of alerting users to compelling content and engaging them more. Push notifications are not used only for news. For example, Kaius Niemi explains that, on weekdays, Helsingin Sanomat tends to send notifications only about important news, whereas at weekends they use this tool to notify their subscribers that other kinds of content, such as books, are available free of charge on their app. [90. Kaius Niemi, senior editor-in-chief, Helsingin Sanomat, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 31 May 2016.]

Approaches to Online Video

Many news organisations are now investing in online news video operations. [91. For a more detailed analysis of online video news production, consumption, and strategies, see Kalegorepolous et al. 2016.] Their interest in this format is mainly driven by the fact that, in all the countries covered in this report, video advertising yields are growing fast and are already higher than display advertising yields. Marek Kopeć, product manager of Fakt24.pl, explains that the Polish tabloid publishes about 400 videos per month because online video ‘is a huge opportunity and, on the business side, it’s working very well’:

[Thanks to online videos] we are fighting for the TV budgets, which are very high, much higher than press budgets and online budgets. … So, this is why this is fast growing and this is why we are investing in that area. [92. Marek Kopeć, product manager of Fakt24.pl, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Warsaw on 10 June 2016.]

Online video advertising is therefore a growing and potentially important revenue stream for publishers. Michela Colamussi, for example, reports that advertisers are strongly interested in pre-rolls [93. A pre-roll is an online video ad that runs before an online video.] and ‘the more digital video you can stream, the more digital revenue you can generate.’ Il Corriere della Sera is therefore able to generate 18–20 million video views per month, and online video produces approximately 20% of their digital revenues. [94. Michela Colamussi, marketing director, digital product and video, RCS, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 12 May 2016.] Similarly, La Repubblica generates between 30 and 40 million online video views per month, and online video already produces between 20% and 25% of their digital advertising revenue, says Pier Paolo Cervi, general director of the digital division of Gruppo L’Espresso. [95. Pier Paolo Cervi, general director of the digital division, Gruppo L’Espresso, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 23 May 2016.] Online video is also considered important because it allows news organisations, in particular newspaper publishers, to adopt new and more effective storytelling formats. Julian Reichelt, editorin- chief BILD Digital, explains that it would be ‘stupid’ for a brand like BILD, which focuses strongly on emotions, not to fully exploit the potential of online video:

Since the production has become so much easier, it would be even more stupid not to do it. Because video content can be very emotive… it’s content that gets directly into the brain. You can consume videos when you are tired, they can be consumed out of the corner of your eye, [whereas] I cannot read like that. … Video emotionalises immediately, it reaches us immediately, that is the core of images. It immediately reaches my emotions. … That is why it is obligatory for an emotive brand like BILD. We have also invested a lot to learn techniques, technologies, and knowledge about the distribution of videos. And it has meant that on BILD more videos are watched than ever before. [96. Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief BILD Digital, BILD, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Berlin on 13 May 2016.]

Strategies for Online News Video

News organisations are therefore investing strongly in online video production and curation. The Finnish tabloid Iltalehti, for example, publishes between 150 and 200 videos per week, and tries to add a video to most of the stories they distribute, says Erkki Merilouto, publishing editor, news, at Iltalehti. [97. Erkki Merilouto, publishing editor, news, Iltalehti, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 1 June 2016.] They have established a dedicated video unit for this purpose, but they also encourage their journalists to shoot short videos with their smartphones when they are out in the field doing interviews or collecting information. [98. Antti Haarala, head of digital services, Iltalehti, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Helsinki on 2 June 2016.] Iltalehti is also experimenting with Facebook Live and producing subtitled video, focusing on lighter topics such as lifestyle and DIY, that can be watched without the audio. Many other news brands are currently experimenting with social video or have already started to produce it. These subtitled videos can be watched without the audio and work particularly well on social media platforms. This is considered a trendy format that can lead to success on social media. Stefan Plöchinger says Süddeutsche Zeitung started publishing social video only a few months before the interview, and acknowledges that they have ‘ignored that form of video storytelling for years.’ [99. Stefan Plöchinger, digital editor Süddeutsche Zeitung and editor-in-chief SZ.de, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Munich on 20 May 2016.] Other news organisations are also experimenting with new ways to monetise online video (see the next box). In 2009 the Italian newspaper La Repubblica established a visual desk, a team of approximately 30 people that publishes between 130 and 150 videos per day and creates other visual and interactive widgets and content. One third of the published videos are internally produced, one third are bought from news agencies, and one third come from their network of video-makers, says Alessio Balbi, head of online at La Repubblica. [100. Alessio Balbi, head of online, La Repubblica, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Rome on 29 Apr. 2016.] Pier Paolo Cervi, general director of the digital division at Gruppo L’Espresso, explains that, in the first phase of online video development, La Repubblica moved from text-based news to video-based news, whereas in the current second phase the brand is expanding its online video offer to cover also entertainment and lifestyle topics. Within this strategy, the Italian newspaper has recently launched Webnotte, a weekly music programme that hosts the most popular Italian bands and singers. The gigs are both live-streamed and curated to produce short VODs that are distributed in particular through Facebook. Generally, each episode is watched by 300,000 to 400,000 unique visitors. [101. Pier Paolo Cervi, general director of the digital division, Gruppo L’Espresso, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Milan on 23 May 2016.] Investing in a format that has little to do with news allows La Repubblica to reach new audiences and to attract new sponsorship. [102. Alessio Balbi, head of online, La Repubblica, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Rome on 29 Apr. 2016.] Other news organisations have expanded their use of online video in sectors not strictly related to news and experimented with new formats. BILD, for example, launched a (digital) paid content offer in 2013, which includes on-demand highlight clips of football matches. Donata Hopfen explains that in June 2016 they had 200 million monthly video views, mainly due to breaking news and the European Soccer Championships. [103. Donata Hopfen, publishing director and head of management board, BILD-Group, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Berlin on 21 July 2016.] Similarly, the Telegraph has launched an online video series focusing on news and explainers, but also on other topics such as lifestyle, fashion, and recipes. Peter Lindsay explains the Telegraph’s strategy for online videos:

Our philosophy there is: we have to be very clear what segment of video we’re playing in. A lot of publishers go into video without a clear strategy of what they’re doing. So we are trying to make a name and carve a niche for types of content that the Telegraph can be known for. So certain types of multi-episode short series, not necessary long form, but short to medium form. Again, some of it around politics, but some of it is around lifestyle and food and drink and recipes. So the Telegraph becomes more of a destination for video and known for certain types of video. So we’re not trying to compete with Netflix or the BBC. Nor are we trying to compete with really fast breaking news video. Like a lot of that breaking news video can be adapted from the Press Association and regurgitated, right. So we’re trying to be clever about where we invest, and we expect the proportion of advertising from video to grow a lot over the next two to three years. [104. Peter Lindsay, director of strategy, Telegraph Media Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 21 June 2016.]

[105. Jean-Luc Breysse, deputy general director, Le Figaro Group, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 2 June 2016.] [106. Pierre Mauchamp, deputy editor-in-chief, La Voix du Nord, interviewed by Alessio Cornia via Skype on 27 June 2016.]

The Difficulties in (Not) Being a Broadcaster in the Online Video Era

Producing online video still represents a challenge for newspaper organisations, whose traditional medium is the written word. Nabil Wakim, for example, explains that Le Monde has approximately 10 million online video views per month, but producing video is still ‘complicated’ for them:

We started doing our journalism with text, therefore video is important but is still new for us. We are aware that it is a long-term construction project. We will not become, overnight, a media organisation that works primarily with videos. Out of 350 journalists working in our newsroom, we have a video team of ten people. Of course, video is important for us, but producing video is expensive, it requires investment in skilled people. We are building it little by little. [107. Nabil Wakim, director of editorial innovation, Le Monde, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Paris on 19 May 2016.]

Producing online video is challenging, especially for some regional newspapers, whose structures and resources are generally more limited than those of national newspapers. Stephan Marzen, for example, says that, at Rheinische Post, they are absolutely aware of the relevance of online video but, ‘unfortunately’, they don’t produce enough videos. [108. Stephan Marzen, managing director, Rheinische Post, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Düsseldorf on 17 May 2016.] Similarly, Debora Peroni, online marketing manager at Il Resto del Carlino, explains that, despite the high value of online video advertising, it is quite difficult for them to sustain original video production with the revenue generated by this activity, because of the high cost of producing online videos internally. For this reason, most of the videos they distribute are bought from an external agency. [109. Debora Peroni, online marketing manager, Monrif Net, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in Bologna on 16 May 2016.] This solution is quite common. DerWestern, for example, produces one to two original videos per day focusing on regional events, and purchases other video from external agencies, says Andreas Fettig, head of online at derwesten.de. [110. Andreas Fettig, head of online derwesten.de, DerWesten, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Essen on 18 May 2016.] But many national newspapers also rely heavily on external services for video production, even when video teams have been established within their newsroom. As Kevin Beatty explains, even a newspaper with a large digital reach such as the Mail Online is principally a curator, rather than a producer, of online video:

We are primarily a commissioner, a curator of great video, and obviously because of our scale we get huge video plays, but at the moment we don’t originate much of our own bespoke video. [111. Kevin Beatty, CEO, dmg media, interviewed by Alessio Cornia in London on 10 May 2016.]

Producing online video is a challenge for television broadcasters too, because online video is a different format that involves different quality standards and production procedures from television content. As pointed out by Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief BILD Digital, broadcasting organisations often struggle to escape from established routines:

The greatest disruption, I believe, is not for us but for TV. We have already gone through this, with what the internet has done to the print media. The biggest disruption I see at the moment is for TV. With live technologies like Periscope, or the successful Facebook Live, this will be bitter, because TV investments in technology were higher and therefore the write-off is higher for them. … We see that TV, much like print in the beginning, has enormous difficulties making use of the new technologies. Fear of self-cannibalism, strong habits: … ‘where is my big camera?’ … ‘where is my sound man?’ They are going through the same as we did. [112. Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief BILD Digital, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Berlin on 13 May 2016.]

The fact that online video quality standards represent an issue for television broadcasters, as well as the difficulties in finding the right balance between the costs and benefits of online video, is confirmed by other interviewees. Eva Messerschmidt, manager of sales and digital products at n-tv, also says that, as a TV news channel, they ‘have the great advantage to rely on well-produced and high-quality video material’. N-tv also established a web-video unit to produce original videos for social media and other digital channels. However, they do this by ‘always bearing in mind the cost-benefit ratio’:

[Online] video needs a lot of clicks to recoup their production cost. Anyway, as a broadcaster we can benefit from our access to existing visual material. But due to innovative ideas and new possibilities we are contemporaneously developing even further. … As the brand n-tv, a company of Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, we have to comply with certain quality standards. Although we would achieve many clicks with funny cat videos we are clear in our minds that it does not fit to the brand n-tv. [113. Eva Messerschmidt, manager of sales and digital products, n-tv, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Cologne on 19 May 2016.]

In a context where most broadcasters are not inclined to invest in original online video production, some broadcasters can easily find a position in this specific market. Łukasz Dulniak, social media and new projects manager at TVN24, explains that the other Polish news broadcasters are not significantly investing in digital, and this is a big opportunity for TVN:

Neither of them has really significant digital news operations going on, so what differentiates TVN24.pl is that we just have a lot of video to use and to flood the web with it. … We sell news, but all of our news has video. That’s our way of business right now. [114. Łukasz Dulniak, social media and new projects manager, TvN24, interviewed by Annika Sehl in Warsaw on 8 June 2016.]

Conclusion

In this report, we have analysed how private sector legacy news organisations like newspapers and commercial broadcasters across Europe are adapting to a continually changing digital media environment. Based on interviews with 54 executives, senior managers, and editors across 25 legacy news organisations in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom, we have shown that newspapers and commercial broadcasters, sometimes criticised for their conservatism (e.g. Boczkowski 2004, Christensen et al. 2012, Küng 2015), are investing in a wide variety of new digital initiatives to reach new audiences and generate new revenues. All the organisations covered see audiences moving from offline media to online media – quickly in the case of print to digital, and so far more slowly in the case of television to online. All aim to make similar moves to retain the audience connection on which both their editorial impact and their business models depend. ‘We need to be where the audience is’ is a frequently repeated mantra. All are also making significant investments across social media, mobile media, and online video – and sometimes in all three – as they seek to adapt to a constantly and rapidly evolving digital media environment. Especially for smaller local and regional players, or for larger companies with rapidly declining legacy revenues, freeing up resources for these investments is a major challenge. Experimentation is necessary, but also costly and uncertain. These are common features found across the cases covered in six otherwise very different markets – different in how developed digital media, social media, and mobile media use is, and different in terms of how rapidly legacy media are losing audiences and advertising. Many of the newspapers and commercial broadcasters we have researched here have built significant audience reach online, but so far, few have developed profitable business models for digital news. This is another common feature across all six countries. In most cases, 80 to 90% of revenues and most of the profit still comes from legacy operations that are declining (print) or still stable (broadcasting). Digital revenues are still limited and the resources for investments in digital generally come from cross-subsidies from legacy operations or from cost-cutting elsewhere in each organisation. This means all of these legacy media have to continue balancing exploiting present business models with exploring future opportunities. Most of the organisations covered have historically offered digital news free at the point of consumption and primarily relied on display advertising for digital revenues. With the exception of a few dominant players, this model is widely seen as under severe pressure from a combination of three factors: (1) the large and growing share of online advertising going to international players like Google and Facebook, (2) the low average revenue per users on the mobile web (where advertising rates are lower and each page contains fewer ads), and (3) the increasing use of ad-blockers. These challenges mean that more and more newspapers are moving to various forms of pay models, with the exception of a few high-profile titles with very large audiences. Only a minority of online news users have been willing to pay so far, but interviewees are cautiously optimistic that the number will grow. Beyond the turn to pay models, private sector legacy news organisations are exploring other alternative sources of revenue to supplement display advertising and subscription, most importantly (1) the launch of new verticals, repackaged content products, and sections aimed at cultivating specific audiences more effectively, (2) investment in native advertising and branded content activities that are more effectively differentiated from generic display advertising, and (3) diversification with a move into e-commerce, business-to-business services, and offline activities including events and merchandising. National newspapers are generally exploring new avenues more aggressively than broadcasters, in large part because the decline in their legacy revenues is much more severe, making the transition to digital that much more urgent. Local and regional newspapers are experiencing similar declines in legacy revenues, but in many cases have fewer resources to invest in new initiatives. This too is a common feature across all six countries. Broadcasters, who have more stable legacy revenues, have also invested in building digital reach, but have so far invested less in developing digital news as a part of their overall business. The degree to which different private sector legacy news organisations invest in digital initiatives, and the overall strategy they pursue (scale and advertising versus niche with a greater emphasis on pay) varies depending on a range of external and internal factors. The external factors are largely beyond the control of any one individual organisation, and include (1) how quickly audiences in a given country are moving to digital media and how technologically advanced the environment is, (2) the development of the digital media market itself including advertising expenditures and people’s willingness to pay, (3) the inherited, historically path dependent structure of the news industry itself, and (4) how existing and new entrants, including both news organisations and other players, compete for audiences and advertising, including how they price their products and services. The certainty that both private sector and public service competitors continue to offer online news free at the point of consumption means that organisations aiming to succeed with pay models need to be confident that their news is of higher quality, effectively differentiated from alternatives, and clearly recognised as such by audiences. This challenge is particularly clear in the extremely competitive English-language market where users have many free alternatives to choose from when any one title opts for a pay model. In terms of internal factors, over which individual organisations have a greater degree of control, previous research has highlighted the importance of some factors that are specific to the news industry and some that are seen as more generally applicable across industries. Lucy Küng’s research on innovation in digital news suggests that common traits of more successful organisations include a clear strategic focus, senior leadership dedicated to change, a pro-digital culture, and a deep integration of editorial, technological, and commercial expertise in developing new products and services (Küng 2015). Most of the organisations covered here aspire to acquire these traits, with varying degrees of success. Strategic focus is particularly difficult in a very uncertain and constantly changing environment, and a commitment to legacy media and established ways of doing things still runs deep in the organisational culture of many newspapers and commercial broadcasters. More generally, this points to the importance of a variety of organisational features that business scholars have underlined as important for balancing the exploration of future opportunities and the exploitation of present ones. Generally, new exploratory and innovation-oriented initiatives benefit from a high degree of autonomy and separation from day-to-day operations even as they need to be carefully managed at the senior level to ensure progress is evaluated, lessons learned, and decisions made about what to continue, what to discontinue, and what new experiments to launch (see e.g. Christensen et al. 2012, O’Reilly and Tushman 2004). While attractive in principle, these more autonomous or separate structures can be difficult to maintain in practice as more converged or integrated operations offer opportunities for cost-saving and an important opportunity to change the overall culture of an organisation to be more pro-digital. Provided the organisation as a whole accepts a new strategic focus and develops a pro-digital culture, integration may work. If not, digital operations are likely to continue to be constrained by established ways of doing journalism and doing business. All our interviewees expect to see audiences and advertising continue to move from offline to online media, and expect to see the digital media environment itself continue to change, driven by evolving forms of use, new technologies, and initiatives from large technology companies. Individual private sector legacy news organisations are adapting to this with varying degrees of success, but no clear generally applicable model(s) for sustainable digital news production have been developed so far. Every organisation examined is experimenting and forging its own path, seeking a balance between exploiting legacy operations, building digital operations, and exploring the opportunities ahead. Experimentation and exploration are an uncertain business, but encouraging in themselves - it is because of their decision to invest in the future that newspapers and commercial broadcasters continue to be central to an increasingly digital media environment.

References

Note: All URLs were accessed in Sept. 2016. Boczkowski, P. 2004. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Boland, M. 2016. ‘Native Ads will Drive 74% of All Ad Revenue by 2021’, Business Insider, 14 June, http://www.businessinsider.com/the-native-ad-report-forecasts-2016-5?IR=T Christensen, C. M., Skok, D. and Allworth, J. 2012. ‘Breaking News’, Nieman Reports, Sept. http://niemanreports.org/articles/breaking-news Deutz, J. and Fard-Yazdani, D. 2016. Axel Springer’s Presentation at the Berenberg TMT Conference 2016, Zurich, 1 June 2016, http://www.axelspringer.de/dl/23496576/16-05-30_AxelSpringer_Berenberg_Zuerich_neu.pdf EAO. 2014. Yearbook 2014: Television, Cinema, Video and On-Demand Audiovisual Services – the Pan-European Picture. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. EAO. 2016. Yearbook 2015: Television, VOD, Cinema and Video in 39 European States: Markets and Players, Services and Usage. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. (Yearbook Online Service accessed July 2016). Hamilton, J. 2004. All the News that’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Internet World Stats. 2016. Online database, http://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm#fi Kalogeropoulos, A., Cherubini, F. and Newman, N. 2016. The Future of Online News Video. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Küng, L. 2015. Innovators in Digital News. London: I.B. Tauris. Mediatique. 2012. The Provision of News in the UK. A Report for Ofcom. London: Mediatique. Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Levy, D. and Nielsen, R. K. 2016. Digital News Report 2016. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Newman, N., Levy, D. and Nielsen, R. K. 2015. Digital News Report 2015. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. New York Times. 2014. Innovation, 24 Mar. http://www.presscouncil.org.au/uploads/52321/ufiles/The_New_York_Times_Innovation_Report_-_March_2014.pdf Nielsen, R. K. 2012. Ten Years that Shook the Media World. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Nielsen, R. K. and Sambrook, R. 2016. What is Happening to Television News? Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Ofcom. 2015. International Communications Market Report 2015. London: Ofcom. O’Reilly, C. A. and Tushman, M. L. 2004. ‘The Ambidextrous Organization’, Harvard Business Review 82, 74–81. Picard, R. G. 2011. The Economics and Financing of Media Companies. 2nd edn. New York: Fordham University Press. Seetharaman, D. 2016. ‘Facebook Revenue Soars on Ad Growth’, Wall Street Journal, 28 Apr. http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-revenue-soars-on-ad-growth-1461787856 Sehl, A., Cornia, A. and Nielsen, R. K. 2016. Public Service News and Digital Media. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Southern, L. 2016a. ‘For France’s Libération, Facebook Instant Articles Drives a 30 Percent Increase in Time Spent’, Digiday UK, 23 Mar. http://digiday.com/publishers/facebook-instantarticles-leads-30-percent-increase-time-spent-liberation Southern, L. 2016b. ‘How Bild is Using vR and 360-Degree video for Breaking News’, Digiday UK, 1 Aug. http://digiday.com/publishers/bild-using-vr-360-degree-video-breaking-news. VanNest, A. 2015. ‘Facebook Continues to Beat Google in Sending Traffic to Top Publishers’, Parse.ly, 4 Dec. http://blog.parsely.com/post/2855/facebook-continues-to-beat-google-insending-traffic-to-top-publishers WAN-IFRA. 2015. World Press Trends 2015. Paris: WAN-IFRA. WAN-IFRA. 2016a. World Press Trends Database, http://www.wptdatabase.org WAN-IFRA. 2016b. Distributed Content. Part 1: What it All Means to News Publishing Strategy. Paris: WAN-IFRA. World Bank. 2016. Online database, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL

List of interviewees

Positions are those people held at the time they were interviewed.

Why Trust Matters

simonl — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

How often do we think about trust in our daily lives? There are numerous occasions on which we unconsciously test some experience against the question: is this the right thing for me to do/buy/eat/believe? Sniffing food before eating it is an example of an unconscious trust test. Will this ice take my weight? Do I trust that driver to respect the pedestrian crossing before I step out? But it’s rarer for us to test consciously and deliberately whether we trust something.

One area where it does happen though, and often, is with the news. In print or on screen, we find ourselves challenging the veracity of news reports all the time. ‘Life on Mars!’ screams the headline. Really? Is that actually Kim Kardashian’s [insert body part here]? Do I believe in anonymous sources? Did somebody pay the newspaper to run this story? Can I trust the journalist, or the editor, or the proprietor to give me an honest report? Or do I not care whether the ‘news’ I see is true or not, just so long as it’s entertaining?

In Britain, we have a long history of independent journalism, although not as long as we like to think. The presence of august organisations such as the BBC, Reuters, or the FT, all of which we – and much of the world – instinctively trust to be unbiased, cements the feeling that we are protected rather than misled by the media.

Yet, as verified not only by the Reuters Institute research, but also our own Edelman Trust Barometer data, in Britain we do not actually trust the media overall. Even including those organisations of high reputation, the Barometer tells us that only 55% of Brits trust the traditional media (defined as broadcasters and newspapers, including their web offerings) to do the right thing. The Digital News Report offers a similar figure, showing trust levels at 50%.

This seems unimpressive, even worrying, but in fact the UK is about mid-table in terms of trusting the media, on the face of it. Dig down a little into the data, however, and another trend emerges: a disparity – perhaps unsurprising – between levels of trust based on the type of media.

This shows television news main bulletins score between 69% and 74% in the Edelman data (Edelman Trust Barometer 2016, UK supplementary research). At the other end of the scale, red-top newspapers score between 37% and 42%. Middle-market British papers scored between 46% and 55%, while what used to be called broadsheets are trusted, on average, by between 58% and 66% (Edelman Trust Barometer 2016, UK supplementary research).

These figures seem reasonable until one explanatory aspect is introduced: these are the trust figures for people who actually read those titles. Among those who are not paying customers, trust in the lower end of the market is in a range of 9% to 17%, in the mid-30s for mid-market, and mid-50s for the ‘heavies’ (Edelman Trust Barometer 2014, unpublished research). Accordingly, it’s tempting to assume that this is a recent phenomenon, provoked perhaps by the phone-hacking scandal of 2011 and a series of high-profile trials that followed in which journalists were cast in an unfavourable and disagreeable light. But that is not supported by research. Again, from two sources: our tracking data from before the time that phone-hacking hit the headlines shows trust levels in the media immediately after the scandal only three percentage points lower than in our most recent survey; and EU study from 2010 places UK newspapers rock bottom in a survey of 27 member nations when people were asked if they trusted newspapers to tell the truth. Britain’s press scored 18%, compared with an EU average of 43%. The next least trusted national newspaper industry, in Greece, recorded a trust level of 28%.

Of course, to some extent this is a global issue. The wider news spreads, the more it gets questioned. The more information people are exposed to, the more they have to exercise their critical faculties. It is a supply-side issue as well: the more sources that come into being, the more contradictions in reports of the same story will be thrown up. And it is an issue of technology and malign intent: the more digital tricks that become available to propagandists and hoaxers, the less trust we ought to place.

The fact is, in the face of an expanding universe of information, every day increasingly feels like April Fool’s Day. But does all this really matter? Well, I would argue that it does. The fact of the matter is that the amount of trust that people are able to place in the institutions that govern or inform their lives accords closely with their sense of happiness. So in a broad, societal sense, it matters whether or not our media is trusted.

In the face of an expanding universe of information, every day increasingly feels like April Fool’s Day.

A drop in trust of media among the mass of the population has come in a general atmosphere in which institutions and other areas of public life have been tarnished all over the world. Just think of Parliament (expenses), sport (FIFA or doping), the financial services industry.

These scandal-led impacts on trust intertwine with a heightening of awareness of inequality across societies and an increasing distrust of elites, reflected in the emergence of candidates who stand (some more than others) outside the norm of politics.

It is a simple evil for us all if people do not trust what they read or hear or see. Any examination of political rhetoric shows how facts have been subsumed into the same calculations of value as opinion; balance in arguments is harder and harder to achieve and public discourse becomes shallower and more partisan, whether held in legislatures or on Twitter.

The Trust Barometer makes it very clear every year that when people trust a company, they buy their products.

So, in that context, it certainly matters that an increasingly large group of people are cynical about what they read, and that is particularly important when it comes to critical public issues such as the UK’s referendum on its membership of the EU. More simply, it is also a matter of commercial survival for the media companies in question. The Trust Barometer makes it very clear every year that, when people trust a company, they buy their products, they pay a higher price over comparable products, and they recommend them to friends.

Everybody knows that media companies, particularly publishers, are struggling with a grim outlook of plunging advertising revenues in print and digital, falling circulation, and the commoditisation of news online. This year has started dismally for them. The first quarter has seen the forced marriage of two great Italian titles, La Repubblica and La Stampa, the closure of the Independent in print, massive job culls at the Guardian, and further cuts rumoured in other UK groups. In countries such as Norway, where the government already subsidises local newspapers to stay open, there are urgent debates about whether to cut down the activities of the state broadcaster to help the online editions of newspapers survive. On the face of it, there are very few industries more in need of the boost that could be offered by increased trust than the news industry.

As it happens, there is no probable correlation between trust in the media and willingness to pay for online news, as recorded in the Digital News Report. But surely it is not a coincidence that the country which is rock bottom in terms of trust in the press (as opposed to the media generally) is also least likely of the markets surveyed by the Reuters Institute to pay for, or to consider paying for, online news?

There are of course other reasons why Britons won’t pay for online news – the commercial companies point to the huge and somewhat overbearing presence of the publicly funded BBC and they have a point, although the Digital News Report shows that payment levels are far higher in other countries – Finland, Sweden, Norway, Korea – where there are also powerful national broadcasters.

However, before we jump to connect the dots, we should think a bit harder: it’s probably just as likely to be true that many people no longer visit media outlets to get ‘trusted’ information. They go for fun. Or outrage. Qualitative research based on the Trust Barometer findings shows that people are likely to rate trustworthiness much lower as a reason for loyalty to a news source than how ‘informative’ – for which read gossipy – or whether or not the source is free.

And wasn’t that always the case? News consumers are sophisticated, as they show in the Digital News Report every year. They know they can trust some sources more than others and they don’t mind. But if they can’t trust a source, their view is, why should I pay for this? The inevitable conclusion is that trust isn’t a market-mover for every media owner, but for those who are going to rely on being paid online, it strikes me as being rather important.

All the evidence of recent history suggests that the advance of technology and the continued multiplication of news sources will only widen the split between those who trade in trust and those who trade in sensation. In other words, nothing changes except the technology. Nothing changes except the pace of change.

Test

hannah.marsh — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

But in 2014, the promise of storytelling in the new medium of VR remained elusive. Early experiments are captured in two excellent reports: Virtual Reality Journalism (2015) from the Tow Center and Viewing the Future? Virtual Reality in Journalism (2016) from the Knight Foundation.4 This report takes up the story where they left off. [5. The Tow Center and Knight Foundation reports identified a number of challenges with VR/360 content including storytelling potential, ethics questions, expense of production, monetisation issues, and the fact that potential consumer adoption and the growth of the market were largely unknown.]

Chapter one

Howto Record a Wedding Scam

test-editor — Mon, 22 May 2017 09:36:34 +0000

Clearly, you will find always a number of things which are potential to do to be sure your first composition is just a great one. A good technique to acquire better would college essay writing service get article trial. Here are a few superb article subjects that children may possibly discover simple to compose. This typically means that's almost impossible for some one to plan every potential essay matter they might come across when using this test. Just in case you might be creating an academic essay. The following measure to writing a brilliant essay, whatever the distinct TOEFL article topics, might be to set a clear path from the start Composing this type of essay isn't a straightforward job. Writing an ideal essay can become a problem!

Collection yourself apart with excellent syntax and spelling.

One requires these abilities to be able to talk to their fellow workers. Writing an excellent article may be boring work for students from rather a number of years, but with a suitable guidance it is possible to enrich his writeup really easily. 2Nd, composing abilities are vital for appropriate communicating in the work scene. Exceptional writing abilities are vital for successful communication. Certainly, a few of these new experiences may certainly be more pleasant than several others, yet one which you may not be capable of liberate from is essay assignments. Bearing this in mind, don't suppose that somebody has writing abilities which are to level because he speaks properly. Teach each applicant to spell out on paper the way to deal with the situation. This really same four- sentence paragraph arrangement might be used to create the expected 3''most significant'' sentences within the illustration essay (one many significant paragraph for every of the three primary purposes within the dissertation statement ) too as any sub paragraphs for each and every principal paragraph.

Try grape, butter, coconut oil, and mayonnaise.

It doesn't require to be in the state article kind or ideal sentences. Precisely the same is true for each of the other paragraphs of a five paragraph essay. Utilize this overall essay structure to earn a thorough outline on your own essays. This book likewise has a wonderful section on how to enrich your composition writing. Your readers was engaged in your body paragraphs, along with your composing nevertheless ought to be directing them straight back for your own thesis assertion. Inside this portion of the short post, we'll provide you with some hints for creating an outstanding reflective composition. Use our SAT essay area to receive obvious suggestions for the best way to manage the essay. Therefore remember to know the subject you're writing about!

So, make sure they deserve to be there.

Writing training inside this course allowed me to understand and dissect my ideas. Teachers should also offer the children proper recommendations for each form of essay which they need to compose. No matter your purpose, simply keep on composing. Phrases reveal a small choice and word choice is acceptable. Design is a vital element of writing skills. Composing style is among the principal aspects written down. Hence, your essay about the 1st question must EXAMINE the functions of both writers.

The location has much to provide.

Also before beginning studying, you might be required to understand what it's you are heading to try unraveling through the article. This list deals with quite a few the simple to write composition topics. The composition demands a position on the matter and can offer an essential context for discussion. It shows little or no understanding of the endeavor. The composition needs a position on the matter and may provide some context for dialogue. 10,000 to get a much more complicated 2000- phrase article and become paid for alterations.

Morrison Critical Essays.

test-editor — Mon, 22 May 2017 09:37:23 +0000

You might never must convert to a different composition writing company. We'll keep to your private deadlines as well as in respect to composing essays, they're planning to permanently prior to all of your instructions. That is the key reason why I will be very happy to work with you with http://besteditingonline.com/ this specific period of writing your report. Simply attempt to get essays online and also let's show you how a completely published document resembles. It's possible For You Yourself To verify how skilled these writers by critiquing our completely free essays, free composition reviews, totally free book essays, completely free investigation essays, totally free summation essays, absolutely free composition term papers viewable inside our dissertation writing weblog. Through this segment you'll find types of essays owned by many article varieties and ways of formatting. You may not discover plagiarism within your essay as it's not there! You've just found the very best online essay author assist !

The writers should really not be unable to structure the paper's content effectively.

Our personalized essay publishing company comprises many free bonuses by way of example free of charge address page, for free format, and totally free bibliography page. We promise totally free efficiencies to published essays relative to your teaching. Your composition writer can help you! "Write my essay" is probably the most well-known demands online. Once you surf our site regarding suggestions which could guide you to create your own personal article, you'll discover several helpful suggestions. You could take pleasure in the most truly effective essaywritingservice. Are you truly considering Compose - Our - Essay - For - Myself.

Suitable Words for a Compassion Card

test-editor — Mon, 22 May 2017 09:37:33 +0000

Every document really has to be of the optimum standard as the documents tend to be written from the view of the skilled author on the issue. Here is still another illustration of complimentary essay on Economics, it may possibly assist you with your article writing. Also, It gives the potential guidance of whatever is included within the article. Upon the papers being acquired within the company, it's going to be assigned to an expert composition documents author who'll create it entirely from scratch utilizing the relevant and current particulars. Custom essay to purchase on line should have various sources of information like articles, books and mags that may aid Spanish essays writers to gather data and details to utilize in custom essay writing. Don't seek support from cons who'll present a badly written composition. Authorship an excellent custom composition isn't an effortless endeavor, it needs tons of abilities and devotion. To compose an outstanding custom essay, first determine on the right topic. It really is quite simple to find high levels nowadays, you simply have to locate a fantastic essay writing service.

According chinese medicine, skin labels really are a signal of central moisture in the body to.

It's critical for learners to seek affordable legitimate essay writing assistance from specialists. This actually is because in order to acquire legitimate article writing help, some one should pay keen concentration to the appropriate structure and types, which are vital for writing the documents. It uses that one would need to spend hours hunting the article banks ( frequently having to buy the correct to look at several essays ) to be able to realize an affordable amount of investigation to refer to. It's potential for You to write posts for assorted sites and get handsome amount of cash Some issues are just therefore soaked within the market the post submission websites only don't have any use in their opinion. Post sites have exceptionally substantial requirements. Both sites pay writers with the advance, and an extra payment is supplied in the big event the viewer traffic because of this brief article is high. Writing articles is actually a fire for a number of individuals and it's a hobby for the others. Every one may earn cash composing online.

Now you can size it by selecting picture-->scale.

It's potential That You do so through among the several content factories on the net or through independent writing sites. In the event you've got talent for writing and would like to bring in, you are able to earn money through composing for assorted websites, blogs and article submission sites. If you're an entrepreneur with no idea on how better to publish your self, it is nevertheless possible to join for educational writing accounts and out source the educational work. The author must have a clear of what they are actually writing and assure that the info is organized in a appropriate manner. There exists various strategies to break in the freelance writing profession. These are two primary means of starting out freelance writing at home. Although you might not have composed for all of us in your whole lifestyle, you can make money creating online!

Do not assure unclear or don't preserve your viewer betting relating to this.

There are loads of merchandise available to assist you with composing, and acquiring this ability offers you an advantage over other web business developers. This really will not imply that you maynot make money composing. This is among the many famous procedures individuals make money creating on the web.

Tim McGraws secret daughter Did Hill is cheated on by Tim McGraw

test-editor — Mon, 22 May 2017 09:37:37 +0000

Your own personal essay custom essay is an important portion of the university application procedure and you will need to make certain that you are composing it in a manner that represents your maturity and in a manner which is expert. If you're trapped in the major stage to do research and don't have any time for real composing, you should think about setting a buy on the internet to find personal essay for college. For potential students, it's a hard job to write their very first personal faculty article. Faculty personal documents are, without a question, the most responsible section of entrance strategy. With the suggestions and proposition stated above, your own essay should come simple to compose. Let's do your writing projects when you have issues with finishing your own personal writing essays, you might utilize the assist from personal article writers. You may well be enticed to writeoff your article or option duties on your own You may even call a individual goals article or private statement essay.

His facts are walking " will elevate anyone???s heart.2).

Make your article merry and fascinating. You must not neglect this essay will decide your future. It truly is my hope that this can help you with your essay. Because this can be a really individual article, it ought to be private. Here are a couple of principal guidelines and ideas on just how you can write an individual essay. The dreaded faculty essay is the most difficult with regard to really coming up plus a topic to write about. There exists a better solution to your own personal college essay. Below are some general tips about writing a personal essay for school.

You can find less gifts, but in the future it's absolutely worth it.

To be a fantastic writer you must always read the works of excellent writers. They can utilise the aid of private article authors and purchase a custom composition for a reasonable price on the web. College essays can be considered a nightmare. Personal writing essays usually do not demand a typical standard. Obtain a terrific possibility to purchase essays online in the simplest way. An individual writing essay is actually a service that provides aid in planning a exceptional individual declaration. Before you begin composing your own personal essay it's very critical that you filter out your intended market.

Do you need for more information about enjoying and seeding? click "rich lord's approach" below.

While some quite private information may be applicable to your own application, its introduction might be an error in the big event the tone of your composition is off. In summary, our phrases are typically meaningful. The ideal article authors may be sure that the document contains no grammar or vocabulary errors because it really is exceptionally crucial never to earn a dreadful impression. While composing your own article, you need to give attention to the audience to be sure your paper isn't ambiguous but uncomplicated. It really is the kind of paper you'd compose before writing a alternative document. That having a fast drawing on that. For people who have something on your own mind during the composing process, don't wait to speak to your writer or customer support so as to get appropriate help. Not everybody knows the primary characteristics of composing an ideal private statement.

I could simply go on it in tiny amounts.

One other significant matter is the truth that the readers will comprehend your interest because of this issue whilst studying, and it is essential. Thanks for a work well done! Many people don't truly know how to write a personal declaration in a ideal method. Authoring something which in truth intrigues a sensation, may hence ensure it is easier that you compose. Furthermore, making do with dedications like homework and also a societal life, leaves no choice except to try to find online aid.

10 Habits to Help Advance Your Career

test-editor — Tue, 02 May 2017 16:32:54 +0000

Howto Transform the Keyboard Terminology in Windows Have you been currently buying solution to modify the keyboard dialect? You'll find events wherever you may want to get this done including if you need to form something in a language as opposed to Language or whenever you buy the keyboard and also a used pc is ready to a different dialect. By enhancing several adjustments in the Control Section it is simple to modify the keyboard terminology to US to UK, etcom German. By modifying the keyboard and vocabulary configurations you are able to do this. It is worth observing that after you switch languages in Windows, the settings are configured per program. You have to alter the input dialect depending on which program you're currently using. This can be quickly accomplished using whenever you add another language in Windows, the dialect club that shows up quickly. I'll also reveal using the terminology tavern in the bottom with this article. Change Dialect in Windows 8/Windows-10 For Windows-10 and Windows-8, open the Control Section and click on Vocabulary. Click the Put in A dialect option that's located above the set of languages that are fitted.

Wolkenlenker Assistance - Parental handle for mobile phones t no goal phone is spied by mobile iphone 4 s, text

Windows8 and 10 possess for checking the languages in comparison with earlier and Windows-7 a far better program. Here you get yourself a wonderful survey of a several heroes for each vocabulary. Select the vocabulary then click on the Include button at the bottom should be currently seen by you as an installed vocabulary. Because it adds any required files for that terminology you can also get some messages from Windows. You are able to select Selections to download the language group for the freshly installed language, that may allow the Windows present language to alter. You can even incorporate additional input options for the terminology. Change Terminology in Windows-7 Start the Control Section and click on Dialect and Region.

Free GPS Cellphone Search

Currently click on the Languages and Keyboards tab then select Change keyboards. You will see providers that are fitted and the current standard input language. To add a dialect, go click and on on the Add option. Today scroll right down to the dialect you want to include and grow the keyboard portion. With respect to the actual keyboard you're currently utilizing, select the keyboard choice that is accurate. Because sometimes one keyboard doesn't work properly, it's likely you have to play around with the different alternatives. You can even go through the Critique switch to see the way the people to your dialect are planned for the keyboard you are using. In my illustration, I selected Hindi Standard for the keyboard dialect.

What parental settings will soon be on the G3

Search right down to the Using http://luxdownloads.com the Terminology Pub area to see how into diverse applications utilising the dialect that is new to kind. Keyboard Terminology in XP For Windows XP, you intend to head to click and the Control Screen on Regional and Vocabulary Selections. Next click on then click and the Languages case on the Details option. This may load up Input Languages and the Text Companies dialog box. Here-you might find the listing of keyboards and installed services on your computer. It is possible to press Increase use feedback vocabulary and a keyboard format. Select the feedback vocabulary and select the sort of keyboard that you have attached to your personal computer. If you'd like to variety on an keyboard, pick Spanish as the Insight language and Usa-Dvorak. Utilising the Terminology Pub It immediately enables the vocabulary club if you install a new terminology in Windows. п»ї

Zando - How to read text messages that are spouses on iphone, phone ios

This really is for rapidly switching between languages in Windows truly useful. You are not likely going to be writing in a single terminology for each application, so the terminology club makes it simple to change. You'll begin to see the vocabulary club within your taskbar to signify the vocabulary you are presently applying. Alist will be, if you select it and you may click on on another vocabulary to choose it. Now you find the terminology from your dialect club can start an application like Expression and commence writing. You should see-the heroes for the language seem when you type. Thats about this! So if you need to type in another language or if you would like to switch back the keyboard language again to English, the steps must fix your problem!

Steam Shark - on texts that are iphone without jailbreak, phone tracking how does it work

test-editor — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 17:39:28 +0000

In regards to enhancing professional images, exactly like Photoshop has become a standard InDesign has transformed into the standard in regards to installing all kinds of guides (publications, textbooks, leaflets, catalogues. ), whether in digital or printed format. Layout magazines, pamphlets, books and catalogues. This software has all of the resources required to accomplish publishing tasks. Letting the users to utilize sheets, incorporate scrolls and pictures. Developing all kinds of tables, and place keys and media files of all kinds. A few of Adobe InDesign's rewards The appliance has all kinds of customizable themes. From which we'll be able to create any kind of guide that we pick, from a planis online manual, to the pamphlet of any business. Another of the truly amazing benefits of the application form are the publishing presets that the method incorporates, since they will make life easier even as we consider our task for the print store. Furthermore, as it has design and editing options.

Netsanity - The # 1 Parental Settings for Apple Mobile Phones

InDesign and different programs which can be area of the Adobe Creative Suite like Photoshop or Illustrator integrate properly. As an example, hence delivering the consumer with among the most effective writing tools out there. Significant features Utilization of platforms that are refined. An element was applied to by scaling of the results. Tools of ePUB guides that are interactive for the design. Passthrough PDF printer. Compatibility with Mac HiDPI Retina features and Windows HiDPI devices. Great integration with Behance. Tryout InDesign if you are searching for a software with which you can design oemsoftwarestore a conventional magazine or release a PDF bulletin for the Web.

Get To Mobile for android, To Portable 4

Needs and extra info: The 30-day demo edition of Adobe Cloud presents 2GB of cloudstorage and limited access to providers. The download lets you launch Adobe services' relaxation and the installation of Imaginative Cloud Connection. Requires an Adobe ID as possible create below. Goes on Windows-7 with SP1, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Adobe Flash Player 10 is required to export SWF files. п»ї

Just how to Release a Study Report

test-editor — Wed, 17 May 2017 15:26:19 +0000

Most companies offer you the 1st part of a Sample summarygenerator essay. Top large quality this contact form companies don't typically give you a whole Sample article. Occasionally though, merely a portion of a Sample article might help you. In instances similar to this, it really is fine to apply a portion of the sample article. It's possible to obtain nearly any Test essay on the world wide web for different themes. You don't have to buy a Trial essay, since it is totally free. Article composing is frequently a daunting job to lots of women and men. The paragraph is really not a summation of what it really is you are writing about, instead, it's in support of what you are writing about.

Low-carbohydrate diets are generally bigger in fat and low in sugars than different diets.

Before starting, you can find some issues you must be aware of around composing an essay. Writers of analytical documents have to get enough info regarding the content they may be currently talking about. Irrespective of if you're composing an essay for second grade pupils or you're distributing this as a section of your Ph.Desis, you have to follow this construction continuously. The human body supplies the info that supports what's said within the introduction together with in the initial sentence of the section. When composing your analytic essay it helps you to actually renew your ideas because you will have the ability to examine each of the significant characteristics of the thing you're authoring. Before you begin to write the thesis statement, make an outline of your own essay then take the critical notion which you will present within the essay to make your dissertation statement. One particular common mistake that lots of folks do while composing it, is creating an overall statement about what they're going to write within the essay. Let's just take a glance at the crossroads that need to be held in mind whilst composing a dissertation declaration, in addition to a couple samples of thesis statements.

Is it attractive? consider how simple it is to navigate your website.

Don't forget to follow the special order of description within the body of your own essay as stated in your thesis declaration. You need to understand the 3 typical sections of the essay. Here is sentence checker online the whole composition. Writing analytic essays isn't an effortless task and thus pupils have to get aid from on-line article writing companies. First, let us have a look at the start of the article. As soon as you've gathered the info, begin along with the launch. Think of your own introduction for a guide of your own article, or perhaps for helpful tips. On the opposite palm, there might be a dilemma where you will be bound to write an example paper.

Recall, increased detail is better.

They're portion in their course work and hence they ought to compose quality argumentative article to be able to obtain improved grades within their tests. It's the kind of paper you'd compose before writing a remedy document. In any case, the actual intention of a trial document is for the straightforward objective of screening. Typically, you may argue powerfully for the most crucial trigger in this sort of composition. In the subsequent article, we'll check into the argumentative essay outline in more detail and strive to get how an perfect argumentative composition must be composed. It's going to house the principal content of the essay. This may make the fundamental bones and synopsis of your own composition.

Dog whispering inside the 21st century

test-editor — Thu, 18 May 2017 10:25:31 +0000

The composing instructions give helpful details. Occasionally, composing a British document may immediately get students feel discouraged, that will make them drop self confidence inside their own ability to compose. Writing the study procedure isn't a complicated career, because the research worker simply has to follow an arranged course of subsections to finish the strategy. Get assist by signifies of your authorship. Here you may possibly detect some critical suggestions for writing primary school essays. Sentence structure and absolute normal essays aren't that complicated. The traditional layout of taking help for homework a look at article writing in. Get expert essay writing aid at an economic cost. Where in actuality the industry is engaged within the creation of just one product, it might at times be called business shrewd concentration. A level background is about writing documents.

One of them you ought to decided being a topic.

You only get your papers, publish it to your own teacher and relish your good mark. It might be demanding to practice your article - composing abilities by your self with no instructor essay writer online s remarks. The class isn't split up in to organizations for rookies to discuss or write collaboratively. A few years back, once I'd my very own class, I used a quite simple manual for assigning homework. If you're a college student then you must offer an unique attention to this part. So overloaded, the characteristics don't have any technical possibility to furnish ordinary lectures. Yet another essential problem is the fact that in Macedonia, to get a couple decades today, there's no model to measure the wisdom of students as soon as they'd finished primary school, or supplementary college. In truth, there's no factors why the essay help school campuses must always be monotonous and bland continuously.

The three new documents with that your series proves give a sturdy closing for your book.

One factor which is needed is that folks especially the students, needs to be ready, to take up the opportunity to research within the buildings faculties in India. Some students have problem receiving their heads round the distinction between an instant story plus your own composition. Roma students are actually being educated within the Macedonian language. Reflects the excellent bulk of student. Fleer helped her students become started by discovering a common issue. Thesis matters are typically fairly broad. Resource handouts, pupils have the ability to.

This assessment type's aim would be to test the application's operation.

They create whatever pops into their heads. Begin an excellent persuasive were conducted with. Others believe students should have many brief holidays through the yr. HOME Here you'll find simple things to do to direct you on simply just how to compose a IELTS composition and tons of model responses of the several essay. This really is why to write the best article you've to make sure you understand exactly. Write this essay within the newsgroup! Typical subjects within this article. Documents of the kind can be stimulating to write since. A fantastic convincing article introduction.

As to which sites possess the same material as your internet site if can send you alerts.

Composition writing can definitely be the. An interview composition is got to offer. If they're composing essays. Read more on the topic of French article creating. This informative article teaches you about how to write a fantastic topic sentence. A topic phrase must capture readers' interest to help you to make them need to continue to study. In here you'll find loads of helpful suggestions about article.

"without you" is # 4," "bohemian rhapsody" is no 5 and "feeling excellent" times out number 9.

When composing your essay you must dedicate a few sentences to every thought out of your strategy. Practical academic that might seem intimidating. Subject sentences show the most important stage of the section. Answering a bad issue is a normal error made by students.

Could I possess the respect Recognition groups and faculty admissions (Part 2)

test-editor — Thu, 18 May 2017 15:23:37 +0000

Composing an article could be annoying and hard. The initial composition is just compared to it self. Critiquing your language is imperative to all sorts of essay. It really is crucial which you're constant during your article. Software article composing is, in inclusion, named entrance essay creating. A fast test in the finish of composing your essay can ensure that you just've employed the appropriate tense through the essay. Just before writing your Application article, you must do a few significant study. You should record your investigation in a mode which makes essay writing simpler for you.

And that is the main reason his pals weren't with him today.

Therefore there isn't a choice except to learn how to love article writing. The 1st sentence of the composition called the lead needs to be quite exact. Custom essay writing appears from contemplating the various perspectives around that one clear matter. When you're done, today it is possible to focus on writing your article utilizing the ideas which are directly associated with your subject or theme. Creating essays is harder compared to, say, discussing the matter easily available. It's desired to study through lots of sample graduate school documents to try this. An article must certanly be composed in the aforementioned approach to control our interest, and in addition to hold it.

Don't be worried about formatting! we will look after it.

You buying academic essays happen to be required to lessen each of the kinks as part of your article. They may pay for research paper also let you read the documents which they've posted to offer you an improved notion. There are just two chief issues that documents require. Refine Your Writing After you've written your very first custom essay writing service reviews draft, you need to change it yourself before you've someone else look at it. For several students such hints can perform little to alleviate the challenge of composition writing. There are a couple of significant things which you undoubtedly should remain in mind whilst writing this correspondence. S O studying how to write solid ; substantial essay responses is a substantial factor in a terrific level once you're registered in a course. Knowing someone from the alumni of the famous university or college means that one can set a network made up of well-known folks who will help you with your job or company In addition, You must comprehend what the college is renowned for.

So could a tranquil atmosphere like the library.

You must show why you're able to easily fit in the program your prospective college supplies you with. You really should show to your own future college also as your self that you're creating the most suitable choice. Prestigious universities are able to assist you to establish systems with various other successful individuals. The trick to turning into a good essay author and impressing admissions officers using a strong personal statement is really to split off your tactic in strategic steps. Inside my view, understanding how to write well is most probably one of the best skills it's potential to discover that can allow you to access it better in every facet of your existence, together with enhancing your chances to make money. This will tell admissions officials more about your own style and how you'd take care of the program you're applying for. The writing paper is a lot more strenuous. This way, your essay is composed with ideas which are of greater importance compared to the rest. You also can foster your educational performance by purchasing a custom written composition. Moreover, the structure of your own article is a thing your instructor will focus on be sure the document flows predicated on the notion you mean to convey.

Instructional Essay Topics

test-editor — Tue, 16 May 2017 11:21:43 +0000

Composition composing doesn't require to be challenging. First and foremost it's required to go for an essay subject. If you're capable to try this, you might be going to be well on your own approach to writing a stunning essay! This guides in giving help with essay the right conclusion to the composition. You will find only three leading procedures to create a compound sentence. To some, composing a section might be an effortless job. Moreover, exercise write a essay creating some easy sentences. To be able to write sentences which are punctuated properly, the author should follow a couple basic guidelines.

Employed in an office is fantastic for a lot of us.

For something to become a great powerful essay matter, it must be an controversial problem. The moment you've selected a subject, it's moment to really write the article. Emphasizing a particular topic makes it less hard that you write an article. Below are a few wonderful essay topics that children may possibly detect straightforward to compose. First, let's appear at the start of the essay. In the event you are going to write an interesting, unique article, you'll need to complete investigation. Thus, you will need to pick the starting of your own reflective essay seriously. Teachers should also supply writing essay the children suitable tips for every type of article which they need to compose.

MLA Outline

test-editor — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 13:30:49 +0000

As in practically any authorship, the drafting period is critical to writing a prosperous descriptive essay. As you begin on your own illustrative essay, it's vital that you identify precisely what you wish to describe. You need to be aware with relationship to the essay writing support you purchase your essay from. There are onlineessaywriting.org a lot of illustrative essay creating businesses on the net that provide cheap providers. There are several particular notions to determine a excellent illustrative article issue. Here are a number of strategies to work with you to ascertain the one thing you must write a detailed composition. Surfing through the web for considerably more thoughts may also be beneficial in creating down the descriptive composition. The essay is really nicely organized.

Using a spatula, slip the stirfry blend aside.

The conclusion is the level where the author restates the primary notion of the provided descriptive article. The introduction should comprise the overall idea of the entire illustrative article. A descriptive article takes a strong accent on the observation together with the explanations furnished by the author. The observations made within the article has to be imaginative and comprehensive. This kind of article must also be well organized. If you really do not know anything about illustrative essays you ought to definitely search for descriptive composition illustrations, which you actually may find on the world wide web along with at Professays. There are a lot of differing types of essays. Way more work and energy has to go in the authorship for illustrative documents, in contrast with other kinds of documents.

Maintain the abstract to 150 to 250 words..

Powerful narrative essays make it possible for viewers to visualize all that's occurring, within their own heads. WritingBee suits everyone demands and gives documents in whatever format is anticipated by you!

Making a Title-Page for a Research Paper

test-editor — Thu, 18 May 2017 13:09:32 +0000

There are specific factors you must consider when writing argumentative essays. You're provided a sentence and must write an article. It is actually a proclamation in what the composition is about. This actually is where you provide a limitation to your own composition. We'll discuss equally within this short college essay writer article. Because you're enhancing a college essay, additionally you require to have adequate foundation as well as the topic being discussed. While you don't must use an author tag in every sentence of the overview, you should be clear when you're offering thoughts which are extracted from the report, and when you're declaring your own notions. Composing methods may be discovered. Reading is just a guaranteed strategy to increase your vocabulary, to enlarge your eyesight and also to make your abundance of knowledge.

His wife was in the manner, although they wanted to take up a living together.

Take a much better look in the grammar and punctuation, and afterwards the syntax. If your essay is incorrectly prepared and edited, you'll have a poor reputation in the form of your pupil clients. Video is an enormous teacher too. What's more, it truly is possible for you to learn the best way to compose nicely from good writers. However the universities are actually not the just agents accountable for teaching. In establishing your standing on your own content solutions, centered on faculty essays, you might have a money-making business, because students need to seek assistance and spend the greatest price if they're happy with the service. Education is truly not the same thing as schooling, which, truly, little of our instruction occurs within the college.

You're able to, nevertheless, inspire them to it.when it comes for the motivators described by dr.

Forty four students came from both authorities schools and 43 from both non - authorities colleges. If there are actually no contaminants, there will not be any pollution. Pollution reduction is a critical world-wide problem due to its harmful consequences on individuals's well-being in addition to the ecosystem. Some of these damages can be viewed as pollution within the town. This has additionally aimed into a growth in corruption and cash4essays website also pollution. Fortunately, it appears to be possible that low income students appear to begin obtaining assist. Pressure among college students may come from several resources.

Numerous theorems, assumptions, calculations, formulas?? omg!! keep it.

In reality, at many schools, they can masterpapers us be needed to have their very own computers. Pupils in several areas of the country today have a extended record of selection with regard to e-learning. Scientific innovations weren't created. I want to consider the edges and science of profiling.''The reason it may assist is economics. Teleconference about it utilizing a research scientist. Read the bestselling, there has to be a reason they're popular. Whatever way you select you need to grab the viewers' attention at the start generate them all to examine through the conclusion. Generally, you'd like to be certain you always utilize the writer's name in addition to the post title when you begin the overview, and that you just utilize the author's prior name in the past sentence of the overview to ensure it is clear you're nevertheless discussing the writer's ideas.

You increase new pieces while you see fit or could determine a particular point value.

Afterward, review the essay for a complete. As they proposed, in case you simply have adequate time to read one special publication about composing, examine this 1. Working with others is an important element of classroom life. Set your center together with your passion in your creating.

How-to Compose a Nomination Notification for an Honor

test-editor — Fri, 19 May 2017 17:05:57 +0000

This area has numerous guides to assist you with the creating and editing practice. Study how to compose an essay by obeying the stage-by-step essay writing manual provided below. Th this in-depth cheap essay writers information on how to compose an article. A detailed information on writing a rrrreally brilliant school essay. You might discover, after you've looked over your entire investigation and completed your 1st draft which you are left with a couple of gaps inside your info. A report of such manuals is supplied in the end of the guidebook. It truly is beneficial to jot down the names of the indexes you've sought, in case you must do extra study afterwards. Afterwards, producing a record of titles is the subsequent measure, but additionally the measure that may be most unpleasant. Should you be not certain what to make an effort to locate or how exactly to repair some thing there are a few of grammar resources accessible that can give you detailed instructions on quite a few essential syntax points.

Once the lawyer has an appointment cost, expect you'll pay about $50.

It's urged to obtain suggestion from library personnel about successful online research strategies, or you can end up searching for hours on the web. E subsequent steps are meant as a manual during the hard. E describe is becoming the many vital portion an essay. There exists many different strategies buy an essay to write an article. Quite simply, it truly is actually a prelude to your own personal conclusion. Step-by-Action composition writing. A Composition is understood to be proper item of academic writing plus it's generally answerable within the past grade. POWERFUL ARTICLE Characteristics of the Persuasive Article.

About the afterlife or death, begin with a out of your preferred sacred guide for a spiritual tone.

Committed to supplying inexpensive essays at acceptable cost. Also before you start researching, you really need to understand what it's which you're heading to try unraveling through the article. Composing a significant school article is a significant conventional ability you will also need to triumph in critical school, university, as well as in the work place. In usa. E purpose of the guidebook will be to supply you with the fundamentals for writing undergraduate history essays and papers! Simply concentrate on having your thoughts in writing. An initial - class describe is perhaps the most important measure in composing a great essay.

9-inch (99 mm) bent touchscreen display using a solution of 854 ?? 480 pixel.

Documents are often utilized to present specific details regarding into a particular area of study. What's a Classification Composition. Essay writing necessitates a great deal of moment since one has to perform investigation from relevant sources in an effort to gather information. Provided that you're composing away make sure you keep checking your concentrate. Maybe You Are composing an essay to argue for a particular perspective or possibly to describe. Use the Novanet catalog to locate books in your own matter. With convincing creating, the objective is to try to convince individuals to agree with you.

"grantchester" time 1, event 2 airs on pbs on sunday 00-11: 00 p.m.

These thoughts will form a vital part of your own document. Which will offer a direction to your own investigation and writing. Persuasive writing is simply a kind. After you've completed, you will require to professional essay writing services compose more drafts if you'd like to build a really fantastic document, which is! Here is the genuine scoop on how best to manage styling novel titles inside your writing. An article may have a few objectives, but the simple construction is exactly the same whatever. A thesis declaration need to be as specific as possible tackle one principal thought. The info in conclusion part must have a linkage together with the entire essay. Order to develop the composition ready two or three times earlier compared to the day of submission.

How-to Go On To England

test-editor — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 08:46:10 +0000

School preparation help Essayforme.org is one of the leaders among the companies who will help you together with your preparation online and in the same time frame give you high quality and non-plagiarized jobs. All you have to to-do as a way to get your homework support would be to head to our website, distribute your requirements along with the accessories when you have one to we of seasoned research helpers and wait till the professional employees from our company may contact you over it. How do we assist with your preparation? Who is the homework tool you might consult? Preparation assistants would be the group of experienced co workers, authors and experts as a way to get your activity accomplished inside our organization, whom you are able to create to. It doesn't matter whether you require homework in simply or mathematics, physics, bestessay record languages, make certain that our help workforce that is qualified can have an expert available particularly foryou. Our online preparation aid firm could offer assist in performing research of amount that is academic that is unique, whether it's possibly a college one, college preparation report or a higher school task. Nowadays, you have no need any more in resting at your stand all day and rotating your face across the topics you can not create yourself. With your lawful research providers you are able to purchase preparation online and additionally, to obtain homework helper. A preparation tool will assists you in doing your undertaking, help reveal you every one of the aspects of the task and additionally, actually do the whole homework for you personally.

10 of the questions in 1 of the math sub sections are not quite a few solution.

There is no need today to become tense or commit sleepless times over assignments, merely visit our website, both fill-in the preparation aid type or simply just write in our talk do my preparation – our corporation using its qualified team will need attention of everything for you personally. How Can Your Writers Combat with Plagiarism? You may not have to worry additionally whether your research will undoubtedly not be secondhand and without problems: All works are usually double checked for grammar, plagiarism and spelling mistakes before they'll be delivered to you. Tutors and the writers that work with our corporation are one of the best ones with years of knowledge in groundwork companies and of course with all the degree of education that is higher. Moreover, we've a small grouping of trainers with PhD levels who are willing to help you to work with the research in sciences that are specific. Request a writer or teacher who focuses primarily on your field of researching, select-all the significant demands with regards to your research together with devices if they are required, all that's necessary is to goto the website of our company and just continue with the repayment. Meanwhile, you will be contacted by our assistance corporation quickly to be able not simply clarify the complete information you've shown, but in addition to alert you the writer/teacher for your homework is effectively allocated. Furthermore, you'll be able to look at the following recommendations that will assist you to eliminate plagiarizing within your publishing function: Do not count only in your desires for detecting the pace of similarity within your report but attempt many plagiarism pieces,. It's simpler to learn every one of the principles of details and document referencing as citing that is incorrect is often thought to be plagiarism and is strictly punished.

Directions choose fixed or the best report you'll find.

Remember that reworking someone’ feelings that are s can be a kind of plagiarism: you can not simply transform the phrasing and let everyone believe these are your own personal suggestions. Be sure that you reveal the writers and therefore are in a position develop reflections and to execute your own research. In the event you know your teacher will check your paper you should not risk distributing it. As this plagiarism all-the works are saved by alarm and as likeness this may be considered in future. Contemplate applying these plagiarism alarms that do not save your valuable report with their repository. Don't wait ask us for aid together with your most intricate projects and to utilize these tips for the university publishing. Through the mutual attempts, we will absolutely get a success. Our Solutions Task Aid University essays Essays writing Homeworks Paying on our site is SAFE Our company works through PayPal. PayPal like a repayment system is additional private information particularly on our site or secure to use, because we as any credit card don't obtain records; the client proceeds with all the fee for that order around the protected payment page of PayPal. You'll be able to spend by credit card or through an existing account.

Download the latest Windows binary by following the previews link.

test-editor — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 15:14:47 +0000

A great deal of folks become duped thinking they are reading an entirely straightforward review--only to later learn the reviewer'' was really simply a commissioned sales-person. Knowing how they differ permit you to produce the best decision when deciding on your condiment courier. Logical betting, on the opposite hand, dictates you have a good mixture of high-low and odd-even numbers. It is normally a very good idea for you to utilize cookie cutters from the freezer and use them within this procedure. It is easy to make and you may make a great deal of distinct variations of this tasty dish. The time cannot begin from the very first layer that you place down as the layering process does not make sure that all of the jello sets at precisely the same point. It's important to understand that you can imagine techniques to cope much better.

Furthermore, there's a possibility that the counter strike 1.

And you may do so by writing a will. A very good copywriter also has to be an excellent copy editor and have excellent command of the language and also has to be fairly conscious of a wide selection of topics with a rather strong background in grammar. Read to get engaged and engage others! The potency of a number of these alternatives isn't simple to assess. It wasn't an immaculate conception. One of the advantages of working with a team to fix problems and achieve desired outcomes is to make the most of divergent and advanced thinking. Be both a valuable guide through complex problems and an informed judge when choices have to be made. The Department will think about the subsequent things in determining jurisdiction.

Actually you should try yourself, the cheats are fun!

Small things can be personal elements. We see so many instances where the present tort laws have an effect on the economy of this society. Does this mean that a specific provision could be repealed or does this mean that the whole Constitution could be repealed. In the present scenario, it must be appreciated. To initiate the procedure and successfully navigate it, you are going to want to follow along with the steps below. Therefore, if you would cs-go-skins like to have this sort of information you've got to visit the regional courthouses or regional county unit to have a copy of this bit of paper. This search a part of the everyday job. When it might still be able wise to use an established video advertising company for bigger projects, you can produce your own videos if you prefer to.

I guess that isn't unsurprising, considering it's the link between 1.

MLM companies, however, usually just have a concise description on their company on the front page and then you have to be a member to see the remainder of the site. A website which provides free of charge legal forms is a superb place to go because it will help you save money from needing to purchase the forms and is a simple place to continue to keep your forms. Of both kinds of garnishment, the majority of people experience garnishment of wages. Another thing to know about is court documents from other states. Much of how you're treated in prison will be contingent on how you're perceived. Not necessarily, which explains why it's important to do your homework before you employ a lawyer to aid you with a litigation lawsuit. These objections do not have to be controversial. A violation isn't a crime.

Server list and tracker for Counter-Strike : Global Offensive.

As soon as you close your shop, you'll need to devote some time calculating sales etc.. No, the work market isn't a game show. 1 advantage is that you could put it in little spaces like a walk in closet. A mother and child opt to devote a sunny afternoon at the neighborhood community pool. If it's a cultural team, it's not recommended to pick out a name like `The Fiery Fighters'. It's possible for you to reschedule it, but you're likely to need to go if they would like to depose you. Following them will make sure you are safeguarded. If you can't help but to listen, make certain it isn't obvious that you're doing this. You will not ever be able to be too sure.

Step1: Connect all PC or Laptop with same LAN network.

In the majority of cases created gemstones are far less costly than natural stones. In regards to both sorts of checks, they may be found through various sources. As an example, unsafe goods, inappropriate practices, respectful resolution, are all decent things. If you're not careful, however, it may lead to important problems down the road. If you're finding yourself in such a situation then you need to definitely research finding out more about them. It also ought to give you a bit of peace of mind to understand that 95% of ovarian cysts aren't cancerous. Only a little percentage will wind up having the ability to open a shop.

The same goes for cycling, sailing, motorsports, etc.

If you can't drink whilst another person is driving then you may as well go in your automobile and have somebody else drive although, in addition, this is illegal to be drinking in the car whilst another person is driving. This copy permits an extra 5% damage with scoped weapons. One particular popular rationale is employment. Based on the structure of your organization, it may arrive in the shape of a buy-sell agreement. In the same way, if your company has more than 1 site, each site ought to be treated as an individual entity. Among the far better pluses to turning into an attorney is considered the earnings. Primarily will be considerable wage which will lures in people to prove to be lawyers.

A lot of people say that this solves the issue.

Furthermore, this form of profession isn't grouped into solicitors and barristers. As a reference it's helpful, because each nation is centered on in its own chapter. You can even locate a door-mounted board. Perhaps above all, you'll receive a report of any criminal offenses that appear on your record. Today virtually every nation on the planet is a member (over 175 States). Commercial Truck Drivers are conscious of the legal requirement to complete logbooks accurately. The War on Drugs isn't working. Issues arise and have a tendency to arise often. Badges, for the large part, are utilized to convey authority.

Leadership Theory - Disadvantages and Skills

test-editor — Mon, 22 May 2017 09:37:41 +0000

This is among the really finest ranked article writing service which offers all creating assistance. Outstanding article creating help, I pick you instead write my essay of other website on account of the fantastic help. The reality of the issue is the reality that by opting for our essay writing solutions, you are going to be capable enough to get optimum satisfaction. They cannot change the caliber of our composition solutions. Discovering the appropriate essay creating website won't be stressful because of the fact that you can decide fit aside to feel about the aid you may get from our business. Should you be nevertheless searching for the very finest essay writing web site, please, stop! Become our ordinary client and get assistance with composition writing for less! The period composition is among the line.

The fraction in ties boosts to restrict your experience of volatility when you age.

A clear majority of article writers may procrastinate, but we're mindful that punctuality is of utmost value to those that write essays on the web therefore don't wait. Therefore, utilize our article writing services to find the best quality, original, and distinguishing custom essays. You'll never need to change to a few other essay writing support. Therefore, should you want help composing essays, you'll earn a great choice in the event you choose us! Now you receive the delights of seeking to outsource professional services wherever your essays are demanded. You don't need to get documents again. Get your personal composition written just the way which you want it to be.

Online Jobs for Youngsters

test-editor — Mon, 22 May 2017 09:37:45 +0000

A'' evaluation essay'' can be several distinguishing kinds together with on an assortment of topics. That's why they're urged to check for evaluation essay illustrations. Using analysis essay. You'd need to tell them with the subject alongside the subject of your own essay. Here we are going for more information about the different types of process analysis essay matters that one can write on, along with the style to patch together your article. Definitely, this is authorship of the literary analysis essay. If you're writing process analysis documents that are designed to offer course, your primary purpose will be to recognize the reader just the way to do something. Additionally, It really helps to be conscious of what the target group is intended to do www.buyessayfriend.com along with the essay. Bear in mind the aim of the process - analysis essay is really to clarify, tell, or examine.

'gal' is basically a fictional portrait of an unnamed female protagonist.

The many acceptable beginning to creating the article must be to pick the perfect issue that could guide your way to achievement. In the occasion your audience is actually several professionals within the subject you'll be currently talking about, there might be specific measures which you can presume they'll currently comprehend. A procedure essay illustration may offer you a chance to understand more about this kind of composing, as it emphasizes the primary points to do to complete this duty. Writing customers through the skill to. The article must be well ordered and provide clear and succinct directions a readers will have the ability to comprehend and follow. To earn a how-to essay you have to read some process and help it become interesting for your own readers. It's essential the writer be mindful of the type of reader who will ready the article. Buy on-line composition writing assist rapid and cheap in the web writers without composition on line or view first document examples no price on line with EssayDoc.

If you prefer to setup vlans the guru can ask you, most consumers must choose no below.

You should make use of a special pattern to compose a procedure essay. Do not try and compose a concise procedure article about something which wants an instructions manual. This really post will probably teach you the means to write a comfortable method analysis essay that is wroth of the level. Lucidity is becoming the most vital component of any process article. An approach analysis composition is the one which follows a sequence of steps in revealing how a procedure occurs to its end outcome. Because you'll be describing how a method works when you create a practice article, you might be going to obviously must get a superior comprehension of the steps within the system. There are just two conventional types of procedure documents which you might be asked to compose. To simplify the process of choosing the proper subject for your own process article, we've made all of the interesting procedure essay subjects.

In the drop-down record close to "connect with" subject, select where you wish to apply the tips.

When the analysis is finished, track your work! Do not stress once your educator let's you know that you must write an analysis!

Things to Write-In a Concern Card an internal Look on Terms of Convenience

test-editor — Mon, 22 May 2017 09:37:49 +0000

Subsequently confine the usage of''I'' in the start of nearly all phrases since it is currently clear the article is really a bit composed through an individual. Naturally, one particular alternative to rapidly comprehend what's required for the type of essay you genuinely have been asked to compose will be to find some sort of trial composition essay writer composing to utilize as a guide. Don't be worried, for this might be the moment that you join the next period and start polishing your essay. Allowed, you will make a completely fresh chain of mistakes, but that's to be anticipated particularly if this is your 1st time writing a specific type of composition. This composition I'm creating is a text. Whenever you happen to be writing this kind of composition, you're required to make sure you utilize proper grammar. Composition instances can reveal to you the proper approach to use grammar, and the style to write a superior and exact essay. Put simply, you have to professionally write your own article, duplicating somebody else's article wouldn't become an proper rendering of you, and is considered plagiarism. Also these essays should have no lexical mistakes.

Go through the list just like you were your bank that is particular, or bank.

The test composition wants in order to reveal great normal syntax. The 2 of The most regular views of writing are the very first and third individual Among the most crucial things a author can perhaps do is research for what they're writing. There's an excellent bundle of creative freedom in a narrative essay that wouldn't exist in lots of different kinds of authorship. There are various procedures a author may utilize to reveal their personal story examples. You have to use story composition illustrations as a means to notice the several formats, which may be employed, in this kind of article. They generally comprise a satisfactory variety of helpful info which will give you great suggestions for the essay summarize. Specifics of sorts of narratives and more details are available in tons of articles, novels, and texts.

Publish an excellent app notification distinctive from others.

At the very first period, you must select a top-notch issue on your own article. The kind of article you pick for is heading to rely on your duty as well as your matter. Which is, utilize an operator which is important to your own article topic. The first factor you should be obvious about before you begin your composition is the sort of essay you'll be composing. Essays are occasionally a demanding assignment for a few students. In this post you happen to be going to be studying just the best way to write an incredible story essay. The simple theory here is to compose an essay that's important.

Here are some examples and issues that will not be unhelpful to you.

Discuss the critical idea of the article. There exists a variety of strategies to structure your essay. Custom documents and study may maybe not be divorced. It really is a term that is now common place in the realm of academia. Consequently, the eight strategies to start your composition. Don't neglect, the leading intention of your own article might be to bring the audience's attention. Empower the audience realize what the essay will be about.

They usually have compassion for that needy and might provide refuge.

You need to believe ahead in case your article may soon be interesting for the own audience. You as an writer should keep in mind that your composition ought to be created very carefully to be able to bring the attention of your own crowd.

ATF promises Procedures Act exemption for ammo bar notice that is proposed

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:08 +0000

The term article originally assumed to attempt, but now it's generally called a simple written piece on a specific subject. One needs to adhere to basic approach to date as excellent composition composing may be entailed. All our article writings are derived from considerable study on the topic. This is actually the very intent of the brief convincing composition. Whenever you're planning to purchase the article, your main purpose is really to find custom essay help an original custom essay from your very finest custom essay writing firm. This is specifically accurate with composition writing. Your composition must be private enough you could write an emotionally charged story, as the universal topic should be sure it remains broad enough to contain because many viewers as possible. Absolutely Free short article is easy to discover these times.

It produced him feel well to hear it even though he'd noticed many time to it.

The 1st paragraph provides a simple introduction of this dilemma, which is afterwards followed by a few sentences, which attempt to establish an argument. 5 paragraph composition issues aren't confined to something, as such a thing could be discussed in such an essay. You must be obvious regarding the reason for your own article, imagine you're writing an essay which has amusing elements subsequently your article should contain humorous components. When composing your composition you need to give several paragraphs to every point. Essays may likewise help in polishing some body's pondering and composing ability. In here you are going to find lots of useful suggestions about composition writing procedure. The writer should feel about the matter and establish the goal of authorship. Authorship is fairly a strong tool. A teacher studying this kind of argumentative article has the capacity to comprehend and also to correlate along with the essay i.e..

"bone-chilling: a brief history of literary fear." variety literature through the ages.

They're assigned with documents based on their own specific area study, who present an essay utilizing a warranty of acquiring a'A' mark. There are lots of characteristics of the standard ; appropriate argumentative composition, your professor wants the best argumentative essay with the intention to present you with a great grade. Among the conditions of the university as well as a faculty is a brief scholarship essay. It truly is astonishing how students might be met with this kind of drivel in their own essays. This student appears to have now been too lazy to trouble paraphrasing a lot of direct quotations into the official article structure. Pupils in either situation, the neighborhood alongside a fast summary statement. Answer to a fast outline declaration 500. As a way to write a top quality thesis article you should be persuasive and can establish your claim regardless of what.

Operate the plan that is win32diskimager.exe.

That's all you will need to understand so as to compose a brilliant thesis article. Term papers can prove to become a headache for you whether the deadline is therefore short and you've n't also written merely one word. That is among those blunders a spellcheck can not discover, nevertheless if the essay was read out it might have been detected. The essay ought to be written inside an objective and analytical fashion, with proper usage of instance and evidence to substantiate the promises. You got a identifying chance to put in a sensible debate with some other writers, because the teacher needs you to truly show your erudition in the subject. If determining just how to compose a convincing essay is a difficult career for you then it's possible to request the aid from experts who'll explain the best way to compose an article. A student must do various sorts of writing while researching distinctive disciplines and humanities areas.

Term Paper Guide

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:10 +0000

Whether you need to create a document of special efficiency, merely get an essay as our authors are running for support. If you choose to spend to write essay consistently prepared to assist you! Should you require an article and don't have any time or option to deal with it, you may ask our creating professionals for aid and they are going to be pleased to write any type of essays for you, offering you an alternative to devote your time and energy efficiently. In the present time you opted to purchase essay from a customized company, you've in all likelihood experienced tons of uncertainties. Article is a variety of composing work that makes its concentrate on the building of x games aspen concert a destination file according to some special matters. With our assistance, you can readily receives a commission to compose essays, therefore study this post to learn more about this exceptional work prospect! All these people now know perfectly well the best way to give you the perfect composition. Luckily, Essays.ph publishers are certainly easygoing.

Both one-week it is not worsen to have..

Some authors pick 1 strategy even although others choose something different. You can speak to your writer individually. In fact, a experienced writer can finish the same job faster than any student as they've been composing educational tasks throughout their entire life. Alternatively you can contact other article authors and inform them that you simply're available and ask to see whether they want to spread a few of these extra function to you. An excellent high quality article writer may eternally popular. Luckily you'ren't heading to lookup web at random. If you search the web for this, not to mention I have, you are going to locate a whole assortment of every blessed post below sunlight.

You can now get extensive if you should be definitely stressed for time.

Sell a variety of support which you can consider on the web in trade for $5. Thus, you want to cover article online and pick our business. There are sites like the people who pay you to actually see ads that pay you to actually read e-mails for a certain time. If you're sufficient and quickly, you can get lots of money. For anyone who is good, you then may create a lot of cash. Should you be watching your funds, and we know you're EssayBuyers.com is the ideal alternative for you. You can find two methods to earn cash when playing your favourite games from house.

Submit warnings remember that customers' thoughts can change to the following in one day.

If you would rather earn money just by doing nothing, then it is feasible to test this process. Other people desire they could make from it, therefore here are a few schemes to bring in money creating fiction online. Should you need to earn money creating fiction on line, it's far better set your unbelievable new ideas aside and plan some speedy storyline actions. While there are various methods for finding work. It's depending on how much you're prepared to devote and the length of time you give the author. Should youn't sense as though you've the time to compose documents on your own, we will get it done for you personally, any instance of the day, a week every week. You've likely forgotten about tons of them! You must believe and determine the best / brilliantly one for you personally.

The worldis toughest nazi had been sentenced to death in england.

Writing is a brilliant part moment occupation, but should you work hard at it you are able to do it full second. Nowadays you might have a great chance to keep your time and money

Capitalization Grammar Information

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:14 +0000

Whenever you are planning to purchase the article, your primary purpose will be to find an initial custom essay in the very best custom essay writing business. Detecting a paper creating supplier when you need to purchase an article is somewhat simple. It follows that one article you may get totally free. That is actually a warranty you'll get a great composition. So purchase essays online here without a question your author knows the method to collar the papers! By placing your buy here, you get a wonderful composition writer and also a fantastic researcher rolled in to one. You can surely do it by starting the writer identification once you purchase your article.

Make sure to utilization of all study products (e.g.

Permit's begin focusing on an incredible composition for at this point you! Some might discover the practice to cover essays online distasteful. When you purchase composition at Exclusivepapers, remember to get a genuine, distinctive document predicated on satisfactory background investigation that's provided in time. It is possible to gain documents composed for you now and need not be concerned about lifting a finger. We do not plagiarize, we write just special papers functions therefore you can purchase essays online with no uncertainties. You're therefore occupied with all the assignments you've got absolutely no time for this particular composition. If you're searching for documents to purchase choose us. Get your personal fresh article presently, from Eduaidguru.

You need to comprehend the guts and mindset of heroine or the idol.

You'll want 2 moments in an effort to order your composition. This is essential if you have a need for an urgent article within the midst of the night. It might be short as 3 hours, nevertheless an article will probably be delivered in time. It will likely be feasible to reach a special and properly - composed essay in 3 hours. The most acceptable choice of a business that provides documents available certainly outcomes in a positive outcome. There are a significant few reasons for selecting SupremeEssays, a trusted on-line custom writing service to purchase essay on-line I believed it would be rough to locate an composition supplier on line but Edusson demonstrated me wrong! Here is the appropriate place to get documents, term documents and order other solutions to create your academic together with regular life so much simpler.

Know what he should know and start to create your overview.

If you like to purchase an article on the internet, you may want to consider the help of Evolutionwriters. This really is fairly significant for me particularly if it is initially I am going to purchase an article from a supplier. Buyessay is an alternate site providing you with essay writing support. First thing you ought to scrutinize whenever you're looking for a web site to protect essay is the web site itself. If it's your very first time to get an article on the internet, you are going to locate the Samedayessay website to be simple to utilize I stumbled upon this site due to an urgent demand. The internet site was made so that you simply may order an article in 3 moments. This website attributes worth for the money if you wish to pay for article. Their authors are needed to have finished a Grasp's degree before they're employed.

They're the people who produce these forms to the events associated with legal scenarios.

Essaywriter is an alternative choice for students who want to purchase an article online. Up against every one of these predicaments, university students maynot assist but purchase an article online.

Howto Publish an Exploratory Composition with Trial Documents

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:18 +0000

In the event you've got any writing ability whatsoever, the 2nd way is obviously a less expensive course. After you have your topic and title, you have to start considering how you'll approach your study strategy. Nevertheless, it gets the perform done. Make it simple to observe how you're a respectable candidate for the job. The actual key to composing a flourishing termpaper is really in the company. Lately, we've heard a good deal from our clients about the trouble they've had with formerly used article writing businesses. Bear in mind it really is a student article competition and your imagination is incredibly important.

Just how to write the resume writing the manufacture application is really a demanding activity.

Get in touch with town everyday newspaper or company papers ( centered on the character of your own workshop ). When you compose a particular theme you generally believe and recall because many things regarding the particular matter as feasible. Terms of your own deal together with the ghost writer must be spelled out in advance. Write down a category as well as a notice. Therefore, our authors have a very extended experience within the collection and running large quantities information. A variety of function may be realized using an person refill, as it has got the skill to print a huge number of pages. Well should you too are searching for a fair investigation paper creating solutions, then you've come to some best area. In developing a business, you got a good deal of information out there at your own finger tips. Your files may be more difficult to examine whether the ink is disappeared.

It might be worth talking to your doctor about anyway, although i'dn't advise it for many people.

There are numerous on-line print providers. In summary, begin collectively with the transcription then generate a customized merchandise. A writer should usually have a essential in inclusion to a target attention. A character's backstory is very essential whether you're writing an instant tale or perhaps a book. Secondly, notably regarding the publication you would like to get published, the author should have some basic understanding of the publishing business. That you do not ought to be the many gifted writer on earth to compose a composition. You should also pick the amount of understanding of your own common reader and write accordingly. Moreover, the issue documents don't cover the whole class.

If payment is incomplete fee, establish the fitting amount, and also the balance sum payable.

Collect info on various topics needed to make the articles. The initial measure you want to consider might be to pick the area you would like to write about. At times, drawn-out solutions are needed to describe the compulsory points against specific inquiries. Hopefully the ideas given in this brief article offers you a nice starting point. They provides you a peer review or possibly a testimonial. In school, besides reading until your eyes bleed, you happen to be going to write many documents. This can help you a good deal since it is possible to write your book with much more detail and much more passion. Conclusion is the closing portion of the essay your reader may encounter. Your decision of an argumentative essay is equally as crucial as the introduction.

Do over what people expect of you to display that you are ready and committed.

Seeing your by writing a college essay line, or name, within a guide is undoubtedly something to take delight in. This really is undoubtedly important for the subsequent measure and likewise for when you really begin creating your book. Something from a guide to some book. Sometimes revenue are really not the principal issue, as within the instance of the precious family associate's memoir, or perhaps a highly individual writing endeavor. In circumstance it's painting or sketching, obtain a novel with directions in addition to a exercise book too. Within us, check writing is more prevalent than elsewhere.

Writing

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:21 +0000

Narrative essays are typically a story type. Story essay matters aren't simple and it's a really detail focused and incredibly special style of writing. Following are a few very great bigotry essay topics which will certainly allow you to come up plus a good written piece. This actually is because a literacy story isn't just about authoring your own favourite materials, it's more personal than that. This really is comprehended as free wheeling essay composing. Narrative article, in exactly the same way as some other class article, should to be limited in extent. The simple view here is to write an essay that's significant.

Choose or create a lid that can be removed in case your fertilizer is also soaked.

It's always good to select the ideal story essay theme for your own function. Narrative creating is actually a kind of creating that doesn't require the writer to conduct any sort of history research. It is pointless to mention that English essay writing can be quite a distinct type of fictional art, and needs an extremely creative spirit jointly with nicely as a creative means of writing. We can supply you with custom writing assist along with writing tips in online essay editor academic. Following are several basic measures and suggestions about writing a brilliant literacy story. Authorship of academic documents needs plenty of things that must be considered. A superb story papers composing business must consistently have these qualities to help you to provide the finest story documents to students. Authors of story documents need to be in a position to discuss correctly to be able to supply the info in the proper style. Such businesses give story papers which are custom written.

Howto put up An Enchanting Bath

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:24 +0000

For pay for an essay the next task I've pasted an essay construction that's ideal, it's extracted from the Hong Kong University Pdf which can be a truly remarkable manual. Section structure and absolute normal documents aren't that complicated. The commonest format for powerful writing might be the five- paragraph essay. Examine every homework provided to you. They may start by composing their principal idea in a group. To start with, detailed terminology and depth perform a major function within an extraordinary story. Perfected the quickest, most frequent innovative composing. Before you understand it, you happen to be going to be found within the book. The last factor that generates a book extraordinary is an excellent plot to which you happen to be able to relate.

Some possibly change to smoking to retain their weight in check.

This is the last component that produces a book outstanding! Compose a brief essay on a book which has had a personal influence on your life. Composition isn't composed within the next individual 14th Phrase is a short overview of the preceding points. Students use sporadic kind in a article. Tests in excellent composition samples were. Contemplate your reply before you are able to compose. I did have a tremendous strategy for training creating that worked within an usual class room situation, but within this situation, I required to acquire creative. Create the custom of assessing your written endeavors, hunt for the common mistakes.

Your profile should include a variety of funds with u.s.

Restate the query in the very first phrase of your own response. Provided the games that you use are especially made for second graders, they may effect an enormous quantity of distinction to your own child. As your own child plays nicely - created online math games, he'll discover how you can be a considerably more flexible thinker in reference to math. If pupils succeed on school creating tasks, they need to triumph on this particular sort of evaluation. Hence, paraphrasing is really not an alternative for ticket. They don't detract from the standard movement of the article. This 1 sentence traces a whole composition! Pupils must supply a quotation whenever info from a distinct source is used inside their article, actually in the big event the first phrases were changed.

Editfast so that you can turn into a work-from-house editor, you must pass an editing examination.

Remember the investigators should notice a nicely launched, planned article. Most important, your students will know the best way to interconnect these paragraphs using an intention in a whole composition using a function. The Sources for Teaching WritingCD ROM gives device - specific printing resources to reinforce your instruction through the year. Studying variations may similarly appear only at that level. Instructors must also provide the children suitable tips for every type of article they need to compose. Plans, activity suggestions and several primary school. It might be regarded a learning impairment or perhaps your kid wants publicity to the correct understanding materials. This system is the basis and also the framework which makes training creating simple. So they are capable to examine on here, to find a few extremely original address subjects which aren't merely fascinating, but rather modern, too.

Nonetheless, your article must incorporate referrals, and promises that help your view.

Here are some examples for research matters in each and every class. The students start by investigating a range of attainable editorial subjects. It is possible to discover tons of poems contests that permit you to. Here are a few superb composition issues that kids may discover straightforward to compose. It truly is actually all of the characteristics for editorials. Hearing that offers students confidence that they will master the abilities of efficient composing. Pupils write whatever pops in their own minds. You mightn't need each site, resource, and pattern as a means to achieve composing success, but you are going to possess the sources away there. Website has a tendency to have company writing inclination.

How to Create An Excellent Composition in a Quick Amount of Time

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:27 +0000

When preparing for this special issue article, you really have to understand and learn what all might be inquired within an problem composition. Language is now quite simple to get. Your writing style was astonished me. Try and adopt this entire construction although composing documents. The sole issue is when and if it'll be taxed in the normal business price. It will offer you the exercise and you will also know regarding the way the accurate evaluation can be, aside from knowing what the test routine is, determining if you're capable to finish the given evaluation within the moment allotted etc. and much more than something, it'll compel you to be be really familiar and uncomplicated with the authentic test. You are going to be evaluated here, on your capacity to believe overly as battle significantly, the offered perspectives.

No-matter how well you are inclined to your car, it could nonetheless stop working on you suddenly.

Next time you request for an absolutely free credit record, ask for your own score additionally. No science As usually, the best technique for purchasing the most effective produce will be to understand what you're looking for. I like travelling europe on-line drugstore legitimate The legislation needs users to demonstrate through I.D. that they're at least 18 yrs old so as to purchase cigarette cigarettes, but it doesn't apply to e-cigarette retailers. If you pick to use facial make-up, or concealer, ensure you get a concealer shade that fits with your face. Remember, it's going to stay all night on your own face, therefore you do not desire to hold something that is terrible for you. When you're feeling like buying yourself a classic Chanel hand bag, you wont have to be worried about going all the approach to your own store. If you differ with the buy or feel a fantastic second was omitted, relax. I will not overlook that.

Many small reports have a real estate portion.

This really is simple to comprehend right away. You may also attempt to eliminate documents which are a respectable credit score. I'll surely be right back. The committee estimated the target will likely be achieved within the fall of 2016. The new UK Trade and Investment statement emphasized NI among the many prosperous areas within the britain, for inward investment. Your Keynesian declaration is, in inclusion, fictitious. Research signifies the proportion of cash spent within the top ten British funds has improved within the preceding two and-

Brown food boosts carbon within your completed product.

- also - - including - - plus a-half years to 38pc. Today imagine if you should be performing company back-up. I will additionally include more settings that may improve the makes from frame to body along with various making systems. Locating a convenient offer is quite a simple occupation together with the on line mode. Someone who's in recovery for an alternate habit is particularly vulnerable to compulsive betting, experts say. Learning in addition to studying is essential, and also is writing along with applying the understanding you have got.

Sales is important in almost any sort of business, whether it gives an item or even a service.

That together with the recent resources on Skydomes and additionally the like is quite insufficient, scarcely covering problems which might appear. Up to now As I'm worried, should youn't utilize a pc you need to be supported. On-Line Language assignment help perhaps not merely saves time plus money for those students but in addition acquires assurance within them.

Numerous Content - Your Article Writing

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:30 +0000

These are fairly different alternatives to writing options or article creating solutions, where copy is written from scratch. If I've written additional articles for the customer and they've been happy with my function, I 'll elect to write an article inside their opinion. It really is tough to track down a decent composing job considering all of the ripoffs. For the improvement of a small company the proper type of translation solutions must be obtained. Such interpretation firms are beneficial to best motivational speech ever written lots of businesses and organizations in a few manners. There are plenty of jobs offered in this web site plus lots of the clients here especially look for Filipinos. Locating a good client attention. On its component, customessaywritingservice has mentioned that it is going to stay working hard so as to retain the present client satisfaction amounts in its pro solutions. Nearly all firms confront this special problem.

Preparing for the systematic writing portion learn of the analytic writing area about the design.

The condition to keep up a high amount of customer satisfaction in virtually any company is a somewhat critical priority. While there aren't any warranties, a practical strategy is to create only a couple of essays for many corporations, this supplies you with time to evaluate the validity of the firm before perpetrating significant amounts of time with potentially costly outcomes. Jot down as many reasons because you can feel about. Book reviews were posted on my own website and also the sites of these individuals engaging within the review. Yet another admonition when picking a guide to create. To impress your teacher and obtain a great manufacturer, remember to learn more about the theme well. It takes a little trial and error to decide the posts you need to compose. Nowadays, it is possible to gain something completed on the web. You are required to study the paper again after you're completed with that.

Because of this psychological pressure and strain i got thyroid issue.

So be certain to proofread the intro in addition to the remainder of the document before publishing the last duplicate. Performing investigation will enrich the caliber of your article. You could also do investigation for reviews. The major aim on studying a fantastic book is primarily for you to be exposed to diverse notions and notions. To start with, you'll be able to generally inform just how much research you're going to need to do by how step by step the finished post must be. By way of example easily'm composing a sentence about' Style'. You're given a phrase and must write an essay. Now you've decided how many sentences are likely to stay your essay, create because many factors to discuss, as your own sentences are. The 1st section must not have been in very first individual, but the balance of this article ought to are.

You're being too much on oneself if you feel stressed-out or under some pressure.

For a regular 5 paragraph essay, you're going to need a minimum of three reasons, or components for your own response. That is not what this manual is all about. Summarize the ideas within the sentence. The 1st draft isn't your final function. This could make the fundamental bones and precis of your own composition. Don't earn a summation of the entire custom article. It truly is only for the synopsis of the leading draft. Tips on how better to pick the best Interpretation Bureau Locate a business with a solid standing in addition to experience. Here is the huge factor of interpretation services into a certain nation.

They???ve recognized a ???emergency petition??? to protect veterans' rifle rights.

If you're an entrepreneur seeking to widen your business in India subsequently contact the several translation solutions Delhi would be a fantastic alternative in the first place. You can definitely locate firms that provide translation services Indian.

Issue Solution Essay Subjects with Sample Essays

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:33 +0000

In situation the creating service is actually expert, it is possible to depend on a few special result of your own co-operation. It's an essential skill that is applied in many places of life, particularly for those who are entering the work force, whether they are doing so as a member of staff or a business proprietor. Within a month subsequent to the difficulty of composition to the client, writing support is prepared to generate a totally free revision. These essay questions regularly request that you structure your alternative in lots of bits. There are a big variety of forms of essays, and following is a brief description of many of them. Wikipedia articles must not listing (FAQs). Authorship a superb narrative essay needs you to actually contain interesting info in an engaging approach. Nowadays you obtain the pleasures of seeking to outsource expert solutions wherever your essays are associated.

And also the last although not minimal severe reason i would not work with fiverr.

The Writing Center provides on the web teaching. It may be easier if one can find means to handle each and every duty. Article writing companies the clients. Writing faculty composition documents have become the strongest weapon in your support we can take delight in. Just endeavor to purchase documents on line and also let's show you what sort of perfectly created document resembles. You may have your own document delivered in-time and on the optimum quality. If you're mindful that any educational papers should be done perfectly, but don't have some skills to handle it by yourself, we'll assist you joyfully. Excellent writing is just like a window pane. Despite the fact that this literary genre will not have any apparent features, there are lots of rules to composing it.

Move to time from time outside your rut.

You might be needed to be clear on which academic fashion of composing you're interested in using for your own composition. Actually if you're a terrific writer, creating these assignments can be hard, time consuming, and daunting. Article writing is truly a job that a number of the individuals hate performing the exact same. In addition, but in addition expert and seasoned writers are vital to write the very best and the preeminent thesis. Additionally you ought to assess your article flows nicely. Pupils may be sure when they receive their finished article it'll maybe not merely be plagiarism free but it'll furthermore be 100% first. There's absolutely no regulation which requires pupils to steer clear of composition support. If, for instance a significant college student requires a research paper in the area of genetic science, the author will get a minimum of the bachelor's degree in biology and surely will use sources which can be suitable for a outstanding college student. Obviously, documents perform an important part in the university application procedure, also.

The link between obesity and the net is rather straightforward.

A comparative essay is among a few pre-requisites for students to finish a class. Finding out the way to compose essays is a significant element of fostering your conversation abilities. Writer customer conversation is, in addition, properly - protected. An essential component of figuring out the best way to write documents may be to understand the need for construction. Whether it is going to be considered an excellent article is dependent on your individual skills and capacity to write. There are several identifying tactics to write essay traces. Building a great essay isn't the simplest factor to do. Understanding the matter of your own composition helps it be feasible that you focus your time and effort. Carefully take into consideration the purpose of your own composition.

Pageants saved my life

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:36 +0000

You'll find some easy guidelines for composing successful basic and compoundsentences. Which will offer a guidance to your own study and authorship. Writing a decision should also follow essential and powerful writing a essay recommendations to block you from creating it poorly. Here are a number of useful suggestions to assist you more if you are just starting in your initial composition duty and require beneficial directions. With synopsis you are able to make your article notable. They're typically used verbs generally composition documents. Utilize this overall composition construction to earn a detailed outline for your own documents.

It's the final undertaking the individuals have to complete to acquire the doctorate degree.

Discuss the key thought of the article. Article composing does not must be hard. To begin with, you should obtain an awareness of why it is you're composing this composition. To put it differently, as an alternative to creating the article, consider discussing the composition. Writing a great article is simply a boring job for students from rather a very long time, but with the right guidance it is possible to enrich his write-up very readily. You're also suggested to supply a copy of your own descriptive essay to your own friend, instructor or relative. Once you have written each essay, obtain feedback from your own economics instructor. Using phrases and terminology is completely different in a few types of essays.

Home-protective surfaces are constructed.

A acceptable arrangement is critical for the improvement of convincing composition on any particular topic. In this process, additionally you will desire to produce a total theme to your own composition that associates you to the issue you're writing about, regardless of what the issue may be. Writing an appropriate cover for an essay you've composed is not a really ambitious job whatsoever, nonetheless it's the most disregarded. The introduction must be composed in a couple of outlines, and ought to clearly describe the issue that'll be mentioned within the essay. The synopsis does not should be in almost any formal composition format. For the time being, nevertheless, beginners are going to discover the fundamental composition structure. Allow's begin by giving you help on composing essays.

The timeline for people is april 15.

Essays should provide enough info and featured details. If you are not, the Internet along with the library are equally excellent areas to detect strong proof for your own article. This might be an additional area for composition assistance. Lots of the period, you may detect that it is tough about how you can end your article up effectively. The principal notion within the essay should forthwith come in the thoughts of the reader. In certain methods this can be definitely the most critical part your essay. Examine the essay over and over before distributing.

An online and printable test can be accessible.

Expert essay aid may be priceless. It truly isn't smart to dwell on quite poor points within your composition. The authorship of the disclaimer may be a demanding job for an individual who has never created one before, so I will give you a concise manual you may utilize and follow. Your audience was engaged in your body paragraphs, along with your authorship nevertheless ought to be pointing them straight back for your own dissertation statement. The trick to crafting a well- written article is really to reveal the judges instead of showing them. Regularly, predicated on the sort of article, the 2nd body paragraph might be used to create a concession and rebuttal. When you organize your article and make note of the points you're going to discuss about in your write, you'll have a great deal of factors to speak about. Though the decision is straightforward and can really be reached in several sentences, it really is a very essential quality of your article that you simply ought to not take for granted.

How to Publish Articles Assessment

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:40 +0000

custom essays The authors should have the ability to inspect the order for plagiarism. They need to get the necessary expertise therefore as in order to compose professional documents. In this case, he can carry away enough research so as in order to write the documents well. A lot of situations the publications are updated and you obtain the incorrect ones. On line articles are there which offer useful recommendations for both studying along with solving Language syntax troubles College composition needs the support of more medical method. It doesn't damage to get somebody else proof your paper possibly. Language is an intriguing matter. Syntax is considered to function as primary basis of any language and in order in English. English grammar is rather tricky as nicely intriguing.

If not, try and redirect the talk towards the matters you want to go over.

It's accepted as a global language around the world. So, the classic Chinese culture is also called the'rice tradition'. Her answer was rapid and critical,''I am going to begin in a number of days, Father.'' You are not just going to get the answers, and the detailed description. The initial issue should eternally about the things your crowd would enjoy to read. It is possible to see that the dilemma is concluded, by using steps yourself to result in a change in the union. Loads of folks end up in a demanding position when they're offered math assignments. It ended up being a choice that altered the whole path of my existence.

Writedown the new phrase and use it as being a flashcard.

You do not need to register for every social networking marketing tool accessible. On the opposite light, many pressing jobs aren't essential. Therefore, if you endure from your absolute most terribly complicated academic assignments, you're welcome to get some assistant accessible. A computer operate by someone with no specific pc operator is known as a personal computer (PC). Certified training programs may supply you with the chance to to get the characteristic instructional instruction and job preparation you must have a really good blooming career. You may select an accredited academic training regime that provides the powers and knowledge that is required to be profitable in the human services business. By obtaining their functions and composing critique modified from these experienced writers, pupils may foster their scores.

No salvage price is likely to be retrieved at the end of the 5th year.

Also, the students should have the appropriate experience needed to compose educational paper. Many pupils believe that they won't ever get caught and a few years back, they were probably best. Enrollment in an approved school or university provides you with the capabilities and knowledge which you will want to locate occupation. The parents may also have the ability to supply you with a great notion of the method to greatest assist the kid With a tiny organizing and imagination, it really is achievable to find schemes to incorporate any kid in your Sunday school programs. It's also feasible to get to realize what the youngster enjoys. Focus on just what the kid can do and their particular skills and not what he/she may not do. Becoming a social worker isn't as tough as you may believe.

Focus on quality connections individuals that talk for you are the great research list's basis.

You may have a chance to meet the fam until they come to course. With the proper expertise there's quite a bit of chance for job advancement within the social work area. You've the chance to get the quality instruction that's needed to come into a flourishing career within this area. It's additionally a terrific opportunity to raise your academic writing potential regardless of what.

Just how to Compose a Thank You Observe

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:08 +0000

They're nonetheless a excellent concept for brief composition writing projects. Writing a faculty essay provides this kind of exemplary practice for people that move on into the industry planet. This can be a lot simpler to earn any modification just before actually writing the essay. Don't worry about writing lots of records. You don't need an ideal composition. All individuals who comprehend just how to compose an essay can create a fantastic article by bearing in mind lots of the essential factors. That's, utilize an opener that's connected to your own composition topic. Suppose this dilemma of the essay is, in inclusion, offered by the assignor. In case the audience is not going to discover the issue intriguing they will not be as likely to study your complete essay.

For example, ag significant note is n g and deborah, competed anyplace around the keyboard.

Ending is the final part of the essay your reader may encounter. If a particular matter is offered on which the article needs to be composed, then it's relatively uncomplicated. No any man has the ability to deny the reality that classification essay is actually a tricky form of composition and it might make one ponder how to proceed and the style to succeed. 1 reason this works is the very first topic word uses right following order custom paper the dissertation within the essay, as typical, therefore we are able to readily understand the connection. Now you're prepared to start writing a school article. The debut of an essay offers a much- needed first impression. For everybody who are starting to write essays, you will find specific guidelines or notions that may enable them to generate an ideal essay.

It increases the standing of your content.

Below are a few tips to permit you to enhance your documents. If you pick a superb issue for your own article then constantly remember that you need to do superior arrangement fundamentally Harvard format is significantly preferred now. Your choice of a comparison essay are at least as essential as the opening. The principal point never to forget when writing college admission essays is that these are equally as to any sort of composition. That is especially significant with college essays. Under you'll discover a thorough set of tips to make sure that the educational writing is consistently ontarget, and prevent shedding these crucial added marks eternally! They create an entire essay, including all of the principles and analysis. The issue how just to write composition has an easy response you must remember each of the info, format a strategy and begin composing.

*analyzing the data is one on paper advertising composition of the crucial duties.

The IELTS writing part is compiled of two jobs. A superb composition depends not merely on this issue and also on the play of words. Concerns on such matters usually are not that technical so candidates don't need to study a great deal on those topics. Below are some adequate article subjects that children may possibly discover straightforward to compose. So as to write an powerful discursive article is critical to grasp the question right. A coherent article is not heading to provide you with a crafty period comprehending what it's that you will be reading. Teachers also needs to supply the youngsters proper guidelines for each kind of composition which they have to compose. You need to think beforehand in case your article may undoubtedly be intriguing for your own crowd. You as an author should not neglect that the composition must be written cautiously so as to draw in the focus of your own audience.

essential online learning resources for adults

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:18 +0000

The intention of this kind of process article will be to educate the readers. The course involves the using interactive word processing computer software. It is necessary to be really knowledgeable writing essays services about the procedure you're writing about. Be sure the reader knows why you're including bits of info. It is critical to mention each of the advice regarding the process to produce the reader grasp its essence. So as to earn a decent procedure article the author should offer essential process history particulars. Students' documents will likely depend on their readings of numerous texts on several different issues.

However, it has mistakes and it is looking for changing.

Among the most suggested choices is always to utilize a successful article writing support. Writing an article of suitable quality needs lots of time plus energy. List the kinds of documents 4. The final results might also provide some guidance or warnings about the procedure The aggregate of investigation that's performed so as to write essay of the finest calibre by our on-line papers writing service may guarantee the composition comprises considerable and up - to date info and demonstrate each assertion with appropriate evidences. So, there'll always be problems, in addition to the purpose of your own proposition composition is really to search for an sufficient solution. To write an essay, plenty of study is needed on the topic, which can be quite a tedious procedure indeed. In the full process of knowing the way to write an essay describe you should the major range relies upon the kind of composition which you are writing. Students got to create essays of lifting sophistication right out of their early educational daily life.

You may suggest ideas for improvement, but don't sound arrogant or pompous.

1 gain, clearly, is your article will be more organized and so flow better and seem better as a consequence. Typically, proposal composition doesn't vary from other article kinds in regards to arrangement. A fantastic essay plan needs to be mapped to be able to know the direction of the article at a youthful age. They'll be within the position to supply you with suitable advice about the best way to prepare an abstract. A fantastic way to get a process essay sensible is always to decide on an appropriate variety of measures within the procedure and also the troubles of every step. Measure one just would be to consider your subject. Among the many processes to accomplish that will be to compose an essay summarize. The last outcome may only supply the outline of what you've mentioned thus far within the article.

The next approach to modifying edges is perhaps essentially the most beneficial of all.

The straightforward goal of an abstract is always to remind the writer what must be mentioned within the essay and what's not too essential. Due to the important fat of the essay, the essay author is needed to conduct an extensive investigating to aid the justifications and promises. The topic of your own personal essay is founded on its objective. The initial step in composing an article is constantly to choose a matter (if one hasn't been put ). Look following the introduction together with the body of the essay that will underline the most important thought or theme of the article. Regardless of the topic is, we'll compose the article for you practically right away. Of course you'd receive all the replies right, in case you'd the time. There's not a matter worse than attempting to compose an article and attempting to remain focused each of the while wondering what it really is you're going to state next.

Types of writing What's public relations creating

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:26 +0000

Our essay writer can allow you to! Online writing isn't simply a doable choice, it's the most flexible, and possibly. Our paper authors come from Language - talking states just and they comprehend the best way to create amazing papers for you! Essaywriters.net In Case you're an professional writer, essaywriters.net is your perfect possibility. Consequently, if you need to create yourself as a completely independent author, listed here are SEVEN pointers to help you. Spread the word that you're a talented and diligent independent writer and are accessible for projects. Independent Swap is an excellent website for those who want to break in the freelance writing company. As the outcome, there's zero way students may dedicate enough time to every assignment.

Utilize a protective level of oil jelly for hairline, brows and your experience.

To be a pupil isn't a easy matter. Because of the educational pressure, pupils require assistance with writing. You make an account so you may manage your occupations on the web site. You'll need a facebook accounts to earn money applying these sites. The paid isn't much and you are going to have to contend with others to locate the occupation. You fundamentally earn money by taking studies. With our help it to's simple to be great cash. Among your neighborhood library in addition to the Online, you'll need to informative info and facts close at hand.

Believe secure old, and broken-in sneakers.

This site provides freelance writing careers, and also some rather helpful information regarding the corporation. A few websites may supply huge bargains and promises they'll never execute. Take a look at the web site to see whether you are capable. Getacoder.com This site runs quite much like Rent A Coder with the exclusion of permitting free of charge memberships in addition to, premium subscriptions. You are going to be surprise how lots of people will see your site some URL to purchase the goods at that you're a joint venture partner and that is going to make you just a little cash. You answer topics within this forum. Many your initial posts must be authorized for your standing to raise and get more income per article you compose. You don't require a blog to bring in cash in this part. You don't demand getting your own site.

They are able to have a fortune to track and break you even if they have weak protection.

It is possible to put your purchase on the website and talk about your appointment with our careful administrator if you require dependable and really affordable help with composing scholar documents. It's yet another perfect place to come across freelance employment in Karachi and distinct areas essay paper of Pakistan. A lot of people are attempting to split in the region of freelance writing. The object of the task needs to be clearly explained. You just finish simple job to build an income online. It takes quite a bit of work and time to accumulate the long set of money making options on line. Exceptionally insightful and well - researched legal internet business opportunities in addition to powerful traffic generation techniques are at present readily available for the advantage of all and sundry. It must be mentioned that we've been operating within this company for several years. There are lots of hundred jobs here within the area of consumer service and call centers in Pakistan.

How-to Include Rates Within Your Writing

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:34 +0000

A personalized essay are often offered from online editorial organizations offering the very same type of providers. When you must purchase a fantastic custom essay, make certain you don't proceed for affordable providers. Thus, consumer needs to be regarded as the initial concern in a trustworthy custom writing business and customer needs require to come very first. Don't go for low-cost custom essay services. Custom article composing has changed into a popular task for the duration of the last couple of years. It is a period that is in use for a fairly long time. The roughest portion of the essay may be to recognize the essence as well as the logical arrangement.

English structure is applied to by the exact same.

Likewise, it's worth observing that a customized article CAn't actually be recycled or reused. Each section must concentrate on one subject that supports your thesis statement. When you demand academic support, you may wish to be positive the last function you happen to be going to obtain will be entirely original. One point to really consider should you be taking a look at custom essay composing is the reality that eventually, the last function is not going to be your personal. To begin, make an outline or prewriting of your own essay when preparing the very first draft. A customized essay isn't like every average literature you locate on the web. Here are a few clear-cut tips which can allow you to master the skill of copywriting and eventually be a blooming copywriter. Paired with an excellent writing application, the easy structure is able to help you turn up documents fairly swiftly.

And lots of myself in addition to people make a lot of money via this lay system that is betting.

Some sites that offer article aid will use authors that can have English as their very first terminology, but they're from additional nations like america. The optimum / brilliantly custom essay writers wish to be rewarded accordingly. You may order merely a bibliography to ascertain how well our authors carry through several kinds of assignments. The application of words and vocabulary is wholly distinct in various kinds of essays. In the current Earth, there's good amount of demand for article writers. Composition writing isn't just about acquiring the maximum grade. Besides that, composing essays is a really nutritious method of enhance writing abilities. It can be a waterloo for some pupils.

Along with the same pertains to the bottom border environment.

Composing an educational document includes a comprehensive study of the special topic. There's no mistaking what this kind of article means to do. Don't wait to quote specialists on this problem and be sure that appropriate referrals are integrated. To make an essay isn't an effortless task. Thus essay writing isn't entire sans the introduction as well as the conclusion. Read to figure out why you mustn't ever pay money for an essay on the web. Undoubtedly, as a means to compose an effective academic papers, the author should have sufficient understanding written down in addition to be well informed concerning the subject of his own assignment. The advent of an essay is really where the writer ushers within the essential notion supporting the article. The information given via the essay needs to be precise.

A header also includes the page quantity indicating the paper's last pages.

Move incorrect, and the whole article is merely a wreck. Custom essay to purchase online should have distinctive sources of advice for example posts, publications and magazines that may aid Spanish documents writers to gather info and details to utilize in custom composition creating. There aren't many but some other respectable on-line essay writing companies that offer well - created documents. If you are searching for the perfect article writers online, you're in the appropriate spot. So buy essays online here with no question your author knows the way to nail the papers!

Notice of Purpose Design

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:09 +0000

Generally a kid's essay assignment would contain a couple of paragraphs. You'd have to, however, write an example within the very same analogy of the 2nd paragraph. Always check the kind of assignment that you are being asked to create and consider what exactly is the most acceptable strategy to construction that form of authorship. Make notes cheap custom research papers on this issue and create your discussion agreeing with the issue requirements and conventional composition construction. Documents are sometimes a rough homework for a lot of students. Handouts can be found in most of these assignments. Visit The Writing Coach to acquire handouts or to get more info about any among these assignments. Determine disagreements, including multiple examinations or essays occurring within the very same week. Granted, you can make a totally fresh team of mistakes, but that's to be anticipated especially if this is your very first time composing a special type of composition.

Advertisement end the paper from arriving in.

The real key to writing an exceptional autobiographical composition may be to let your ideas flow in place of location them in a fixed format. A huge section of achievement in composition writing is located in planning your own time effectively. It truly is going to shift the way in which that you simply feel about authorship. Your satirical composition may make additional brownie points with a suitable title. If final idea is to recognize a brilliant essay writer doesn't expect perfection as well as the very first write. You can begin with studying somebody else's composition. The more specific you're in the start the more likely you're to get the composing you want.

Geethree slickfx photomotion this plugin targets pot and zoom effects for slideshows.

Allow's merely aid with article papers, so you might realize the best outcomes ever. Con Fusion of ideas is commonplace, and net aid with essay composing really are able to for instance, display you how you can structure an essay correctly. Writing a college application essay isn't straightforward, below are some useful tips and ideas on how to assemble narrative documents about change compose the really best essay possible. Go on the key points within your essay. They're additionally called'' convincing essays.'' On-line composition anthologies. Best localities to purchase essays. The sort of essay you pick may rely on your duty along with your topic. Without any proper structure, also superb articles can not conserve an article. There's an easy format that this sort of essay must follow.

Once you've explained the main element things you've to-order them to make a working outline.

Obviously, one unique choice to swiftly comprehend what exactly is required for the kind of essay you are requested to write will be to get some kind of sample essay writing to utilize as helpful tips. Expository documents may comprise different approaches, including categorisation or cause-and-result. If you would like to purchase composition on the web, attain unaware of someincluding. Trying to find a popular company to purchase custom article online. To reap the benefits of composition aid is actually to guarantee great English. When the assignment is completed they are able to join the remainder of the group. It's a 14th change composition truth that pupils are needed to plete a huge variety of academic papers while they're examining.

Recall, more detail is much better.

Your article represents a terrific deal of work and what you've got in the experience. Students are rssays on line daily to locate an expert author to write a customized admission article within their view. Often they'll procrastinate, preventing the tough task of starting a document till it is almost expected, leading to a poor quality article and a poor grade. Get assist with starting on your own college article.

Writing Prompts for Children in Simple and Middle-School

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:29 +0000

You're allowed 30 minutes for each and every article. Today, it is possible to fall upon a lot of argumentative article topics. So, you'd want the argumentative composition help within this. It truly isn't simple to compose argumentative article as it's an incredibly specialized sort of composition creating. Debate composition examples are additionally are accessible in your website, assess them. While this essay looks carefully arranged, it doesn't follow the instructions for the designated job. The debate article differs from your regular essays which you've been composing in addition to in the dilemma article asked in precisely the same section of the test. The e ts gives the standards which can be applied to report the matter and discussion documents. So as to compose a persuasive argument, you'll need a powerful thesis statement, resources to backup your debate, and a counterargument.

This implies prime marks within your final year(s) exam results.

For an argument article to perform, it has to contain selected elements. An excellent argument essay illustration will include an incredible topic. Within an argument article you'll must furnish evidence without providing a lot of drama. Locate the sources which will best help your discussion. Audience is quite an writing a persuasive speech essential consideration in argument. For an argument essay to function, it needs to feature specific components that may convince the crowd to find points from your own viewpoint. When one ought to write an argumentative article actually the theme the individual h AS chosen plays a significant function. By reading diverse pupils' documents, you'll develop an knowing of what ETS is hunting for. It may also be confident students to really get the argumentative essay on right time and also reviews it.

Thursday, nexon america confirmed the cyberpunk game's american release.

Even though there is no greater teacher than feedback, having somebody offer you a honest criticism of your own essay is demanding. Undoubtedly, many, just do not strive to select from, therefore you may comprehend that not every thing they provide you with the finest article writers who consistently show responsibility including finishing the work done rather effortlessly. Additional custom writing firm has to have the specialist writers that may compose the argumentative article. Component of your own aim for a audience needs to be to set the author's thoughts in your phrases. It might provide you with the opportunity to raise your writing skills and get cash, obviously. Think of the questions presented within the homework provided that you're reading and researching. Therefore, comprehending the issue till level might be a substantial component this manner of creating. At the precise period of writing, you must always keep the test of argumentative article on you, it's going to behave as the manual and assist avoid bunch of attainable blunders linked to study and creating procedure.

The internet was a massive support for my imagination.

In contrast to typical opinion, writing an essay is hardly a thing that occurs spontaneously. You are getting documents which get a score together with their short comings are explained. They'll score each composition predicated on several variables, together with the ratings will likely be combined and averaged. That's the reason an individual strategy is utilized by educational institutions they need to compose an article. This is among the 3 types of documents within the IELTS writing examination.

Chapter One: News Access and Consumption

nic — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:07:48 +0000

Part of the aim of this Reuters Institute survey is to understand more about what, how, where, and when news is accessed online, specifically within the context of the wider media landscape in the UK and in four other countries – Denmark, France, Germany, and the United States. This first chapter explores the types of news accessed and the most important sources of news.

Chapter two looks in more detail at online news.

Frequency of News Access and Consumption

nic — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:09:28 +0000

Our survey of online users shows significant differences in how frequently news is accessed by consumers in different countries across all platforms – TV, radio and online. Around 9 in 10 Germans access the news at least once a day compared with only 3 in 4 people in the United Kingdom.

Daily news access by country

Q1c Typically, how often do you access news? By news we mean UK, international, national, regional/local news and other topical events accessed via radio, TV, newspaper or online. Base All UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

In general, daily news consumption is significantly higher amongst males in all of our surveyed countries. Daily news consumption is particularly low amongst women in the UK at just 67% – that’s almost 20 percentage points behind the interest shown by women in Germany.

Daily news access by gender

	Germany	Denmark	USA	France	UK
Male	91%	92%	86%	81%	84%
Female	88%	83%	78%	74%	67%

Age is also a factor in how regularly people keep up with news. Young people in Germany (83%) and the UK (73%) are most likely to check in once a day or more whereas those in France and Denmark are least interested in keeping up (65% and 63% respectively). In general, interest in news tends to be highest amongst the middle aged and older generations. In Denmark and the USA older people are highly engaged (96% and 87%).

Daily news access by age

Drilling down on the UK figures in particular we can also see that there are significant regional differences in daily consumption. People living in Northern Ireland are most likely to look at news several times a day (62%) – no doubt driven by the long running and continuing concerns about the political and security situation. Those in the North of England seem more comfortable with catching up once a day (33%) or even less frequently than that.

Daily news access by UK region

	Average	London	South	East	Midlands	North	Wales	Scotland	N Ireland
Several times/day	43%	52%	45%	40%	48%	41%	54%	44%	62%
Once/day	29%	27%	28%	28%	28%	33%	30%	31%	22%

Overall there is little difference between TV, radio and computer in terms of frequency of access but the emergence of new personal and portable devices such as smartphones and tablets seem to be encouraging more regular checking in with news.

UK Daily news access by device

Q1c Typically, how often do you access news? By news we mean UK, international, national, regional/local news and other topical events accessed via radio, TV, newspaper or online.Base UK (n=2173) Note - Relates to those who have accessed via these devices in last week

UK news segmentation

News use is not just about frequency, it is also about the volume of consumption. For this study, we have combined the answers to a number of questions to come up with ways of identifying the levels of attention and consumption.

Categorisation of online news users*

News absorbed Tends to Male 25-34 Likes International, political news Tablet owning (30%) Twitter using (44%) 3-4x more likely to pay Might like Sky, FT, C4 News

News mainstreamers All ages Might like BBC, Mail Online, Yahoo

News light Tends to female 21-34 Celebrity news – 31% Use 1 news source – 43% Facebook using (67%) Might like Sun, MSN, C5

*These percentages relate to our sample of online users who say they are interested in news. Assuming 50m UK adults, 77% internet use and 18% saying they are not interested in news this suggests raw numbers as follows: News absorbed (2.2m), News mainstream (22m), News light (6.9m).

News absorbed: These are people who access the news several times a day and who say they consume in total more than three hours of news each day. This accounts for around 7% of our sample of internet news users.
News mainstreamers: These are people who generally check in at least once a day and who say they consume between 30 minutes and three hours a day or who check in once a day but consume more than three hours a day. This group accounts for around 70% of our sample.
News light: These are people who consume less than 30 minutes a day on average and access once a day or less often. This group makes up around 22% of the sample.

We’ll refer back to these groupings throughout this study, but in general we can see there is a small, mainly male, well-educated, and engaged group of news users that likes to participate in news, that uses a variety of online devices to access the news, and might be prepared to pay for the privilege. There is a slightly larger group of infrequent, disengaged users and then the vast majority are somewhere in the middle – still mainly using television and radio for news but regularly supplementing with online sources.

Sources and Access to News

nic — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:18:05 +0000

This question is becoming more and more complex. People have traditionally sourced the news through television and radio news channels or branded newspapers or magazines. Now we have online channels too, but these are harder to define and categorise. They incorporate both traditional branded media channels as well as non-traditional media such as aggregators and blogs. In recent years we’ve seen the rise of personal and social media channels not just as means of communication but as a source of news too. It still helps to understand and track how different groups consume television, radio, online and print – but this is no longer enough and in this section we’ve tried to break the categories down further. It’s becoming increasingly important to understand how news brands perform across different platforms, what the relative strengths are of each channel and at what time of day they get most traffic. Another dimension that we explore in this section is the explosion in the number of devices through which news can now be accessed. Alongside television and radio sets, we now have computers, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, and e-readers – all able to access news content in text, audio, and video. Increasingly in an era of convergence these connected devices can also view live TV channels on high-definition screens, whilst ‘smart televisions’ can access internet content alongside traditional broadcasts. This is the multiplatform, multi-device world that is emerging today. Over the next few years we hope to be able to map how news usage is affected by these changes. In looking at weekly news use, we can see that television and online are by far the most regularly used sources for all ages and demographics in the UK. Our survey suggests that online is accessed by more people – but it should be noted that our internet-based survey does not take into account the 20% of the UK population who are not online. Factoring this in, TV is likely to be ahead with all groups except the 16–24s.

UK Weekly news access by source

Q3 Which of the following news sources have you used in the last week? Base UK (n=2173) 16-24 (n=342), over 45 (n=1112)

Indeed it is striking that amongst those surveyed younger people watch far less television news (61%) and access far more online news each week (88%) than the group of over 45s. Only 22% listen to radio news bulletins or programmes compared with 55% of the older group. It is also interesting to note however that many 16–24s say they do read print newspapers and magazines (49%) even if they don’t always pay for them. At a more granular level, we can also see that, amongst our online sample of news users in the UK, television news programmes and bulletins remain the single most used source but the websites of broadcasters like the BBC and Sky are not far behind.

Weekly news sources breakdown

Q3 Which of the following news sources have you used in the last week? Base All (n=2173)

TV news bulletins/programmes are used more by older generations and less by younger people whilst the exact opposite is true for websites of newspapers and magazines.

TV news vs newspaper/magazine websites by age

Scroll data area to see more

	16-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
TV news	51%	52%	61%	71%	79%
Newspaper sites	48%	40%	38%	37%	34%

Looking at different media usage across countries, we see again marked differences in the media mix that is deployed. The US, UK, and Denmark show the greatest enthusiasm for online news, while Germany shows a particularly strong loyalty to printed products (68%). Online news usage in Germany is lowest of our countries at just 61% whilst TV broadcasts draw the vast majority of the population to watch each week (87%). It will be interesting to see if these differences persist or if the Anglo-Saxon model of strong online adoption gains ground in the rest of Europe over time.

Weekly news access by source and country

Q3 Which of the following news sources have you used in the last week? Base All UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

Devices to access the news

In terms of access points, our data show that the computer and television are neck and neck as most important in terms of weekly access – but new internet devices are making a significant impact. Smartphones that connect to the internet have only been around for a few years but already the percentage of people accessing news weekly via a mobile phone in the UK has reached 28%. The tablet is also emerging as a significant device for news consumption at 8%. The impact of these devices is explored in more detail in later sections. Layering our news absorbed and news light segments on top of the overall sample we can see that heavy news users are more likely to access via computer and other online means. Of our news absorbed group, 23% access news via a tablet device, compared with just 3% of the news light group.

Weekly access by device

Q4a Which of the following have you used to access the news in the last week? Base UK (n=2173)

Top UK brands for accessing the news: winners and losers

Overall, traditional routes are still used more than online ones. Use of BBC via radio and television is around 10 percentage points higher than via BBC News online. Taking into account this is an internet survey and adjusting for the total UK population would produce an even bigger difference. Some providers have struggled to make an impact online. ITV is a huge player in television news but has not focused heavily on digital news until now. As a result we find its reach is equivalent to a new online player like MSN.

Traditional vs online routes to news

Q8a/b Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week, via traditional routes (Radio/TV/Print) and via which online means? Base All (n=2173)

At the other end of the spectrum the Guardian and Telegraph have been the only major news providers to buck the trend of smaller online reach. They have invested heavily in online news and our data show they have attracted significant new audiences in the UK (as well as international ones). In the case of the Guardian, this is an audience almost twice as big as the newspaper one and with a much younger age profile.

Guardian audience - % accessing newspaper vs % accessing online

Q8a/b Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week, via traditional routes (Radio/TV/Print) and via which online means? Base All (n=2173)

The Guardian’s position strengthens further on new platforms such as the tablet – rising from 10% reach online to 21% on tablet. More generally with this tablet-boost sample we see greater use of online sources. Amongst BBC tablet users, we see that the proportional usage of traditional and online sources is almost the identical (74% vs 73%). The same is true for Sky News (21% vs 20%) and the Daily Mail (18% vs 18%). It appears that new technology/devices which allow for easy news access online are encouraging the growth of online access. The data also suggest that, if tablet behaviours become the norm, some traditional news brands can expect to end up with a market share not that different from the ones they’ve been used to offline.

Traditional and online usage amongst tablet owners

Q8a/b Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week, via traditional routes (Radio/TV/Print) and via which online means? Base Tablet owners (n=314)

Aggregators, pure players, blogs, and social media

Our UK survey shows Yahoo! News delivering a weekly audience online of 15%, just ahead of the Daily Mail.

Aggregators and portals

Q8a/b Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week, via online sources? Base All (n=2173)

MSN in the UK also achieves a healthy share and is one of the few news sources to attract more women than men. Blogs, social networks like Twitter and Facebook have also emerged to be seen by some as a source of news – especially for breaking news. The extent of this varies considerably across countries – with new players, aggregators, blogs, and social media playing a far bigger role in the USA than in any other country. It is interesting to note how traditional news providers dominate online provision in the UK and Denmark whereas in other countries new models of provision have gained more traction. In the United States much of this has been driven by innovation in news provision from the likes of the Huffington Post and Gawker. In the UK, traditional media organisations like the BBC and the Guardian have been relatively quick to innovate, with developments such as live blogging, social media, and data journalism – leaving little space for new providers. In France the relative weakness of broadcasters online and of the French press has left more space open for new so-called ‘pure players’ as well as aggregators.

Traditional brands vs aggregators vs social media

Q3 Which of the following news sources have you used in the last week? Base Online Denmark (n=826) UK (n=1778) US (n=704) France (n=777)

Where and When Do People Access News?

nic — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:18:17 +0000

This part of the report is likely to become even more interesting when we have trend data, and can see how consumption patterns are changing over time. Currently we can get some clues to this by comparing the consumption habits of older and younger respondents. Our data set is primarily from the UK, but in subsequent years we would like to extend this to other countries. We found that the vast majority of people consume news at home, with around one-fifth consuming it in an office and a similar proportion whilst travelling. Consumption in an office is higher amongst men than women, which is what we would expect as we know that more men than women work full-time. Likewise, office consumption is higher amongst people from higher social grades, who are more likely to have office-based jobs. In terms of age, 25–44 year olds are more likely than other age groups to consume news in an office, and 16–24 year olds are more likely than other age groups to consume news in a place of study.

Where did you consume news yesterday?

Q7 Where were you when you looked at / listened to the news yesterday? Base All (n=2173)

As we might expect, consuming news whilst travelling is more common amongst people who access news on a mobile phone, a tablet, or an e-reader, as those devices are well-suited to consuming news on the move. News consumption whilst travelling is also more common amongst those who listen to news on the radio, as this is the default medium for car drivers. We also asked people how long they spend consuming news on different platforms on a typical day. We have been cautious in the way we interpret this data, because we know that time spent is a difficult thing for people to estimate accurately. Having said that, it was no surprise to see that people spend the longest amount of time consuming news on television, and the shortest amount of time consuming news on mobile devices.

Of everyone who uses that platform in a typical month, percentage who use it for 30 mins+ per day

Q5 On a typical day, how much time do you spend accessing news in EACH of the following? Base All those who use each device for news monthly TV (n=1768) Radio (n=1205) Printed publication (n=1091) Computer (n=1816) Mobile phone (n=756) Tablet (n=213)

For the traditional media platforms, time spent by users aged 45 or over is greater than time spent by younger users. But for the new media platforms the opposite is true, with mobiles showing the greatest disparity. This suggests that for news consumers over the age of 45, the mobile is only used for short bursts of news consumption, whereas for younger consumers it can be used for quite significant lengths of time.

Of everyone who uses that platform in a typical month, percentage who use it for 30 mins+ per day

The most popular times for accessing news are first thing in the morning and early evening, which makes sense as we’ve seen that the most popular place to access the news is at home. Qualitative research has shown that people like to feel up-to-date with the news, and this drives them to seek out the latest headlines when they wake up in the morning, and before they go to bed. These regular checks reassure people that they know about any events that might affect them, and they know enough to partake in conversations about the news. A quarter of respondents told us that they like to access news throughout the day. As we might expect, those who consume news throughout the day tend to consume news on a greater range of platforms, and from a greater range of sources than average. They are also more likely than average to consume news on mobiles and tablets, which makes sense as these portable devices facilitate regular news access.

When do you typically like to access the news?

Q6 When do you typically like to access the news? Please select as many as apply to you. Base All (n=2173)

16–24 year olds have quite different patterns of news consumption compared to other age groups. Their peak usage time is first thing in the morning. The lunchtime and early evening peaks that we see for older age groups aren’t present in this group. This could be because around 40% of them are in full-time education, and this is also supported by BARB[1. The Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) compiles audience measurement and TV ratings in the UK. It is owned by the BBC, the ITV companies, Channel 4, Channel 5, BskyB, and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Participating viewers have a box on top of their TV which tracks the programmes they watch.] data which suggests that younger age groups are less likely to watch TV news bulletins than older age groups.

When do you typically like to access the news?

Q6 When do you typically like to access the news? Please select as many as apply to you. Base All (n=2173)

The pattern of news consumption also varies between our three segments. As we would expect, news absorbed users are more likely to consume news throughout the day, with 53% of them claiming to do so, compared to 27% of news mainstreamers and 14% of news light users. If we exclude those who consume news throughout the day, we can see that the remaining news absorbed show a similar pattern of news consumption to the news mainstreamers, although they’re more likely to check news last thing at night. This fits with the high level of mobile and tablet news consumption amongst this group, as qualitative research has shown that these devices are often used for a last check of the headlines before bed. News light users are most likely to consume news in the early evening, with lower levels of early morning consumption and lunchtime consumption than the other groups.

When do you typically like to access the news?

Q6 When do you typically like to access the news? Please select as many as apply to you. Base All (n=2173)

These data can’t tell us how different platforms are used at different times of the day, but we know from BARB data that TV news consumption peaks in the early evening and around 10pm, with smaller peaks in the early morning and around lunchtime. By contrast, RAJAR[2. RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Limited) was established in 1992 to operate a single measurement system for the radio industry in the UK. RAJAR is jointly owned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Radio Centre (commercial radio's trade body). The methodology is based on a paper diary, which is filled in on a quarter-hour basis for one week by a representative sample.] shows that radio news consumption peaks in the morning, with smaller peaks at lunchtime and drive time. Web analytics data for the BBC News site tells an interesting story about how different online platforms are used in a complementary way. Desktop usage of the BBC News site peaks at lunchtimes Monday – Friday, as office workers check the headlines during their lunch breaks. Mobile usage peaks in the early morning and evening, as people are commuting to and from work. Tablet usage peaks in the evening and at the weekend, which fits with other data that suggest that tablets are predominantly used in the home.

Interest in Different Types of News

nic — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:18:32 +0000

In this section we explore in more detail interest in different types of news with a particular focus on the UK data. One of the concerns often expressed about on-demand media is that it will over-represent what is popular and immediate at the expense of more serious and explanatory information that can help to underpin a representative democracy. We start with a high-level view of news interest in the UK and then drill down into some of the detail around political and financial news.

Which news is most important?

Q6 When do you typically like to access the news? Please select as many as apply to you. Base All (n=2173)

In terms of the most important types of news, domestic news comes out on top (74% overall), followed by news about my town or city (50%) and international news (48%), but there are significant differences in terms of gender, especially around specialist news types. Celebrity news, local news, and health and education news are more important to females, whilst men consider business, political, and sporting news more important. The low level of interest in UK political news amongst women is especially striking – and reinforces other studies, which suggest that Westminster politics in particular is not helped by gender inequalities in political representation. [1. Hansard society research paper on women’s attitudes to politics: http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/no-politics-please-were-women/.]

Which type of news is most important?

Overall people in the UK are more interested in celebrity news and less interested in domestic politics than those in some other countries surveyed.

Interest in politics vs interest in celebrity: How the UK compares

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Base UK (n=2173) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

Celebrity news explored

We have already established that much of the interest in celebrity news in the UK comes from women, but these charts demonstrate the extent to which this is driven by younger women. Almost 50% of 16– 24s women say they are interested in celebrity and entertainment news – that’s twice as many as express interest in news about the economy.

Interest in celebrity news by age and gender

	16-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
Male	12%	28%	11%	13%	4%
Female	48%	45%	34%	28%	16%

It is also striking that the biggest single driver of celebrity and entertainment news has been online newspaper websites such as the Daily Mail and the Sun. Almost a third (29%) of Mail Online readers say that are interested in celebrity news, compared with 19% of those who read the printed newspaper. The Daily Mail editorial agenda online has been heavily focused on celebrity and these figures show how successful this strategy has been – helping it become the world’s largest online newspaper according to Comscore.[1. BBC News, How Mail Online Took over the World: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9708000/9708023.stm.]

Celebrity news by by publication (UK average = 21%)

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Base All (n=2173) Mail (n=303), Sun (n=305), Mirror (n=245) Online Mail (n=276), Online Sun (n=152) Mirror (n=75)

As well as online newspapers, social media and blogs are cited as a key source by almost a third (30%) of the users who say they are interested in celebrity and entertainment news. This is much higher than the average for traditional sources – which lends weight to the argument that digital and social media are encouraging the growth of celebrity news. It should be pointed out, however, that printed magazines also over-index with these groups.

Political News and Political Engagement

nic — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:18:45 +0000

British people give political news far less importance than many other topics – but almost half claim to be keeping up with political issues daily. Contradictory attitudes towards politics emerged in the part of the study that looked at political engagement in more detail. In comparative terms, the UK ranked last in the importance people gave to political news – with only 37% rating it important, nearly 20 percentage points lower than the other countries in our survey (although France and the USA were both in the middle of political campaigns). However, when we asked ‘how important it is for people like you to keep up-to-date on what is happening in politics’, 8 in 10 Britons (79%) said it was important, and only 5% said it was unimportant. When asked how often they kept up with political issues, 44% said they did so daily or several times a day; 40% said weekly or several times a week; only 16% said they did so only infrequently, only at elections, or never.

Keeping up with political news

Q9b How often do you keep up with political issues generally?
Base All (n=2173)

Such differences require some explanation. It may be that when people were asked directly about politics (rather than choosing their preferences), they were reminded of their civic duty and found it hard to admit their disinterest. On the other hand, it may that the wording of the two questions conveyed a different meaning. People in the United Kingdom may not like politics at the moment, or consider it edifying, but they may nevertheless feel it is important to find out what is going on, especially if it might affect their daily lives. As the question in this section did not specify ‘domestic’ politics, it may have been interpreted more broadly to include local and international political developments, as well as single- issue political campaigns, and not just Westminster politics (where disillusion is greatest).

Keeping up with political news by age/gender

Q9b How often do you keep up with political issues generally?
Base All (n=2173)

Interest in political news

The degree of interest in political news varies considerably by age and gender. In general, men take a more active interest than women, and older people more than the young. While 52% of men said they kept up with political issues daily, only 36% of women did so. And the older you get, the more likely you are to be following politics closely. Of those aged over 55, 51% kept up with politics daily, while only 34% of the 16–24s did so. Interest does not seem to vary by political party affiliation; however those who say they ‘don’t think of themselves as any of these’ (about one-third of the sample) are less likely to follow politics closely, while those who supported the nationalist parties (SNP and Plaid Cymru) were most interested (64% keeping up daily, on a small sample size). There is also some evidence from our survey of a low level of political engagement among working-class voters – something which has been a long-standing concern of the Labour party in the UK. Among council tenants, only 65% said keeping up with what is happening with politics was important, compared to 79% of the sample as a whole. One-third also said they rarely kept up with political issues (compared to 16% of the sample as a whole). In contrast, 53% of those earning over £30,000 per year keep up with politics daily, compared to only 38% of those earning under £10,000 per year.

Sources of political information

The most widely cited source of political information is – by a wide margin – television. It is followed by online news websites (both broadcast and newspapers). Printed newspapers are considerably further behind, below even political programmes on television. Even taking into account the fact that this is an online survey, this is a remarkably low figure, barely ahead of those who keep up with politics through personal contacts – keeping up via word of mouth is used significantly more by women and young people. The group we identified as news absorbed, who have an intense interest in news generally, seem to be following political news very closely. Half of this group say they are searching for political news several times a day (compared to 16% for the whole sample). The news absorbed users are the biggest consumers of political programmes on radio and television, specialist political blogs, information published by political parties, email newsletters, and political magazines. They are also twice as likely as average to look at newspapers for political information, and 50% more likely to look at general news websites. In contrast, those who are casual users of news seem to almost exclusively rely on television, and to a lesser extent general news websites, for their political information.

Sources used to keep up-to-date with political issues

Q9c Which of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with political and government issues?
Base All who keep up-to-date with political issues (n=2088)

Political participation

How to re-engage young people with politics and encourage more political participation has been widely debated. Some hope that the internet might prove an important tool to help achieve this goal. Many young people who are not interested in news will have excluded themselves from this survey, but even so there are some signs of encouragement.

Using the internet for political involvement

Q9d In which of the following ways have you used the internet to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion?
Base All (n=2173)

Nearly 6 of 10 young people say they used the internet ‘to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion’ and they were more active than average in using social media to engage in political activity. One in five (21%) posted their political views on a social media site, 14% joined a campaign, and 10% contributed money to a political cause. Most remarkably, more than 7% said they used the internet to find out about a meeting or to volunteer for a political activity.

Using the internet to get involved with politics by age

Q9d In which of the following ways have you used the internet to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion?
Base All (n=2173)

The area where young people showed a lower rate of political activity was in sending an email about a political candidate or issue (9%) – over 55s were much more likely to do this (22%). For all groups, signing an online petition was the most common form of political engagement. News absorbed users were far more likely to engage actively in politics online (86% compared to 55% overall). They were also twice as likely to use social media to join a campaign.

Business News Consumption

nic — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:19:07 +0000

Just as political news is essential to a well-functioning democracy, a strong and vigorous business press is necessary for the efficient functioning of markets and the economy. Monitoring financial information is vital for individuals as they take more responsibility for their own financial future in an era of austerity.

Interest in economic and business news by country

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Base UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

International comparisons

News about the economy is given a higher ranking in the UK than in all the other countries surveyed, with the exception of the US. So far the financial crisis has had a greater impact on US and UK household finances than in the European countries we surveyed, despite the looming Euro crisis – and the latter also have a bigger cushion because of the existence of stronger welfare states. In all the countries surveyed, there is a significant difference in the level of interest in news about the economy (which gets the highest rating of any specialist news area) and news about business and finance, which is rated much lower, with only one in five people saying that is important. Interest in business news seems to be significantly lower in France (where it is only one in ten), and higher than average in Denmark.

Interest in the economy and in business news

More than 4 in 10 of our UK sample say the news about the economy is important to them. This group is broadly similar to the population as a whole, with equal numbers of men and women, and equal numbers from all social classes. Their media consumption patterns are also similar to the norm, with television their main source of news, and they are heavy readers of the tabloid press, such as the Mail, the Mirror, and the Sun. However, young people are far less interested in economic news than the older groups. This may be because young people have fewer financial responsibilities, such as mortgages; or it may be that older people have more financial stress, or are more worried about retirement. In contrast, business news is a minority interest with only one in five people rating it as important. This group tends to be disproportionately male and they are more likely to be in the higher social classes. The age differences are far less marked – suggesting that this group is taking an interest, and perhaps planning for their financial future, at an earlier age. Those who thought business news important also had a different view of what other areas of the news mattered, with fewer citing entertainment, sports, or local news as important, while more were interested in politics, science and technology, and international news. They were more likely to be readers of the broadsheet press, especially the Telegraph and The Times (but not the Guardian).

Interest by age and social class

Interest in economic and business news increases with age and social class

	16-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+	AB	C1	C2	DE
Business	18%	17%	17%	17%	22%	23%	21%	13%	14%
Economics	29%	35%	39%	49%	50%	42%	40%	45%	44%

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Base All (n=2173)

Keeping up with financial matters generally

The Reuters Institute survey also asked a series of broader questions on how important it was to keep up with financial matters generally. This is one of the key indicators of financial capability developed by the Financial Services Authority and first surveyed in 2005.

Importance of financial matters generally

Q10a In your opinion, how important is it for people like you to keep up-to-date on what is happening with financial matters generally? Base % saying very important (n=601)

Most people agreed that it was important to keep up with financial news (82%), while 28% said it was ‘very important’. Among people aged 16–24, an astounding three times as many men as women said it was very important. But by the time people reached 55, the difference had completely disappeared. One-third of the population looks for financial information either daily or several times a day, probably many more than before the financial crisis.[1. See the essay by Steve Schifferes, Austerity News: The Financial Crisis and the Digital Revolution, for further details of the comparison between this survey and the 2005 FSA research.] Again, age and gender differences are very important: four times as many young men as young women looked for financial information daily, but by age 55+ the difference was 5:3 (48% of men and 31% of women). Those interested in business news, and those who were categorised as news absorbed, search for information even more frequently, with more than half of the latter looking daily or several times at day. In contrast, one-quarter of casual news users rarely or never look for financial information.

Keeping up with financial news

Scroll data area to see more

Frequency	All	News Absorbed	Mainstreamers	News Light
Several times a day	9%	21%	12%	0%
Once a day	24%	36%	28%	14%
Several times a week	29%	25%	31%	20%
Once a week	16%	13%	16%	19%
2-3 times month	7%	3%	5%	11%
Once a month	4%	2%	3%	10%
I don't keep up	9%	-	5%	20%
Never	2%	-	0%	5%

Q10b How often do you keep up with financial matters generally, such as the economy and the financial services sector? Base All (n=2173)

Sources of financial information

Finally, we asked about the sources that people used to find financial information. Older groups were just as likely as young people to say the internet was one of their main sources of financial information. But young people were far less likely to use either television or newspapers for this purpose. Men were more likely to use the internet than women (59% vs 47%), while women were more likely to talk with friends and family (19% vs 31%). Young people used social media more (9% 16–20 vs 2% 55+), but in general this was not a major source of financial information – perhaps reflecting the British reluctance to talk about money matters publicly. The group who are interested in business news are big consumers of digital financial news. Nearly half (47%) used smartphones, tablets, and other devices, compared to 40% in the wider sample. And 69% search the internet for financial information, compared to 53% overall. They were also nearly twice as likely (9% vs 16% on radio and 12% vs 22% on TV) to listen to personal finance programmes on television and radio, and read the business pages of newspapers (18% vs 38%). Interestingly, they were less likely to use personal contacts with friends and family to get financial information, and no more likely to seek advice from a bank or adviser (18% vs 21%). The large and diverse range of sources that people used, and the increase in both internet and face- to-face contacts – particularly compared to 2005 – suggests there may have been some decline in trust in traditional media sources since the financial crisis – something which is backed up by other research.[1. Steve Schifferes, ‘Trust-Meltdown for Business Reporting’, British Journalism Review (June 2012): http://www.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/153245/Trust-meltdown-for-business-journalism-Steve-Schifferes-BJR.pdf.]

Sources of financial information

Q10c Which of the following sources do you use to get advice on personal financial matters? Base (n=2173)

Chapter Two: Online News and New Devices

nic — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:18:43 +0000

We have spent a considerable amount of time comparing traditional and online news, but the rest of the survey deals exclusively with online. Until a few years ago this meant websites and desktop computers, but now news can be accessed through a range of connected devices – smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and internet-connected TVs. This chapter looks to explore the implications for news specifically of these rapid changes.

Devices to Access Online News: Smartphones, Tablets, and E-Readers

nic — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:20:27 +0000

In the UK, we have already seen that significant numbers of people are using smartphones (28%) and tablets (8%) to access the news every week, but this doesn’t give a sense of how important these devices are today and how this might change. We asked online users their main way of accessing news and, though the computer is still dominant as an access point, for a significant minority mobiles are emerging as the most important device (13%).

Main way of accessing online news

Q13 You said earlier that you regularly spent time looking at news online (on a PC/laptop, mobile, tablet, Smart TV or e-reader), which is your MAIN way of accessing online news? Base = Those who use PC/laptop, mobile, tablet, Smart TV or e-reader to access news online (n=1948)

Again, the demographic story is particularly interesting with the younger groups showing strongest affinity towards accessing news via a mobile phone. More than a quarter of the 25–34 year old group (27%) say their main way of accessing online news is now through a mobile phone, whereas the over 55s show almost no interest in accessing news this way. Tablet users show a different spread, with the cost putting them outside the reach of most younger users but with older groups starting to embrace the simplicity and ease of use.

Main way of accessing online news by age

Both smartphone and tablet access is even more male- dominated than general computer news usage (60% male usage for tablet and 55% for mobile). Mobile news use is also particularly focused on the C1 lower middle class grouping (38%), whereas tablets are overwhelmingly the preserve of the AB middle and upper middle class (43%). As prices fall and penetration of both types of devices grows it will be interesting to see if these demographic differences even out.

Socio-economic demographics by device : Computer

Socio-economic demographics by device : Mobile

Socio-economic demographics by device : Tablet

National Readership Survey social grades classify AB as managerial/professional, C1 as supervisory/clerical, C2 as skilled manual workers, DE as semi-skilled, unskilled, on welfare Q4a Which of the following have you used to access the news in the last month? Base All (n=2173) Computer (n=1816), Mobile (n=756), Tablet (n=213)

Partly as a result of these demographic differences, the types of news stories accessed by device also varies – though the mobile context is also a factor. Stories that update regularly – such as sports scores and financial information – are proportionally more heavily accessed from smartphones (36% and 34%) than general news (28%). Celebrity news and technology stories, which tend to be widely shared via social apps, also tend to over-index on mobiles and tablets.

% accessing different news by device

Q4a Which of the following have you used to access the news in the last week? Base All (n=2162) Computer (n=1598), Mobile (n=607), Tablet (n=170)

Mobile and tablet experience compared with a fixed computer

Specifically we asked some questions about the quality of experience on a mobile and tablet and about the costs of access, which are sometimes more of a factor than with a fixed-line computer. Those who read news on a mobile phone are more concerned about the cost of accessing news (32%) than those who read news on a computer. Tablet users are generally less concerned (22%) as the majority of usage remains via Wifi-only devices that do not carry an extra tariff – and tablet owners tend to be from higher income groups.

Accessing news via tablet and mobile phone

Q17b You’ve told us that you read news on a TABLET/MOBILE as well as on a PC. With that in mind, please could you tell us how much you agree or disagree with the following statements: Base All who read news on a mobile and a PC (n=731) All who read news on a tablet and a PC (n=289)

A quarter of mobile phone users say they rarely finish reading a news article on these devices. In contrast, only 9% of tablet users say they rarely finish articles – lending weight to the view that these devices are better for news consumption. Equally striking is the perception, from almost 40% of tablet users, that viewing news is a better experience on a tablet than via a PC. This may reflect the bigger and better quality screen, but also the optimised experiences that many news providers have created through apps that are usually designed with less clutter than a normal news website.

Sources of news online

Despite the range of choices available online, it is striking that the number of sources accessed is still relatively modest for most people. Our survey shows that on a computer 81% used three or fewer sources of news each week, with only 14% using more than four sources. Mobile users seem slightly less adventurous, with 87% using fewer than three sources, but users of tablets were significantly less likely to use only one source (21%) and a quarter used more than four sources each week.

Sources of news by main access point

Q14 In a typical week how many different ONLINE news providers do you use (including traditional and non-traditional sources, specialist digital publications etc)? Base All (n=2173) Main access point for online news Computer (n=1564) Mobile (n=256) Tablet (n=84)

Overall, however, it seems that it is the interest in news rather than the device that has the biggest impact on the number of sources used. Looking at our news segmentation, we can see the news absorbed tend to use far more sources of news than the other two groups – over a third are using more than four sources every week.

Sources of news accessed per week by segment

Q14 In a typical week how many different ONLINE news providers do you use (including traditional and non-traditional sources, specialist digital publications etc)? Base All (n=2173)

We were not able to ask this question outside the UK this year, but it would be interesting in subsequent years to see if this pattern is different in the United States or France where we know there is higher consumption of blogs, portals, and new internet news players.

Types and Formats of News Consumed Online

nic — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:24:16 +0000

A key question for researchers and news organisations relates to the types and formats of news consumed online. Many news organisations are now putting significant resources into creating and curating live blog pages, which they update throughout the day for major news events. There is also more and more expensive audio video content being produced – but does the investment justify the cost? Are these formats attracting new users or simply super-serving existing audiences? These data offer insights into some of these questions by showing how different content initiatives resonate with consumers across the demographic groups. In this sense they can help define how online channels can best complement offline content such as newspapers and broadcast channels.

Ways of accessing online news

[Any video: 39%; Any radio: 16%] Q15 Thinking of the way you looked at news online this week, in which of the following ways did you access news online? Base (n=2173)

It is no surprise to see that glancing at headlines and reading full stories are the most common types of online news consumption, but watching video news is quite close behind, with nearly two-fifths of the sample claiming to have done so in the past week. Online radio news consumption lags far behind, with only 16% of the sample claiming to have accessed any radio news online in the past week. Men are more likely than women to engage in all of these behaviours except glancing at the headlines. The biggest difference is around video news: 47% of men engage in at least one of the video behaviours, compared to just 32% of women. Over 45s are much more likely to say that they’ve glanced at the headlines online, and much less likely to say that they’ve read a full news story online, than younger age groups. This fits with online being a secondary platform for news consumption amongst this age group.

Paying for News Online and the Rise of the App Economy

nic — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:26:23 +0000

A key dilemma for news organisations is how to derive more revenue from online media. In the early days of the internet, publishers hoped that online advertising would move seamlessly to the web as audiences grew. They believed that trusted brands would gain a sizeable chunk of that market. But in practice, the enormous amounts of general news inventory has pushed down prices for brand advertising and much of the value has gone to sites that have used technology most effectively to target specific consumers – classified listings sites, news aggregators, search engines, and now social networks. Despite the increased importance of internet news, for most newspapers digital revenues remain a fraction of those derived from print. If consumers cannot be persuaded to pay for digital news, publishers will need to significantly reduce staff costs or may be forced to the wall. In the last 18 months, publishers have launched a series of initiatives to encourage consumers to pay. In July 2010 Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation took the brave decision to put The Times and Sunday Times behind a paywall. The titles lost 90% of their audience in the process, but News Corp says revenues are on track and these digital customers contribute 50% more cash than the 20 million ‘window shoppers’ they had before.[1. More than 45,000 are now paying to receive The Times via their iPads and research shows they spend an average of 42 minutes a day with the material and have an average income of £109,000: http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2011/11/23/all-the-media-news-apart-from-the-leveson-enquiry.] Meanwhile the New York Times introduced a flexible paywall in March 2011 where individuals could access a number of articles a month for free. This approach enabled the company to maintain its market share AND gain more than 450,000 digital subscribers.[2. Monday Note on New York Times figures: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/23/monday-note-nyt-paywalls.] Encouraged by these figures, more publishers in the United States and Europe have recently launched paywalls or are considering charging for content on desktop, combined with charging for news apps on tablets and mobile phones. Publishers will be looking for encouragement in the data contained in this survey around attitudes to paying for digital news. Despite the best efforts of news organisations, the numbers paying for online news remains low. In the UK we see the lowest proportion of people paying for digital news content – just 1% in the last week. This compares with a recent National Federation of Retail Newsagents survey (Feb. 2012), which shows 70% of their UK sample buying a printed newspaper at least once a week.[3. https://www.nfrnonline.com/Press-Office/NFRN-Makes-Overwhelming-Case-for-an-OFT-News-Industry-Review.] In total, Denmark has the highest percentage of digital news payment (12%), but less than half of this was in the previous month. Indeed, Denmark is slightly unusual in that one of the largest newspaper groups, Berlingske, has introduced payments for individual articles such as gadget reviews, travel, and slimming guides. Most Danish newspapers also charge for mobile and tablet news apps, either as a single payment or as part of an ongoing subscription.

Have you paid for digital news?

Q16 Have you paid for digital news content? Base UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

UK tablet users are most likely to pay for news

There are some interesting differences in attitudes towards payment when you drill down into the UK figures by age and device – and also sharp differences depending on the strategy being pursued by each news organisation. Those who use a tablet as their main way of accessing news online have paid for significantly more digital news content than those who use a computer or mobile phone as their main way to access online news.

Likelihood to pay by device

	Computer	Mobile Phone	Tablet
Have ever paid	3%	11%	21%

Q16 Have you paid for digital news content? Base UK (n=2173) Main access point for online news Computer (n=1564) Mobile (n=256) Tablet (n=84)

Likelihood to pay by frequency of use

	Several times a day	Once a day	Less often
Have ever paid	7%	5%	2%

Q16 Have you paid for digital news content? Base UK (n=2173)

We can also see that those who use online news heavily are more likely to pay for news. Tablet and mobile users also indicated that the device made a difference to their willingness to pay. Many newspapers now provide free and paid-for offerings online but follow different approaches

The Guardian charges for its iPad and iPhone news ‘app’ as well as its Kindle version but allows free access to the core website
The Financial Times requires registration and then limits the number of articles without payment. It operates a cross-platform ‘app’ which follows similar rules
The Times and Sunday Times lie fully behind a paywall on all platforms – and only exceptionally allow articles to appear without payment (such as the story of the death of war correspondent Marie Colvin)
The Daily Mail provides a free service across all platforms

Willingness to pay by news source

Q16 Have you paid for digital news content? % who have ever paid from those who read selected publications Base UK (n=2173) Tablet boosted sample (n=314)

Going forward 6% of respondents agreed with a statement that they would be willing to pay for news from particular sources they liked. Agreement is higher amongst younger people with 13% of 16-24 year olds and 11% of 25-34 year olds being open to paying for news.

Future willingness to pay

	16-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
% Agree	13%	11%	5%	5%	3%

Q16b How far would you agree with this statement? In the future I would be prepared to pay for access to online news (including tablet, mobile etc.) from particular news sources that I like. % net agree Base All (n=2173)

Once again, it is tablet owners who are most open to the idea of paying to access online news in the future.

Future willingness to pay by device

	Computer	Mobile Phone	Tablet
% Agree	5%	12%	16%

Newspaper brands staging a comeback on tablet?

Looking at the relative position of different traditional and non- traditional news brands across devices, the position of ‘newspapers’ seems to have been strengthened by the emergence of the tablet. Five of the top news brands on a tablet in the UK come from newspaper groups, compared with just two on the open web. New media players such as Yahoo! and Google News seem to perform less well in this arena.

Top news brands by platform

Scroll data area to see more

Offline news	All web	Tablet*
1. BBC News	1. BBC News	1. BBC News
2. ITV News	2. Sky News	2. Guardian
3. Local newspaper	3. Local newspaper	3. Sky News
4. Sky News	4. Yahoo!	4. Mail
5. Mail	5. Mail	5. Local newspaper
6. Sun	6. Google	6. Telegraph
7. Free City newspaper	7. MSN	7. Times

Q8a/b Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week, via traditional (Radio/TV/Print) and via which online means? Base All (n=2173) *Tablet owner boost (n=314)

The success of the app stores particularly with Apple and Android users has encouraged the rebundling of news into semi-closed environments – accessed by a simple touch on a branded icon. Although standard web browsers are used extensively on tablets, our survey shows that news apps are also popular and are used more heavily by those for whom these devices are the primary access point.

Usage of ‘news apps’ in the last week

Q15 Thinking of how you used news in the last week did you use an ‘app’ on your mobile or tablet to access the news? Base Smartphone users n=1150 Tablet users n=328. Main way of accessing news; Smartphone n=256, Tablet n=84

Not only are these news apps popular, they are increasingly appearing in a world where bundled content can be easily paid for. The eco-systems developed by Apple and Amazon in particular facilitate one-click purchases that reduce much of the friction associated with news payment. Both companies have also introduced the concept of digital newsstands in recent software releases, which can push new editions of any publication to the device. These developments are not going to reverse the trends towards real-time always-on news, but they may offer some hope to traditional newspaper groups struggling with new competition and falling profit margins. On the other hand, we should remain cautious in interpreting these figures at this stage. It is still very early days for tablets, which are largely in the hands of richer, and better educated groups who are likely to be more prepared to pay. This is a developing story, which will benefit from the tracking of this data over time.

Foreword to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2012

daviv.levy — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:39:34 +0000

Digital and social media are contributing to audience and device fragmentation - and to the disruption of the business models that have underpinned our information ecosystem. We are swamped with data in this area but much of it is partial, contradictory, or specific to a moment in time. To understand the impact of these changes on the quality and plurality of provision, we need to be able to look at the most important data points in a consistent way over time – in addition to providing relevant research on emerging issues. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report is a new venture which aims to deliver both of these objectives. Each year we hope to bring together an annual benchmarked international survey and a series of essays which help to contextualise some of the key themes. In this first year’s survey Peter Kellner writes about the changing relationship between politicians, the media, and the public. Steve Schifferes looks at the way in which different types of media are being used to inform our understanding of financial information and I’ll look in more detail at consumption of and interest in international news. In the rest of the report, we set out the most important results of the survey in the order in which the questions were asked – setting out the major consumption patterns, the role of different media devices, attitudes to pay, discovery, and participation. Each section is accompanied by some brief contextual material. Although in this first year the UK has been the major focus with an extensive online survey, we are delighted that we’ve been able to benchmark some key questions in four other countries – France, Germany, Denmark, and the United States. International comparison is a key part of the institute’s work and these results illustrate once again that the speed and nature of change is often very different in Europe to a country like the United States which frequently sets the terms of the debate. International comparison is a unique feature of this survey, which raises many important questions about the role of culture, regulation, and politics on media systems. We hope in the future to extend our international polling to a wider range of questions and countries – and will be actively looking for partners and sponsors to help support that vitally important process. This report draws inspiration from US research conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and its associated Internet and American Life Project – along with the Oxford Internet Institute’s bi-annual surveys of internet usage in Britain. Here, the combination of robust surveys and authoritative commentary has provided invaluable assistance to academics, regulators, and practitioners negotiating the transition to digital. To that end, the full data tables are published on our website – freely available for anybody to use. Over time, this will build up into an invaluable resource for researchers and news organisations, to explain the past as well as point to the future. A description of the methodology is available there, along with the complete questionnaire. In this first year, we are very grateful to our supporters. Ofcom, the BBC, City University London, and the polling company YouGov have variously provided financial support, advice in identifying the key issues, and help in interpreting the results. I am especially grateful to Nic Newman for launching the survey and leading it to a successful conclusion and to YouGov for their enthusiasm about the project and for the extensive polling and analysis without which the project would not have been possible.

Survey Methodology for the 2012 Digital News Report

nic — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:42:10 +0000

This study has been commissioned by the Reuters Institute to understand how news is currently being consumed in the UK with a particular focus on digital news consumption and devices used to access the news. A number of the questions were also asked in France, Germany, Denmark, and US to provide an international comparison on key measures. This research was conducted online by YouGov in April 2012. This is an online survey – and as such the results will under-represent older people’s consumption habits, namely use of newspapers, radio and TV. Where relevant, we have tried to make this clear within the text. Going forward these issues will become less of a factor as online penetration grows but it should be stressed that the core purpose of this survey is to track the activities and changes within the digital space – as well as gaining understanding about how offline media and online media are used together. In terms of the UK data, the sample was weighted to targets set on age and gender, region, newspaper readership, and social grade to reflect the online population which Ofcom estimates at 77% of the total UK population.[1. From Ofcom, Communications Market Report (Aug. 2011), 193, 'Internet take-up'.] Because of what we predict will be the importance of tablets going forward, combined with their relatively low penetration today, we have oversampled tablet users in the UK to ensure that the detailed questions in this area are backed by robust numbers. The vast majority of the data we quote in this report is based on the nationally representative sample only. We have made it clear where we are quoting data based on the tablet owner boost sample.

	UK	US	France	Germany	Denmark
Nat rep	2173	814	1011	970	1002
Tablet owner boost	314	N/a	N/a	N/a	N/a
Total	2487	814	1011	970	1002

As this survey deals with news consumption, we filtered out anyone who said that they had not consumed any news in the past month. This was 18% of the initial sample in the UK. The quotas were applied to the remaining sample to ensure that it was representative of the UK internet-using population.

Executive Summary and Key Findings of the 2012 Report

nic — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:47:51 +0000

This first Reuters Institute Digital News Report provides a fascinating overview of news consumption in the transition to digital across the UK and four other countries. The value of this kind of longitudinal study will build over time as we see changes in the data year on year and we hope to increase the size and scope of our international survey – but already we can identify a number of emerging themes, which will be of interest to anyone concerned about the future of journalism and its role in supporting a civic society.

Key findings

There are significant differences in how regularly people keep up with the news across our surveyed countries. Almost 9 in 10 Germans access the news at least once a day compared with only 3 in 4 people in the United Kingdom.
The rapid switch from print to digital in the United States is not being replicated exactly in European countries. Germany is showing the strongest allegiance to traditional viewing and reading habits and has the lowest levels of internet news use.
Online is the most frequently accessed form of news for young internet users – with television remaining most popular for older groups. In general those who’ve grown up with the internet are showing markedly different consumption habits online. They discover and share more news through social networks and show less loyalty to traditional media platforms.
Smartphones are starting to play a significant role in the consumption of news. One-third of Danish internet users access news stories via a connected mobile every week. More than a quarter of those in the US and UK do the same.
The tablet is emerging as an important device for news consumers. Of tablet owners, 58% use the device to access news every week in the UK. They are more likely to pay for news content and over 40% say they find the experience better than a PC. In the UK, we find that some newspaper brands with paid apps do significantly better on a tablet than on the open internet – in terms of overall market share.
More widely, consumers remain resistant to paying for news in digital form. Propensity to pay for online news is lowest in the UK (4%) compared to the other markets and highest in Denmark (12%).
One in five of our UK sample share news stories each week via email or social networks – but in general Europeans are less enthusiastic than Americans about both the sharing of news and other forms of digital participation.
In the UK, news about politics is perceived to be less important – and celebrity news more important – compared to the other countries surveyed.
There is more interest in business and especially economic news in the UK and the US than in the European countries surveyed.
A relatively small number of people are disproportionately important in the creation, consumption, and distribution of news. We’ve identified a small group of news absorbed users in the UK who access significantly more sources of news, are more likely to comment on news, and twice as likely to share news.

Background and market context

This survey comes at a time of continuing and rapid upheaval for the new industry. The internet has disrupted business models, particularly for newspapers and magazines - with each new technical development accelerating the decline in traditional print circulation (see chart below).

UK annual press circulation (m)

Source: Presentation by Claire Enders, Leveson Inquiry Seminar, Competitive Pressures on the Press, 6 Oct. 2011.[1. http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Presentation-by-Claire-Enders1.pdf.]

In the United States, Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism has predicated a future of shrinking newsrooms, less frequent publication, and more papers closing altogether.[2. Project for Excellence in Journalism, The Search for a New Business Model, March 2012: http://www.journalism.org/2012/03/05/search-new-business-model/.] We are seeing similar if less dramatic trends in several other parts of the developed world, although the impact of the internet on legacy media appears to vary greatly by country.[3. See D. A. Levy and R. K. Nielsen, The Change Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy (Oxford: RISJ, 2010).] At the same time, we have seen a major expansion in the use of the internet for news and information. According to a recent global TNS survey, news now comes second only to email in terms of daily activity[4. TNS Global Digital Life (2010): email = 75%, news = 55%, social = 46% daily access for these activities (n=48,804); http://www.tnsdigitallife.com.] and the global nature of the internet has opened up the possibility for consumers of a much richer range of sources - available 24 hours a day, at the click of the mouse or the touch of a finger.

Source: Pew Research Centre, Americans Spending More Time Following the News, 12 Sep. 2010.[5. http://www.people-press.org/2010/09/12/americans-spending-more-time-following-the-news/.]

In the United States, the regular Pew surveys have tracked how consumers have taken to internet news over the years - the most recent shows that online has overtaken newspapers as a regular source of news. But these surveys also show that interactive services are not being used as an alternative to traditional broadcast mechanisms such as television but in a complementary way. At the same time, the online picture is getting more complex, with smartphones, tables, and e-readers extending the range of choices of access - and social media joining traditional news sources as a place where the news itself gets created and consumed. Part of the aim of this Reuters Institute Report is to understand much more about this complex eco-system as it develops and to see how these US and UK trends map to a wider range of countries and cultures.

Change is not equally distributed across countries

One of the most striking findings of this Report is the differences that exist between countries in terms of the transition to digital. In terms of consumption, the US and UK seem to be adopting similar models with heavy adoption of online sources of news, whilst some other European countries are showing a much stronger allegiance to traditional media. Germany shows a particularly strong loyalty to printed products - with 68% of the survey sample accessing a newspaper or magazine for news each week. Traditional news bulletins on radio (68%) and television (87%) also draw the vast majority of the population to watch or listen each week - whilst only 61% access online sources in an average week.

Weekly access of news by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	USA	Germany	France	Denmark
TV	76%	69%	87%	80%	81%
Online	82%	86%	61%	77%	82%
Print	54%	45%	68%	57%	57%
Radio	45%	33%	68%	43%	40%

Q3 Which of the following news sources have you used in the last week? Base All UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

These differences may be partly attributable to the media environment in many European countries where a predominantly non-English-language press and broadcast environment has reduced the impact of external competition. But we also see other factors at play. In Germany the largely regionally-based printed press appears to have stronger roots and has received a measure of protection through regulation, restricting the extent of broadcasters' activities on the internet. Newspaper websites dominate across much of Europe as they do in France - where there has also been limited government support for print - whilst in the United Kingdom the websites of TV and radio news providers do best. The BBC invested early in a significant news presence on the internet and has built up a formidable market share of more than double its nearest competitor.

Online news sources by type

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	USA	Germany	Denmark	France
Broadcaster sites	56%	46%	25%	51%	20%
Newspaper sites	38%	50%	30%	56%	43%
Aggregators	29%	53%	26%	28%	36%
Social media & blogs	18%	36%	18%	23%	17%

Q3 Which of the following news sources have you used in the last week? Base All UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

Overall we see traditional media brands picking up the majority of the digital audience in most countries. The main exception to this rule is in the United States where websites like the Huffington Post and entertainment and technology blogs like Gawker have attracted significant audiences alongside more traditional web portals like Yahoo! and AOL. Blogs and social media are much more regularly used in the United States than in Europe (36% use these as a news source every week compared with an average of 20% in European countries). Our survey also reveals differences in the level of interest in different types of news across countries. IN general, people in the UK are more interested in celebrity news an less interested in domestic politics than those in the other countries surveyed. Germans are most interested in regional news (62%) - no doubt influenced by their federal political structure - while people in the US are much more focused on news from their town or city (56%). The British and Germans seem to follow sport more closely whereas the French are the most interested in art and culture. People in Denmark show the strongest interest in international news (65%), with those in the UK and the US showing the least interest (48% and 44%).

Level of interest in types of news by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	USA	Germany	France	Denmark
Domestic news	74%	53%	61%	66%	75%
International	48%	44%	64%	54%	65%
Local (town or city)	50%	56%	50%	36%	41%
Region	42%	28%	62%	46%	32%
Business	19%	22%	17%	11%	28%
Economic	42%	52%	34%	33%	36%
Ents & celebrity	21%	16%	14%	14%	9%
Health & education	27%	27%	26%	27%	24%
Art & culture	10%	11%	8%	19%	12%
Sports	37%	24%	33%	24%	24%
Politics	37%	63%	55%	57%	56%
Science & Tech	23%	27%	28%	21%	24%

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Choose up to five. Base All UK (n=2173) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814) Denmark (n=1002)

Although the news industry has been disrupted in every country, our survey suggests that the media structures, the geography, and the culture of individual countries seem to have a very significant bearing on both the pace of change and the winners and losers.

The rise of smartphones and tablets for online access to news

A second key theme running through this report is the rapid consumer adoption of more personal and flexible consumer devices which are freeing internet access from the home and the office. Smartphone, tablet, and e-reader sales have all exploded over the last few years. In our UK sample of internet news users, 53% say they use a smartphone and 15% use a tablet - but out survey also shows how extensively some of these devices are being used for news consumption across countries.

News access by device across countries

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	USA	Germany	France	Denmark
Computer	74%	87%	80%	79%	78%
Mobile	28%	28%	21%	20%	32%
Tablet	8%	11%	5%	6%	13%
E-reader	0%	3%	1%	1%	1%
Smart TV	1%	3%	4%	2%	3%

Q4a Which of the following have you used to access the news in the last week? Base All UK (n=2173) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814) Denmark (n=1002)

While computers still dominate online usage across countries, mobiles now stand at over 20% in all the countries surveyed and peaks in Denmark at 32%. Tablets still account for a relatively small percentage of consumption but the sector is set to grow quickly. Our detailed data on tablets and smartphones are only available for the UK, but show that 10% of the 47% who don't already have smartphones are thinking of buying one - as are 19% of the 85% that don't already own a tablet. Our UK data support the recent findings of the latest digital survey from the Pew Research Center in the US, which suggests that these devices are adding to the news experience - rather than replacing other ways of access.[6. The role of mobile devices: http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/infographic.] The vast majority of mobile users in our survey use computers to access the news and also use the news more often throughout the day. The same is true of tablet owners who typically use a rich range of ways of accessing the news. Our UK survey data show the tablet emerging as a particularly important device for news:

58% of tablet users access news from the device every week (68% in the last month).
Tablet owners access a larger number of news sources than other online users.
44% of tablet users say the device provides a better experience for news than a traditional computer.
Tablet owners are significantly more likely to pay for news.

Amongst tablet owners

Q4a Which of the following have you used to access the news in the last week? Base Tablet owners (Boost) (n=314)

Our tablet-boosted sample of users in the UK also shows a very different ranking in terms of the most popular weekly news sources - with newspapers that have charged for 'apps' (Guardian, Telegraph, and The Times) doing much better in percentage terms than on the open internet.

Top UK brands online (weekly access)

Scroll data area to see more

BBC News	58%
Sky News	15%
Yahoo! News	15%
Local newspaper	14%
Mail Online	13%
Guardian	10%

Q8a/b Which, if any, of the following brands have you used to access news in the last week? Base All (n=2173)

Top UK brands tablet (weekly access)

Scroll data area to see more

BBC News	73%
Guardian*	21%
Sky News	20%
Mail	18%
Local Newspaper	17%
Telegraph *	16%
Yahoo! News	14%
Times *	10%

Base Tablet owners (boost) (n=314)* Publications with a paid tablet proposition or paid after free trial. Figures for Times, Telegraph and Mail include Sunday titles.

Tablet users also consume more online news compared with offline equivalents. For the news industry these figures will be very encouraging given that, for many publishers, long-term survival depends on building up cross-platform subscriptions as the move to digital gathers pace. A recent survey showed that within two years only 35% of US Economist readers over 40 plan to continue buying the paper in print.[7. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/nov/27/andrew-rashbass-economist-group-interview.] Generally, however, there is a still widespread reluctance across all our surveyed countries to pay for online news. In the UK only 1% have paid for online news in the last week and and just 4% say they have ever paid. People in Denmark were most likely to pay for digital news, with the British users most reluctant.

Paying for digital news

	UK	USA	France	Germany	Denmark
Ever paid for digital news?	4%	9%	8%	6%	12%

Q16a Have you ever paid for digital news content? Base UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

Despite this we continue to see intense activity in this area with a number of general sites now setting up paywalls and experimenting with paid-for news applications on tablets. It will be interesting to watch how attitudes to pay shift in the years to come.

Discovery and sharing of news: the growing importance of social media

A further theme that emerges from this survey is the way in which people discover news is changing - with social media starting to challenge search engines as a primary way of finding news. Looking at our UK data, we can see that 20% (one in five) now come across a news story through a social network like Facebook and Twitter, with young people much more likely to access news this way (43%).

Search vs social discovery by age

Q18 Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories? Choose up to five.

Base: All UK (n=2173) 16-24s (n=342), over 45s (n=1112)

Overall search engines (30%) are still more important than social media (20%) but the fact that young people are almost twice as likely to discover a news story through social media rather than search marks a significant generational change. And across all our age ranges, 57% say they are more likely to click on a news link that comes from someone they know compared with a link from elsewhere. These developments have been fuelled by a greater focus on news by Facebook in particular, with the development of social plugins for news sites and the launch of social newsreading apps during 2011. These allow the sharing of a news story or video based on what you've read - often known as 'frictionless sharing'. Partly as a result, news organisations like the Washington Post, the Guardian and Yahoo! have reported significant uplifts in traffic - with the Guardian reporting at one stage that referrals from Facebook had outstripped those from Google search.[8. Tanya Cordrey, Director of Digital Development, Guardian News and Media, at the Guardian Changing Media Summit, London March 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/changing-media-summit-tanya-cordrey.] The Economist says that almost 10% of its site traffic now comes from social media.[9. Eric Baumes, chief technology office for The Economist's online edns, at the annual conference sponsored by the Software & Information Industry Association, Feb. 2012: http://adage.com/article/btob/siia-event-dominated-social-media-mobile/285610/?btob=1.] It is not only that audiences are discovering news through social media, they are also sharing news in larger and larger numbers. Here are some of the headlines emerging from our data:

28% of our US sample share news via social networks every week - twice the proportion of those in the UK.
Facebook is the most important network for news. It accounts for over half of all news sharing in the UK (55%) followed by email (33%) and Twitter (23%).
Other social networks such as Google+ and LinkedIn are still relatively niche for news.

In addition, our survey indicates that a small number of heavy news users have a disproportionate influence on the sharing of news. We created a segmentation using a mixture of frequency of access and consumption and identified a group of news absorbed (7% of the sample) who share news more than twice as often as the overall internet news population (46% each week compared with 20%). They also proportionately use Twitter far more heavily than any other social networks. This backs up a growing body of evidence around the special importance of Twitter for news.[10. Nic Newman, #UKelection2010, Mainstream Media and the Role of the Internet: How Social and Digital Media Affected the Business of Politics and Journalism (Oxford: RISJ, 2010).] Against this background it is not surprising that news organisations have been focusing their social media strategies on Facebook and Twitter in the past 12 months. In particular, online discovery and sharing patterns are playing a growing part in customer acquisition and monetisation. When the New York Times introduced its digital paywall in March 2011, it pioneered an approach that made special concessions for users from key social networks (and search engines) to ensure that content can still be discovered and shared freely. This ‘semi-permeable membrane’ has now become a standard approach for most companies operating paid for digital services.

The continued importance of news brands online

Despite the continued importance of search and the rise of social media, our survey contains a number of clues that show trusted news brands still play a dominant role in news provision. Even in terms of finding news, our UK respondents said they were much more likely to think about a branded news website than anything else.

Gateways to news

Q18 Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories? Base All UK (n=2173)

Although we didn't ask the question about discovery of news in other countries in this year's survey, other international studies have drawn similar conclusions. The latest Pew study in the United States finds that 'the reputation or brand of a news organisation, a very traditional idea, is the most important factor in determining where consumers go for news and this is even truer on mobile devices than on laptops or desktops.' [11. Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, State of the Media (2012): http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/.] Our own UK data are not quite as clear on that last point, but they do show that brand is at least as important on a mobile or tablet as on a computer. Further evidence comes from the market position of leading news brands in the UK. In most cases market share is lower online because of the greater levels of choice and competition, but two publications - the Guardian and the Telegraph - have managed to build a stronger market share online, attracting new younger audiences in the process.

Traditional and online use of selected UK News brands

Scroll data area to see more

	Traditional Use	Online
BBC News	69%	58%
ITV News	31%	7%
Sky News	22%	15%
Mail	14%	13%
Guardian	4%	10%
Telegraph	4%	6%

Q8a/b Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week, via traditional (Radio/TV/Print) and via which online means? Base All UK (n=2173)

Given the problems in converting audiences to revenue online, none of this guarantees the survival of traditional news organisations but it should offer a little encouragement that quality journalism combined with strong brand positioning and effective delivery can provide value in a world of multiple sources, personal, and social media. It is also striking that the number of sources used online is still relatively modest for most people. Our survey shows that 78% used three or fewer sources of news each week, with only 13% using more than four sources.

Sources of online news accessed per week

Q14 In a typical week how many different ONLINE news providers do you use including traditional and non-traditional sources, specialist digital publications, etc.? Base All (n=2173)

We find that tablet users and heavy news users do access more sources but even here the majority used fewer than three sources each week. In our news absorbed group, 57% used three sources or fewer and 36% used more than four sources each week. Even with a strong appetite for news and an unlimited range of sources to choose from, it seems that constraints of habit and preference along with the limitations of time are playing a role in focusing access and maintaining the power of news brands.

News as a two-way process

Unlike broadcast technologies, the internet was designed at the outset to facilitate two-way dialogue. It is only in the last few years, however, that powerful and simple software tools have emerged to make that promise real and this has significantly affected the way news is gathered, processed, and distributed. With the upheavals in the Middle East over the last 18 months, ordinary people have been able to capture events on mobile phones and distribute raw news instantly using global networks like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter - as well as email. Across the world in many other cases, citizens are finding their digital voices - and the speed an power of these networks is putting new pressure on governments, businesses, and traditional institutions. There is now a huge variety of ways in which people can participate in news coverage, from taking part in online polls or petitions, commenting on news stories, posting pictures or videos, writing blogs, or organising political campaigns. Our survey across five countries provides a rich set of data around how many people are taking part and which activities are most popular.

Weekly digital participation across countries

Scroll data area to see more

UK	USA	Germany	France	Denmark
42%	69%	41%	60%	45%

Q21b During an average week in which of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? % selecting one of nine options Base UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

At a headline level we can see that each week almost 70% of our US sample participate or engage in the news using at least one of nine options outlined in our survey - compared with less than 50% in most of our surveyed European countries. Of the European countries, France is the most engaged, with 40% taking part in an online poll each week and 21% commenting on news stories in social networks. The French election campaign was underway when our survey was conducted, so this may explain the slightly higher figures there.

Top ways of digital participation across countries

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	USA	France	Germany	Denmark
Vote (online poll)	19%	41%	40%	18%	22%
Comment via Social Network	14%	27%	21%	12%	17%
One-to-one conversation (e.g. email/IM)	13%	30%	15%	23%	22%
Comment via news website	10%	25%	16%	9%	8%
Post picture/video to Social Network	5%	15%	11%	5%	6%

Q21b During an average week in which of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Base All UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814) Note: Only five of the original nine options are shown in this table

More widely, however, it is striking how different the behaviour is in the United States. This could be because the social media revolution started earlier there and eventually perhaps all countries will see these levels of participation. On the other hand, there could be cultural factors affecting take-up. Europeans may just be more reticent about sharing their opinions so freely and openly. We'll find out more as this longitudinal survey takes its course. In terms of demographics, once again we can see those who have grown up with digital technologies (16-24s) engaging with news in different ways to the rest of the population. They are more likely to comment on a news story via a social network (17%) than on the pages of a traditional news site (7%) and much more likely to talk about a news story using one-to-one digital communication (21%) than older groups. Overall these data tend to suggest that the new generation is more comfortable creating and commenting on content on its own terms and in its own spaces - rather than within the confines of a mainstream media world. Our UK survey data also show:

People who use a mobile phone as their main way of accessing news online are five times more likely to send a picture to a news organisation than those who mainly use a computer.
Heavy news users - our so-called news absorbed group - are far more likely to comment on news stories via social networks (21%) and on news sites (16%) than our mainstream group.
Signing a petition was the most common form of political online engagement, with 44% saying they had done so.
Nearly 6 out of 10 young people say they used the internet 'to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion'.

Conclusions

The overall picture painted by the data in this survey is of an increasingly complex media landscape, where digital media are no replacing other forms of media but are layered on top. Tablet owners are still buying and reading printed news publications and watching TV news in pretty much the same proportions as non-tablet owners - and the same applies to other devices. Young people who are addicted to their mobile phones continue to consume at least some printed newspapers and magazines. People are using traditional media and non-traditional media. They are consuming passively and actively at different times and in different contexts. The balance and media mix may be changing but this is is not a zero sum game. Against this background, it is not surprising to see more and more news organisations declaring 'digital first' strategies, reorganising structure and workflows for a multiplatform world. As distribution fragments and competition becomes more intense it will become more and more important for news brands to provide coherent services that work across platforms - with a closer and deeper understanding of what audiences need at any moment in time. In that sense we hope that this Reuters Institute Report will help to build a deep understanding of what those changes are and how news organisations can respond most effective to the new opportunities.

Authorship and Research Acknowledgements for the 2012 Digital News Report

nic — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:40:06 +0000

Nic Newman is a journalist and digital strategist who played a key role in shaping the BBC's internet services over more than a decade. He was a founding member of the BBC News website, leading international coverage as World Editor (1997-2001). As Head of Product Development he led digital teams, developing websites, mobile, and interactive TV applications for all BBC Journalism sites. Nic is currently a Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and a consultant on digital media specialising in news, social media and mobile. Additional expert analysis and interpretation of the survey data was provided by Steve Schifferes, Marjorie Dean Professor of Financial Journalism, City University London (including authorship of sections 1.5 and 1.6), and by Lucy Stewart, research manager within the BBC's audiences team (sections 1.3 and 2.2). The editor is also indebted to Peter Kellner and the team at YouGov – Adele Gritten, Dan Brilot, Shaun Austin, and Angharad Houlden – for questionnaire design, data analysis as well as the quality of their interpretive insights. Also to Richard Addy for his consistent support and encouragement through this project.

Several Strategies For Creating An Investigation Paper

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:43 +0000

In reference to examples in exemplification documents, they may be special or typical. In the example of authorship an illustrative essay, you need to make sure to include things like an clear table of contents and additionally a outline. In truth, among the principal factors which were blamed on reduced grades with regard to writing illustration essays may function as absence of the prerequisite information in exemplification composition creating. You'll likely even think of other items to increase the essay. Moreover, It offers the future path of whatever is contained within the article. Probably yes, since it's the hottest fad in educational article writing. Visit our own article writing company and relish unique and skilled composition solutions.

It's undesirable not small and seems oh, thus threatening on the monitor.

Performing research will enrich the caliber of your composition. Our firm offers you distinct argumentative essay issues where you could get quality educational document. Our write my paper suppliers have certified essay writers who'll enable you to write research paper. You'd like presenting your self as a capable expert writer online Take a gander at websites (the types which make the previous word in what links to domestic assault ), have a look at the collection. It's the type of paper you'd write before writing a option document. You might be required to study the newspaper again after you're completed with that. The Harvard style of writing is only a particular manner of introducing academic papers because it truly is quite professional and user friendly. Contain abovementioned reality into the paper.

Thus, make sure they deserve to be there.

Instead of attempting to tackle the issue, this kind of papers explores the various standpoints of the concern and attempts to comprehend the cultural and societal context of the trouble. Determine where to discover the most reliable advice regarding this issue you're authoring. Also, You will control to correct any grammatical errors and spelling which was within the test. In a Exploratory papers, you're asked to assess past the apparent solutions so as to detect other points of view which can on occasion support in solving the issue. They're component in their course work and so they need to compose quality argumentative composition as a means to acquire far better mark inside their own assessments. A outstanding dissertation issue needs to be particular, first and related to the sector of study. Were I able to sit and compose each re Search issue on books down, I'd be here quite literally eternally. This isn't the very first time I Have composed on the area of research subjects in English literature. If no research is needed, then thought is where you may find your replies.

Advertisement ways realize the regulations in your town.

I locate actually clear-cut,' stupid' queries are outstanding questions. Students who like to move their examinations shouldn't utilize or essay writer buy no cost argumentative composition. Most of on-line article writing businesses were in the marketplace to create cash. Also in case you might have the perfect composing teacher within the planet there'll come a day when you really must abandon that teacher behind and compose all by yourself. With never-ending chances plus a deadline just across the nook, it's no question which you have considered Google for just somewhat inspiration and tips on ways to get the best document subject. Moment restriction is, in inclusion, among the largest challenges in dissertation writing.

How to Description Skills, Teach Fractions & using a Leader

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:46 +0000

So as to begin creating on any of these issues, you need to tackle entire investigation. Composing on such matters should become a great exercise for the thoughts and mind. This actually is perhaps among the finest persuasive essay topics for 5th level. This enlightening post provides an archive of selection of topics which one may select from, for composing editorials. It provides you an educational listing of controversial issues which are suitable for composition writing and a healthy argument. This listing relates to a number of the simple to compose article subjects. Let us observe a few of the topics that one can use for your own essay in 2013. One should comprehend the 3 write essay conventional parts of the article. The very best component about creating an informative essay might be the substantial selection of topics you are able to pick from.

Protest and the faculty supervision will routinely alter the person responsible for pickup.

You can contemplate composing on following themes associated with research and technology. Let's just take a gander at several the school amount subjects. In the next post, we'll analyze some convincing composition hints for various age ranges. In the forthcoming article, we've put together a listing of argumentative essay subjects which may inspire you in to using a stand in some thing you're zealous about and might earn a grounding stage too. Writing an appropriate cover for an essay which you have composed is not an extremely demanding endeavor whatsoever, nonetheless it is the most disregarded. Though this is n't a true segment of your essay, it's possibly the most critical within the procedure Writing should be a procedure of inquiry. Writing an essay isn't a demanding job once you learn the format nicely. Picking the theme may be simpler done once you learn where you excel at considering creating stream. The complete process of picking a standard ; appropriate descriptive essay has to start with contemplating the a range of alternatives out there.

As an example, in the event the parents are currently transmitting the request, they write "mr.

Writing this sort of composition is not a simple occupation. A superb essay must consistently have comprehensive investigation and also a solid discipline of abstract thought in every declaration. Each expository essay will probably have clear aim. Nonetheless, it is possible to try to find professional essay writing services which are going to be capable enough to finish your writing needs. Moreso, in regards to argumentative and persuasive writing. Reading is a strong instrument that may assist you to develop your writing skills unlike another instrument can. The goal of writing such an article will be to inquire and investigate.

The liver has many significant characteristics that preserve an individual healthful.

Prevent supposing the reader is familiar with exactly precisely the same degree of expertise as you're unless obviously you're creating for your own happiness. Before writing, you have to invest a substantial time period, in contemplating about that issue. If you discover an interesting idea in your completely free writing text, but you are not certain about the issue yet, consider performing everything over again. That you do not should argue for or against the topic you're composing on. The introduction must be composed in a couple of lines, and should to certainly explain the topic that will be discussed within the essay. You might be pleasantly surprised to detect this problem of the dynamite essay waiting therefor you. For instance is a fairly fascinating subject, but in circumstance you have to write a categorization essay on this issue, it merely won't be feasible.

Storage Strategies for College Students to Use

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:42 +0000

Writing is chilling for a whole lot of studentsand guys and women generally. In actuality, writing editorials is among the leading approaches to generate knowledge about wellness issues. That is simply to not say it's the initial sentence of the essay. To begin writing a descriptive essay, select the issue you'll be explaining. For a common 5 paragraph essay, you are going to require three or more motives, or parts to your own reply. Make the closing sentence more innovative compared to the others. Write a reply to that issue.

Try to find additional savings for experts, pupils, aaa people, seniors.

Summarize the ideas within the section. Most of us have the inclination rewrite regularly, and students will need to comprehend that re writing, if not backtracking, is really a natural region of the process -- maybe not an indication which they're creating mistakes. You can consider writing on subsequent topics associated with science and engineering. The articles of the kind are grouped within the nonfiction genre. This is actually an essential sort of writing as it assists in developing skills that are vital in our day- today existence. Let's just take a gander at several the school amount issues. It is ordinarily taught to pupils inside their school times. Intimidation and violence among school kids is apparently progressively increasing, as are college shootings.

Other career prospects incorporate coaching and investigation.

Normally, students within the top-notch college Language course know one another, some for several years. In practically every college, students receive the opportunity to communicate their heads on many different topics in the form of elocution competitions. That is just because, students may directly associate with a few of these things, and for their sake, such subjects regularly become an interesting matter to discuss. Teachers should also provide the children suitable instructions for every kind of composition which they have to compose. Brain storming on a specific topic can be called concentrated free writing. You're able to integrate the responses to each of those queries within your essay on relationships. It really is possible to brainstorm the topics for an entire paper or simply a conclusion or an example. Endeavor to include the principal area of work in to the decision. Proposition helps all to believe of several varieties of imaginative suggestions and thoughts.

The need is to sharpen his talent towards the vocation he enjoys to carry on..

The Riddle Fun aids learners to reap the benefits of simile, metaphor and metonymy. Following are a few basic essay writer measures and suggestions on writing an exceptional literacy story. For documents that need study, make sure that you happen to be using great excellent sources of information. It really should not be an issue for you personally since it is a brief story you're creating and not an tremendous essay! Nonetheless, based on the subject of the storyline and just how much information he's seeing it, research is, in inclusion, an essential piece of composing typically discussing. Innovative composing will not hold what you'd call a special construction. Story documents comprise storylines which are intended to demonstrate a point. Narrative non-fiction is truly a balanced mix of details and drama. The essays may protect every prospective matter below the sun.

Rather, you should utilize texting to move into a phone-call or an in-person time..

When composing articles within this category, research whenever possible on the topic. Let's take a view of the topics which could be placed under lifestyle editorials. Here are some quite good essay topics that kids may discover easy to write. This enlightening article presents a record of number of themes it is possible to pick from, for writing editorials. Every subject requires an alternative conclusion style. This may wind up being yet another educational issue to speak on. This will frequently get you to the site of the log making it possible to search for your own issue.

Just how to Snipe

test-editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 08:23:46 +0000

While writing a critical article, don't compose in the first person. The best way to really write the essay may undoubtedly be clarified in another brief article. Be a productive article author. Recognize the crucial themes of your own essay. Learners at college phase are tutored precisely the write me an essay best means to write an opinion essay to ensure that within the time to come they could frame the appropriate phrases and take advantage of the correct text when designing an article. There's but one englishlanguage. The TOEFL examination isn't a easy test.

Id for notarizing forms you will also should display the notary proof of your id.

Continue studying for 4 simple tips for score nicely to your own TOEFL test. The test does an incredibly complete career of examining someone else's capacity to understand and function within their second language. Such books commonly include sample checks to allow you to prepare. All the best with your writing! If your reviewer isn't successful at figureing out what it's that you are attempting to say, you'll require to work further with them all to determine what the difficulties are exactly. You should not actually just take it for granted the readers already has adequate knowledge of the area to be able to recognize below. What you must additionally know is an essential study and authorship isn't a specific or separated activity.

datawrapper example

simonl — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Triumph and Perils of ‘Circus Noir’ Journalism

peter.kellner — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 09:03:29 +0000

A few weeks after I joined the Sunday Times in 1969 as a young graduate, the incomparable Nicholas Tomalin wrote his famous essay for the paper’s magazine about the trade of journalism. It is best remembered for its opening line: ‘The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability.’ However, to my mind, its most important passage comes later in his essay:

A journalist’s real function, at any rate his required talent, is the creation of interest. A good journalist takes a dull, or specialist, or esoteric situation, and makes newspaper readers want to know about it. By doing so he both sells newspapers and educates people. It is a noble, dignified and useful calling.

Those were the days: Insight’s memorable and important investigations for the Sunday Times; inquiring factual programmes in prime time on ITV, well-informed news features on serious subjects in the ‘Mirrorscope’ pages of the Daily Mirror. Today a different impulse seems to dominate the media: give readers and viewers what they want. Many people deplore the showbiz obsessions of the Sun, and the populist agenda of the Daily Mail; but they sell far more copies than any other papers. They are clearly getting something right. YouGov’s research for the Reuters Institute helps to explain what that something is, and how specifically British that something is. We offered people a list of different types of news story and asked them to identify which were most important to them. These are the proportions in five different countries saying ‘domestic political news’ and ‘entertainment and celebrity news’:

News interest across countries: Politics vs Celebrity

	UK	USA	Germany	France	Denmark
Politics	37%	63%	55%	57%	56%
Celebrity & Ents	21%	16%	14%	14%	9%

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Base UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

As those figures show, Britain is out of line with the other four countries. We are less interested in politics than they are, and more interested in celebrity news. If anything, those figures understate the propensity of the British to lap up celebrity stories: people tend to overstate their appetite for serious news, just as they often tell pollsters that their favourite TV programmes are nature documentaries, but the biggest audiences are for soaps, talent contests, and reality shows. There are two ways to view these findings. They tend to be advanced by opposing camps, but they are not strictly incompatible. Both may be valid. The first is that, in competing for readers and viewers, tabloid editors and TV executives are responding to public demand. The second is that, by packaging their papers and programmes in such a compelling way, these editors and executives are shaping that demand. I believe both things are true. Readers and viewers who are passionate about politics and current affairs have plenty of choice – for example, in the pages of the Financial Times, Guardian, and The Economist, and by viewing BBC2, Channel 4, and the BBC’s Parliament channel. Add in what’s available on the internet, and the public has vastly greater access to serious analysis and intense debate than ever before. So when most people prefer tabloid papers, soaps, and reality shows, it is not because they are starved of alternatives. It is because that is what they prefer. On the other hand, supply does shape demand to some degree. Big Brother, Britain’s Got Talent, and I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of Here, did not erupt because market research showed a massive, unmet demand for these particular formats, but because programme- makers and TV executives judged that, with the right people, package, and promotion, they could attract large audiences. To some degree, they generated the thirst they went on to slake. When Ant and Dec lured list celebrities into the wilder parts of Australia, it was because ITV responded to angry viewers demanding that fading soap stars clamber through insect-infested plastic tubes. My point is that far fewer resources are now devoted to any similar appetite-generation for serious journalism, on ITV or in mass-market newspapers. They have largely given up on Tomalin’s quest for compelling coverage of ‘a dull, or specialist, or esoteric situation’. Such investigations that are commissioned tend to have a simple and dramatic central message – for example, that particular MPs and peers fiddle their expenses, or that certain sports stars are corrupt, or that a university took money from a foreign dictator. These are strong and important stories; but there are even more important issues that do not receive the treatment they deserve, or at least not until they become crises – and then they tend to be covered stridently and superficially. Britain’s and Europe’s current financial problems are a case in point. Where is the hour- long, prime-time ITV special with the same resources and production values as The X Factor? Or the six pages in the Sun, deploying the same flair that the paper devoted to serialising the biography of Simon Cowell? To deplore this is not to appeal for an alternative diet of ‘good news’ stories that cheer us up. Journalists should report events and analyse issues on their merits. However, that is precisely what too many of them are NOT doing. Instead, much of their news agenda is driven, consciously or unconsciously, by a particular narrative. In the case of politicians, the prevailing narrative is that they are corrupt, remote, dishonest, and malicious ego-maniacs who evade straight questions and would sell their granny if this would advance their own careers. The Roman satiric poet Juvenal would have understood the forces at work. He described the concerns of citizens as ‘bread and circuses’. Alongside often simplistic ‘bread’ stories (for example, about house prices), today’s mass media pay inordinate attention to the ‘circuses’, alternating between relentless stories of real or imagined sleaze and the confected world of talent contests and reality shows. Without anyone asking for it, but with plenty of readers now paying for it, too many journalists now paint a bleak picture of Britain as a bizarre dystopia: not just a circus, but a circus noir. Now, there is plenty of malice, evasion, and careerism; and the details of some MPs’ expenses claims were truly shocking. These things deserved to be probed and reported. But anyone with an open mind who comes into frequent contact with politicians also finds that most of them spend much of their time as diligent, hard-working people who tend to their constituents’ problems and who care about Britain’s future. When party leaders adopt policy compromises it is usually not out of intellectual flabbiness or political cowardice but because they have concluded that there are no simple and easy ways forward – however much tabloid editorials like to pretend that there are. In short, the typical MP is part-saint and part-sinner. But if journalists are exclusively interested in their sins, then we should not be surprised if the public concludes that they are mostly up to no good. And that is precisely what has happened. Earlier this year, in a survey for the David Butler lecture organised by the Reuters Institute[1. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/new-poll-shows-6-out-10-britons-believe-%E2%80%98politicians-tell-lies-all-time%E2%80%99] and the BBC,[2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/bbc_parliament/newsid_9706000/9706356.stm] YouGov found that:

62% think ‘politicians tell lies all the time – you can’t believe a word they say’.
Just 15% think their own local MP is doing a good job.
66% think that ‘however they start out, most MPs end up becoming remote from the everyday lives and concerns of the people they represent’.

Other surveys have found that trust in politicians has declined markedly over the past decade. This is not just a response to the MPs’ expenses scandal. The process began years ago, and it applies also to other groups of people in positions of authority, such as business executives, the police, and civil servants. And journalists, too: by providing such a persistently alarming account of modern public life in Britain, they have encouraged their readers to distrust elites of every stripe, including themselves. I realise, of course, that my hypothesis – that our contemporary journalistic culture bears some of the blame for an excessively negative public view of those in authority – is impossible either to prove or disprove. Social science cannot conduct pure, controlled laboratory tests of rival theories in the way that physical sciences can. Yet I find it hard to suppose that the mass media have played no part in creating a society in which the average Briton is less interested in politics and more interested in celebrities than people in the rest of Europe. Indeed, the squalid phone-hacking saga reflects the most extreme form of the media’s pursuit of this agenda. So what should our media do? To avoid being misrepresented, let me stress again that I am NOT arguing for any curbs on exposes of bad behaviour. I AM arguing for a more complete account of what politicians and others in authority actually do. Take those terrible stories about MPs and their duck houses, moats, and second-home-flipping. What did the total amount of venality add up to – that is, in terms of clear and cynical dishonesty, not the grey area of dubious ‘expenses’ that the Commons officials considered at the time to be legitimate? I reckon that they amounted to well under a million pounds a year. Had other countries’ legislators been probed in the same detail, I’d wager that few would have experienced less corruption than ours. Our MPs were depicted as world-champion crooks, whereas a proper global league table of venality would consign them to the relegation zone. A newspaper investigation that reached that conclusion would have been important, and actually rather interesting. But it would have contradicted the prevailing narrative, so wasn’t attempted (not even by more serious papers and programmes: they, too, have been influenced by the ‘circus noir’ agenda of the tabloid media more than they might care to admit). My plea, then, is for the media, and in particular their most popular forms, not to hold back on exposing villainy but to investigate and report MORE of what people in authority do: their serious attempts to tackle difficult problems and solve awkward dilemmas, not just their attempts to line their pockets and do down their colleagues. The media should abide by the same rule that applies to witnesses in court: ‘to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’. A true democracy is a well-informed democracy. The paradox of Britain today is that we know more about our MPs, in particular, than ever before; but, to adapt what John Birt and Peter Jay argued a generation ago, this increase in knowledge has been accompanied by a decline in understanding. This is part of the price we pay for the victory of ‘circus noir’ journalism.

Evidence on Interest in and Consumption of Foreign News

daviv.levy — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:27:28 +0000

2011 was a peak year for foreign news coverage. The Arab spring and the Japan earthquake occurred along with the continuing war in Afghanistan and the slow unfolding of the Euro crisis. It is against that background that this brief article brings together two different sources of data. First I use the Reuters Institute survey data to highlight some key findings about declared levels of interest in foreign news within the UK and how that compares with our comparator countries, the US, Denmark, Germany, and France. Second, I provide some early findings from a piece of research being conducted by the Reuters Institute on audiences for foreign news on the BBC.[1. This research on foreign news has been made possible because Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News, gave us access to the relevant BBC data. The Reuters Institute would like to thank her and the BBC News audience research team for their support for this research.] This draws on BBC research about declared interest in foreign news stories and then compares that with two different forms of news consumption:

audiences for the BBC 6pm and 10pm TV news bulletins in weeks when foreign stories predominated;
patterns of consumption online in the same periods.

The aim of the research is to assess how interested in or resistant to foreign news audiences were, and whether levels of consumption differed noticeably either according to the different kinds of story or by platform.[2. This research will be published in a forthcoming Reuters Institute report, due in autumn 2012, on The Public Appetite for Foreign News on TV and Online, by Richard Sambrook, Simon Terrington, and David Levy. I’m grateful to Simon Terrington and Richard Sambrook for allowing me to summarise some early findings from this project here.] This is important because there is very little research which compares declared interest with levels of provision and actual consumption of foreign news. It also allows us to see, in the case of the BBC, the extent to which editorial choices about the most significant stories have any impact on audience size when those stories are foreign.

Evidence on foreign news interest

The level of interest in foreign news in Britain is lower than in most of our comparator countries. Only 48% of British people place foreign news in their top five areas of interest, and this compares with 65% in Denmark, 64% in Germany, and 54% in France.[3. All of these countries have troops in Afghanistan but Britain and France also played an active part in the Libyan activity of 2011.] The level of interest in the US, at 44%, is closest to that in the UK. If one were to assume that interest in foreign news might be correlated with levels of overseas diplomatic and military activity in each of the countries then the low US figure seems surprising, particularly alongside the very high Danish one. But interest in foreign news may also reflect people’s sense of interconnectedness, the degree to which affairs abroad are likely to impact on them directly, or for which they feel some affinity, as much as any direct relation with their government’s degree of foreign engagement. On that interpretation the low US figures may make more sense.

Interest in international news by country

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Base UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

We also see differences between countries in the ranking of the top five forms of news. In the UK foreign news comes third in the list, at 48% some way behind domestic (74%) and local news (50%). But this overall picture conceals striking differences between men and women. British men place domestic news first, with international news second (and sports news third). British women by contrast put international news in fourth place, behind domestic, local, and regional news. British men are on average 10 percentage points more likely than women to be interested in international news (53% compared to 43%). There is a similar pattern in the US where the overall figure of 44% conceals a 49:39 male female gender gap. However this pattern is not repeated in Western Europe. German women are slightly more interested in foreign news than men (66% vs 63%), whereas in France men are slightly ahead (57% vs 52%).

Interest in different types of news by country

Scroll data area to see more

United Kingdom	All	Male	Female
Domestic news	74%	71%	77%
Local news	50%	41%	58%
International news	48%	53%	43%
News about my region	42%	36%	48%
News about the economy	42%	44%	41%

Scroll data area to see more

Germany	All	M	F
International news	64%	63%	66%
News about my region	62%	59%	65%
Domestic news	61%	61%	61%
German politics	55%	59%	51%
Local news	50%	46%	53%

Scroll data area to see more

Denmark	All	Male	Female
Domestic news	75%	69%	80%
International news	65%	67%	64%
Danish politics	56%	61%	51%
Local news	41%	39%	43%
News about the economy	36%	44%	28%

Scroll data area to see more

USA	All	Male	Female
US politics	63%	70%	55%
Local news	56%	47%	65%
Domestic news	53%	52%	55%
News about the economy	52%	55%	48%
International news	44%	49%	39%

Scroll data area to see more

France	All	Male	Female
Domestic news	66%	64%	68%
French politics	57%	64%	50%
International news	54%	57%	52%
News about my region	46%	41%	52%
Local news	36%	32%	40%

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Base UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)Note – shows top five categories in each country

British interest in foreign news increases by age. The gender gap places men about 10% ahead of women for most age cohorts and only narrows significantly among the 25–34 group, with men’s interest just 4% ahead of that of women.

International news by age and gender

	16-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+	All
Male	45%	47%	46%	58%	62%	53%
Female	34%	43%	36%	42%	51%	43%

Interest increases with age

Finally we compared levels of interest in international news according to the sources of news used by respondents each week. Here we have highlighted six of the 20 sources offered to respondents. The high levels of interest amongst readers of the Guardian and Financial Times and viewers of Channel 4 news are not that surprising. Users show very little difference in interest according to whether consumption is on or offline, other than for readers of the Sun and the Star who appear to have more interest in international news online than in their paper versions. The figures for the BBC are interesting for two reasons. First, 53% of users of BBC services place international news in their top five categories of news, compared to 48% of the UK population. That is relevant for the next stage of our analysis where we focus specifically on BBC consumption of foreign news. But it is also interesting that levels of interest hardly vary between users of BBC TV and radio and BBC online.

Interest in international news by news title

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Base All (n=2173)

BBC audiences and levels of declared interest in foreign news

The BBC regularly surveys the public on a range of different issues, using their Pulse panel and RISJ research underway uses this to look more closely at attitudes according to different types of foreign story. A BBC Pulse survey conducted in December 2010 (i.e. before the Arab spring) asked BBC viewers how closely they followed UK news, news from their area, and international news, from any source, and found that 50% of people followed UK news and news from their area fairly closely, with 44% following international news fairly closely. Those who followed these areas very closely broke down as 19% for UK news, 15% for news from their area, and 9% for international news. The hard core of around 10% who follow international news very closely are relatively unaffected by the kind of story. But according to BBC research, looking at the period 2008–early 2011, for most people there is a wide variation between the kinds of foreign stories that attract interest. The BBC Pulse surveys asked people both whether they had followed certain foreign stories closely and whether they wanted to know more. The next graph plots a range of foreign stories from 2010–11 against these two axes. We have highlighted the contrast between the relatively low levels of declared interest in the coverage of events in Tunisia in early 2011 and the Pakistan floods, compared with the very high levels of interest in the Chilean miners story, the Haiti earthquake and the Australian floods, and the Egyptian and Libyan uprisings. A few points emerge. Why was there such low interest in the first Arab revolution – the events in Tunisia? This had fairly extensive coverage on the BBC, but the low interest may have been precisely because it was the first Arab revolution – so its wider significance was not known – and Tunisia is not that familiar to most British people. But we can see that, as the Arab revolutions spread beyond Tunisia, the number of people saying that they were following the events closely and wanted to know more increased dramatically for the uprisings in Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain. Of course in each case the level of BBC coverage also increased, as did the number of familiar correspondents reporting from these countries, and it is reasonable to assume that audience interest may be influenced by the nature of the coverage.

Interest in foreign news stories 2010-2011

Source: BBC Pulse Surveys 2010-11

Second, it is clear that human interest and disaster stories such as the attempts to rescue the Chilean miners and the Haiti earthquake attracted very high levels of interest. But not all disasters attract equal interest. The Pakistan floods of August 2010, whose human toll was huge and which had extensive coverage on the BBC, attracted much less interest than either the Haiti earthquake or the far smaller floods in Australia. The full report will attempt to explain these different levels of interest.

How foreign stories affect audiences for BBC TV news bulletins and bbc.co.uk

Our research also examines weeks where there was intense coverage of foreign news on the BBC main TV bulletins to see what impact, if any, that had on TV audience numbers and use online. The work is still in progress but some emerging trends can be seen. We have examined coverage and audiences for foreign stories over 2010–11. The stories include the rescue of the Chilean miners, the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in early 2011, the Japan earthquake, the New Zealand earthquake of 2010, and the Gaza flotilla of 2010. For each foreign story we have where possible coded the 6pm and 10pm BBC News bulletins for the relevant period (normally one week, though on occasions more) to see the numbers of minutes devoted to the story and its position in each day’s bulletins. We then examined BARB audience figures minute by minute for the relevant bulletins and compared those with the average audience for each bulletin. With online we examined the traffic to the relevant online stories on the same topic in the same week, and measured both the absolute amount of traffic (from within the UK) to each story, and how that traffic compared to that attracted by other stories on BBC online either about the region or across the whole of BBC online.[3. With the help of the BBC News research team, Simon Terrington has kindly accessed and coded this very significant amount of data.] Detailed analysis is underway but some early findings are as follows:

Most foreign stories get more coverage on the BBC 10pm compared to the 6pm bulletin. This reflects the different agenda of the two bulletins.[4. This contrast is identified over the decade to 2009 in a recent piece of research by Steven Barnett and colleagues, ‘From Callaghan to Credit Crunch: Changing Trends in British Television News 1975–2009’, Jan. 2012: (accessed May 2012).]
While declared levels of interest in foreign news are generally below those for domestic stories, and vary greatly by topic, audiences of TV news bulletins dominated by foreign stories hold up relatively well. The most attractive foreign stories can draw up to 20% more than the average, with less attractive ones very rarely depressing the figures to below 10–20% of average. This suggests that, in spite of the challenges facing linear TV, BBC TV news editors can still play an important part in setting the news agenda according to their editorial values; a focus on major foreign stories does not have to come at the price of audience numbers.[5. Our research has not controlled for the quality and nature of the coverage in each case, which must clearly be a factor in engaging audiences in stories they might not necessarily have sought out.]
However, extended coverage of some foreign stories can lead to audiences dropping off during the bulletin even where the audience level has started at a high level. This may simply reflect the fact that the audience appetite for additional angles on the story may be less than that of the programme editors.[6. We have not compared this drop off in audiences for foreign stories run at length (more than 10 minutes) with audience reactions to similarly lengthy treatment of a single domestic story.]
Online audiences for individual stories are on average lower than those for the two main BBC TV news bulletins, and with levels generally ranging from 500,000 to 3 million (compared to average figures of over 4 million for the 6pm and 10pm news bulletins) are much more volatile than for TV, according to the story. That is not surprising given the active nature of online news use as opposed to that for TV.
Stories that peaked online included the Japan earthquake, the rescue of the Chilean miners, Egypt, and the New Zealand earthquake. Online audiences for the 2010 Pakistan floods were, in keeping with the Pulse figures, relatively low.

Conclusion

While the Reuters Institute Digital News Report shows that British people accord less importance to foreign news than those in Germany, France, and Denmark, there are some significant qualifications to this finding. First, levels of interest vary significantly by age, by gender, and by news source used. Second, as our BBC research demonstrates, levels of declared interest vary greatly according to the kind of story; lumping all international news together conceals this important fact. Finally, initial findings indicate two somewhat contradictory trends. In spite of the challenges to linear TV, the audiences to the BBC’s main TV news bulletins are ready to watch foreign stories and some major foreign stories in 2011 boosted audiences by up to 20%. On the other hand, consumption online is much more volatile, with huge peaks and troughs in consumption. The forthcoming research will try to better understand these variations, classify different types of foreign stories, and see how far audience behaviour reflects levels of declared interest. Longer term, as more news consumption switches from set-piece TV bulletins to online, public broadcasters such as the BBC may face a challenge in retaining audience attention for the full range of news stories.

Austerity News: The Financial Crisis and the Digital Revolution

steve.schifferes — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:32:05 +0000

The financial crisis has transformed public interest in business and economic news. The severity of the crisis, and its direct effect on living standards, has led to people to search much more frequently for personal financial information. People are less certain where to turn to for reliable financial information. Trust in major financial institutions – and in the business press – has declined sharply. One reaction to this development has been the increasing use of multiple online sources to seek out financial news. The internet is the most rapidly growing source of financial information. More people now look for financial information online than on television. The use of mobile internet devices to get instant business information is also growing fast, with half the population using smart phones in this way.

Changing nature of financial information seeking

There has been a dramatic shift in how often people search for financial information. In 2005, before the crash, most people were happy to keep up with financial matters on a monthly basis, and 40% never or rarely kept up at all; now, one-third are doing so on a daily basis, and more than three-quarters are doing so at least weekly.[30. The Reuters Digital Survey repeated three questions first asked in the baseline survey of financial capability carried out by the Financial Services Authority in 2005, concerning how often people kept up with financial matters, and what sources they used. The two surveys cannot be directly compared because of the different methodology (face-to-face as opposed to online). In particular, the numbers saying they accessed the internet need to be adjusted for the fact that just less than 80% of the population is online. So we need to be cautious about making direct comparisons between these two sets of figures. Even making these adjustments, however, the striking differences between the two surveys – one before and one after the financial crisis – are unlikely to be due purely to methodological differences, and it is a reasonable hypothesis to suggest there has been a major shift in public attitudes and behaviour in relation to financial information – something confirmed by other survey evidence.]

Looking for financial information: how often?

Scroll data area to see more

Frequency	2005	2012	Difference
Weekly or more*	34	78	+44
At least monthly	24	11	-13
Less than monthly	19	N/a
Don't keep up generally	N/a	9
Never	23	2	-21

Q10b How often do you keep up with financial matters generally, such as the economy and the financial services sector? Base % seeking financial information 2005 (n=5328) 2012 (n=2173) *2012: Daily or more: 33%, Weekly or several times a week: 45%

As well as looking for financial information more frequently, people are also using many more sources to find it. Two new sources stand out. There has been a striking increase in the use of the internet; and there has also been a substantial increase in the number of people who are seeking financial information through face-to-face contact, such as with friends, colleagues, and advisers. The traditional offline media have seen far smaller increases – and while television has gained, printed newspapers do not seem to have benefited from the general trend.

Sources of information on financial matters

Q10c Which of the following sources of financial information do you use to get advice on personal financial matters? 2012 Base All (n=2173) 2005 (fieldwork June-Sept, n=5328); : Financial Services Authority, Levels of Financial Capability in the UK: Results of A Baseline Survey

The growing use of the internet for financial information is only one part of the trend to seek out multiple sources of information, but it is important. People who use the internet for news typically look at two or three different sources.

What is driving the search for more financial information?

The financial crisis has had a huge impact on public attitudes. The downturn in the UK has been deeper, and lasted longer, than the decline in economic output during the Great Depression of 1929–31. Household incomes have fallen for the first time in a generation, and are not expected to recover to their pre-crisis levels for a decade. Asset prices – housing and shares – have crashed, reducing wealth levels and further undermining confidence. There has been a sharp drop in consumer confidence and a high degree of pessimism about the future, with many households experiencing severe financial stress, with accompanying emotional and physical symptoms. Attitudes towards debt and borrowing have also undergone a sea-change.[31. Adele Gritten, ‘New Insights into Consumer Confidence in Financial Services’, International Journal of Bank Marketing, 29/2 (2011), 90–106.] Those in financial stress are more likely to be following the news about the economy, and to want more information about how it will affect them personally. Public interest in the economy has not declined during the first five years of the crisis. According to research carried out by City University, levels of interest in the economic crisis are as high now as when it started in September 2008, when the collapse of the huge US investment bank Lehman Brothers triggered the global recession.[32. Steve Schifferes, ‘Public Attitudes towards the Media during the Financial Crisis’, paper presented at a British Academy Conference: Soothsayers of Doom: The Media and the Financial Crisis in Comparative and Historical Perspective, London City University, Dec. 2011.] People are not just interested in news about the economy generally. They are also interested in the fate of their own personal investments – something which becomes particularly urgent during a severe downturn. This type of information is more readily accessed on news websites than other types of financial news sources. For example, at the beginning of the financial crisis there was a big increase in viewers of the BBC News website, and a particularly sharp rise in the numbers who were looking at the live market data pages. In fact, during the three months from the collapse of Lehman, traffic to the market data pages made up 25% of all pages viewed.[33. Steve Schifferes, ‘Downloading Disaster: BBC News Online and the Financial Crisis’, Journalism, Theory, Practice, Criticism (special issue on the financial crisis, 2012).] The severity of the crisis shattered trust in the high street banks. It led to greater uncertainty and fear in the public mood, as people are no longer clear where to turn to for financial advice. The decline in trust may help explain why more people turn both to personal contacts – friends and family – and to financial websites, where they can try to find more impartial advice.

Trust in financial institutions

Scroll data area to see more

	More	Less	Same	Don't know
Banks	3%	57%	36%	4%
Credit card	1%	49%	44%	6%
Pension	2%	44%	47%	7%
Insurance	2%	39%	54%	6%
IFAs	6%	33%	52%	9%
Building society	12%	31%	62%	5%
Price comparison websites	19%	14%	58%	8%

Q Thinking generally, in light of the recent economic crisis, when it comes to looking after your money do you trust the following types of company more, or less, or is there no difference?Fieldwork YouGov Omnibus online survey : February 2010, (n=2104)

It is not just the banks who are now trusted less, but the credibility gap has extended right across the financial sector, including pension funds, insurance companies, and credit card firms. The only sector that has not shown a decrease in trust is price comparison sites, which allow people to compare and choose financial products online. Business journalists have also suffered a loss of reputation. Polling commissioned by City University found that 40% believe that journalists are not independent enough of businesses they cover, and half thought that they were not doing a good job explaining the financial crisis – with many confused by economic jargon. The greater uncertainty in times of crisis has also reinforced the importance of seeking news from well- trusted brands, with the BBC one of the main beneficiaries.[34. Schifferes, Steve, 'Trust-meltdown for business journalism,' British Journalism Review, (June 2012).] Beyond the crisis, there are also deeper trends at work. The idea of a job for life, with an occupational pension and owner-occupation providing security in retirement, is a fading dream for the next generation. The role of the state had also been trimmed back even before the financial crisis, with individuals being expected to pay more of the full cost of their education, housing, and social care. The desire for financial information that is useful in planning for the future is increasing. The attitude change which the crisis has brought about has reinforced this trend. Fewer people believe that it is acceptable to live for the moment and more say they would rather save than spend.

Future trends in business and financial news

Will the shifting landscape of financial news and information be maintained after the financial crisis is over? Even if – and this is a big if – economic conditions return to normal, there are reasons to suppose that the shift to multiple, digital sources of business news will continue. This will provide both opportunities and threats to news providers. The austerity forced on governments by the crisis is reinforcing the trend towards greater personal responsibility in financial matters. The advantage of the internet is that it provides real-time, detailed, and on- the-go personal financial information. One likely trend – already underway – is the increased personalisation of financial news, particularly on mobiles. Another trend to watch is the growing convergence between seeking financial information, looking for financial products, and making online transactions. It could become only a short step from finding about interest rates changes to purchasing a mortgage. Already an increasing number of people use the internet for financial transactions generally – and for checking on financial product information. At the height of the boom, one-third of older people were tracking the value of their stocks online and one-quarter were executing transactions. (These numbers have declined significantly since the crash.) Independent financial advice is also increasingly found online.[35. See William Dutton, Eileen Helsper, and Monica Gerber, The Internet in Britain 2009 (Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute, 2009) and William Dutton and Grant Blank, Next Generation Users: The Internet in Britain in 2011 (Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute, 2011).] Enhanced financial news consumption has not been driven by social media. This could change if transactions become more integrated with financial information-seeking. Relying more on social media – recommendations from reliable sources – might close the trust gap. It may be that some types of online financial recommendation sites based on user experience will become more important, or that general financial news sites will offer this service. The greater willingness of people to pay for online financial information will also boost investment by news organisations, although brand will continue to be very important – especially for more affluent readers (whose top news brands are the Financial Times and The Economist, both of which have made significant investments in their online offerings). There is a danger that the future flow of financial information may become even more unevenly distributed. There are already two audiences for business and financial news, as our survey has shown – the more intense, better-off users who are interested in investment decisions, and many general readers who want to know how economic events will affect them personally. The increased use of pay-per-view news websites could mean that one part of the audience will have less access to real-time information than before. The gap between the specialist business press and general business audience – already large – could widen further. Interest in business and financial news is also very unevenly distributed between different age groups, and between men and women. Will this trend persist in the future? At the moment older people, especially men, are the digital pioneers in seeking financial information online. Already we are seeing a narrowing gap in the level of interest in financial matters between men and women as they get older. So there are some grounds for optimism that permanent changes are occurring in attitudes and behaviour among under-served groups. Further changes will be necessary if the level of financial capability in the population as a whole is to rise to meet the growing challenges of the post-austerity economic landscape.

Gateways and Discovery of News Online

nic — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:33:56 +0000

Researchers have long been interested in what news people are exposed to – and how this might affect people’s opinions about political and social issues. Newspapers have often claimed, for example, the power to influence the outcome of elections or other big issues of the day. Broadcasters have been subject to strict impartiality rules for news – but that hasn’t stopped output being intensely scrutinised by politicians and regulators because of its perceived influence. And yet even as Lord Leveson investigates the power and influence of old media, digital media is changing the rules of the game. The internet has dramatically expanded the number of news providers through lowering the costs of entry, but ironically it also seems to have created a small number of powerful new gatekeepers. Google, for example, has more than 90% of the search engine market in the UK[1. http://www.hitwise.com/uk/press-centre/press-releases/google-increases-market-share-of-uk-searches.] and has become the starting point for many internet journeys. Our survey shows that Facebook is also used every month by 63% of the online news population and YouTube by 54%. News organisations have come to rely on search engines and social networks as a source of traffic and employ search engine optimisation techniques (SEO) and social media marketing to drive more. But there is some disquiet about the power of these new gatekeepers and the lack of transparency of the algorithms used. In China and other authoritarian countries, certain news stories are routinely removed from search results. Elsewhere, Google stands accused of bias towards its commercial interest by favouring its social network Google+ in search results. Apple’s promotion of a particular ‘news app’ can increase the number of downloads by 10 times or more. Such examples have raised fresh questions about how we discover news and news sources in the digital world. Overall, the starting point for news tends to be a branded news site across all ages and demographics. Beyond general browsing, search remains the most important mechanism – with the main search engine more important than a specialist news search.

Gateways to news - brand vs search vs social

Q18 Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories? Choose up to five. Base All (n=2173)

The other key finding in our survey is that 20% (one in five) now come across a news story through a social network like Facebook and Twitter, with young people and tablet users much more likely to access this way. Young people search less (25%) but use social networks like Facebook and Twitter far more often (43%), where news comes to them in a constant real- time stream of comments, links, pictures, and videos.

Discovery mechanism by brand

Q18 Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories? Choose up to five. Base All (n=2173)

As just one example, the Kony 2012 film produced by the charity Invisible Children about the activities of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Central Africa became an instant sensation amongst young people, clocking up over 100 million views on YouTube and Vimeo – after the link was passed around on Facebook and other social networks. Different news brands rely on various ways of getting their news found. Powerful brands like the BBC can rely on more direct traffic to their website and cross-promotion from offline services. As a result, their users tend to search for news a little less. Smaller brands like Channel 4 News tend to rely on search, social media, and email – presenter Jon Snow, for example, has a loyal following for his daily updates and Twitter channel. But again the big story here is social – where online users of the Independent newspaper and the Guardian use social media significantly more as a discovery mechanism (46% and 41% respectively). Both newspapers have been active in social media and launched ‘social reader’ applications in Facebook – which automatically share stories that you have read – without having to take any other action. This so-called ‘frictionless sharing’ has ratcheted up social sharing of news for some of the world’s biggest brands in 2012.

More likely to click on news from a friend

Driving this are data showing that people trust content that comes from friends. Trusted news brands are still important but in social networks recommendations from your connections are most valued. This is particularly true amongst people who share news regularly, where 78% say they are more likely to click on news sent by a friend than from elsewhere. The opinion of friends is especially valued around arts news (67%) and celebrity news (61%).

Likelihood to click news link from someone you know

Q21 Are you more likely to click on a news link that comes from someone you know – compared with a link you come across elsewhere? Base All (n=2173)

Sharing of news

News organisations are increasingly seeding content in social networks, setting up brand pages and feeds on Facebook and Twitter, but the bulk of sharing is done by individuals.

Sharing news links via email and social networks in last week

Q20 Thinking about how you share NEWS, in the last week have you passed on a link to an online news story, video, via email, social networking, or other means? Base All (n=2173) All those whose MAIN way of access is mobile (n=212) Main way of access is Tablet (n=84)

Overall, our survey shows 20% of the UK online news population shares news digitally every week by social network, email, or other electronic means – but once again mobile and tablet owners are more active. Drilling down into the direct mechanisms by which people share news, we can see that Facebook is by far the most important way of sharing news, accounting for more than half of all links (55%), followed by email (33%) and Twitter (23%). We can also see that in the UK none of the other social networks are particularly significant in terms of overall volume. It is still early days for Google+, and this is not yet generating a large volume of news links (6%).

Through which of the following have they shared news links?

Q20b Through which of the following have you shared a news link with others in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base All those who share news links at Q20 (n=435)

Once again we see a marked generational difference in the tools used for sharing news and the propensity to do so. Email is a popular choice for the over 45s, whilst Facebook (71%) and Twitter (24%) are the natural choice for young people. Links shared in social media are also likely to be seen by a number of people, whereas emails tend to be delivered to one person or to a small group – so it is not surprising that social media has overtaken email in terms of total volume of referrals to the websites of most news providers.

Weekly news links by age and platform

Q20b Through which of the following have you shared a news link with others in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base All those who share news links at Q20 (n=435), 16-24s(n=107), over 45s (n=168)

Two-way News: Participation and Engagement

nic — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:36:20 +0000

Social networks have become important not just for the sharing and discovery of mainstream news, but also as a place where news can be created by ordinary citizens. Much of the coverage from Egypt, Libya, and Syria has emanated from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter – driven by the ubiquity of mobile phones and the growth of global social networks. In the early days of the internet, such participation was limited to an online poll or comments on the news stories of mainstream websites, but the last decade has seen an explosion in many more types of participation – photographs, social chat, videos, and blogs. The Oxford Internet Survey has tracked the rise of online participation since 2005. In its latest survey in November 2011, the authors conclude that new ways of communication continue to increase at a striking rate. They note that in the UK the use of personal websites and blogging is levelling off but this is perhaps explained by the dramatic growth of social networks that incorporate much of this functionality.

Oxford Internet Survey - participation online

Q How often do you use the internet for the following purposes? Oxford Internet Survey - OxIS 2005 (n=1309); OxIS 2007 (n=1578), OxIS 2009 (n=1401), OxIS 2011 (n=1498)

This section explores a series of participation metrics relating specifically to news, so we will be able to track changes over time and between countries.

Participation in the UK

Overall almost one in four of our survey respondents engages with the news in some way – by writing comments, blogs, posting videos, sharing links, or taking part in polls or campaigns. The old days of news as a one-way broadcast seem to be well and truly over.

Weekly news participation online

Q21b During an average week in which of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Please select up to five of nine options. Base All (n=2173)

Continuing the theme running through this report, younger people – who are widely thought to be disengaged from news – are the most active group in discussing and sharing news stories online. Much of this activity is likely to be around entertainment and celebrity news, as we noted in an earlier section, but this group also shows more interest in UK politics than the national average so it is likely that political discussions and engagement will be a strong part of this story.

Weekly news participation and engagement online

Q21b During an average week in which of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Please select up to five of nine options. Base All (n=2173) – using figures for none of the above and don't know to define non-participation.

We can also see that the younger group engages with news in different ways. They are more likely to comment on a news story via a social network (17%) than on the pages of a traditional news site (7%) and much more likely to talk about a news story using one-to- one digital communication (21%) than the older group. This reflects the popularity of different messaging technologies in general amongst younger people (social networking, SMS, and instant messaging) when compared with email, as noted by the Oxford Internet Survey.

Weekly participation types by age and group

Q21b During an average week in which of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Please select up to five of nine options. Base All (n=2173)

The level and type of participation also appears to be affected by device. Those people whose main access to online is through a mobile phone are more likely than computer users to share news and create and upload their own news content. Strikingly they are five times more likely to post a picture or video to a news website than computer users. This may be because they are more likely to witness a news event when on the move, but also because the integration of the camera and connected phone has driven a significant increase in citizen-generated news pictures and videos – as was seen during the Arab spring, the royal wedding, and the London riots. One-to-one messaging and online voting are the only two participation measures where the activity levels of computer users are higher. It appears that new devices and, particularly, the way they make it easy to integrate messaging and social applications, are driving greater participation with the news. These trends will be interesting to track as smartphone penetration grows.

Weekly participation types by main way of accessing news

Q21b During an average week in which of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Please select up to five of nine options. Base All (n=2173). Main way of access via computer (n=1564), main way of access mobile (n=256)

International participation levels

Across the world we see remarkably different rates of adoption of the new social and participatory techniques. A much higher proportion of US respondents share and participate via social media platforms than respondents from other countries. Overall, UK and German respondents share and participate in weekly news coverage the least.

Weekly participation by country

Q21b During an average week in which of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Please select up to five of nine options. Base UK (n=2173) Denmark (n=1002) France (n=1011) Germany (n=970) USA (n=814)

Each week almost 70% of Americans participate or engage in the news using at least one of the techniques above – compared with less than 50% in most of our surveyed European countries. People in the United States are twice as likely as Britons to share news, engage in an online conversation about news, or comment on a news website or in a social network. Of the European counties, France is the most engaged, with 40% taking part in an online poll each week and 21% commenting on news stories in social networks. The French election campaign was underway when our survey was conducted, so this may explain the slightly higher figures there. The high figure in the US around taking part in online campaigns may be related to the current presidential elections there.

Explore the 2012 Report

simonl — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:14:02 +0000

Download the 2012 report

Supporters of the 2012 Digital News Report

simonl — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:22:36 +0000

Supporters

Partners for the 2012 Digital News Report

simonl — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:01:01 +0000

Supporters for the 2013 Digital News Report

simonl — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:09:51 +0000

Supporters

Foreword to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013

daviv.levy — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:00:57 +0000

This is the second in what we hope will be an annual series of reports that tracks the transition of the news industry towards an increasingly digital and multi-platform future. This year’s report provides compelling evidence about the growing number of ways of consuming news and, in particular, the speeding up of the mobile and tablet revolution. It also documents the ways in which people are paying for news, the growing number of locations where they access the news, and brings new data about the trust and credibility of different news sources as well as attitudes to partial or impartial news. But there are many other fascinating insights that have emerged from our unique survey of the news habits within nine countries. We have expanded our focus to include Japan, Brazil,[1. The survey only covered urban Brazil. See the following section on methodology.] Italy, and Spain – in addition to the five countries (US, UK, France, Germany, and Denmark) that provided the basis of last year’s survey and we’ve asked more questions in all countries on the key issues. Once again we combined these data with a series of essays, which add depth and context to the findings, and these have been strengthened by academic partnerships with the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg, the School of Journalism at the Institute of Political Science in Paris, and the Centre for Power, Media and Communication at Roskilde University, Denmark. Many of our academic partners are also organising events or country reports looking in more details at national themes – and adding wider value to this international project. To that end we have also taken more effort to open up all of the data this year. A new website (www.digitalnewsreport.org) contains slidepacks, charts, and raw data tables, along with a license that encourages reuse. The website – which is optimised for mobile and tablet devices – will also carry links to non-English-language versions and build over time as a resource for further research. Over time, we believe this will build into an invaluable resource for academics and news organisations to explain the past as well as the future. A description of the methodology is available along with the complete questionnaire. Making all this possible, we are hugely grateful to our sponsors this year, which include Google, BBC, Ofcom, France Télévisions, Newsworks, as well as the Hans Bredow Institute and Roskilde University. I am also grateful to YouGov, our polling company, who did everything possible to accommodate our complex requirements and helped our research team analyse and contextualise the data.

Survey Methodology for the 2013 Digital News Report

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:05:03 +0000

This study has been commissioned by the Reuters Institute to understand how news is being consumed in a range of countries. This research was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2013.

The data was weighted to targets set on age and gender, region, newspaper readership, and social grade to reflect the total population of each country. The sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet.
As this survey deals with news consumption, we filtered out anyone who said that they had not consumed any news in the past month in order to ensure that irrelevant responses didn’t adversely affect date quality. This category was between 2% and 4% in most countries but as high as 9% in the UK.
A comprehensive online questionnaire was designed to capture all aspects of news consumption.
Core questions were asked in France, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Japan, Brazil, and the US, as well as the UK, to a nationally representative audience to provide an international comparison.

Scroll data area to see more

Country	Starting sample	Non-news users	Final sample	Total population	Internet penetration*
UK	2308	9%	2078	63m	84%
Germany	1099	3%	1062	81m	83%
Spain	1016	4%	979	47m	67%
Italy	1003	4%	965	61m	58%
France	1016	4%	973	66m	80%
Denmark	1024	2%	1007	5.5m	90%
US	2170	7%	2028	314m	78%
Brazil**	1003	2%	985	194m	46%
Japan	1004	2%	978	127m	80%

*Source: Internet World Stats http://www.internetworldstats.com population estimate 2012. ** Please note that Brazil is representative of an urban population rather than a national population as such the internet penetration is likely to be higher than stated above, which must be taken into consideration when interpreting results.

This is an online survey – and as such the results will under-represent the consumption habits of people who are not online (typically older, less affluent, and with limited formal education). Where relevant, we have tried to make this clear within the text. Going forward, these issues will become less of a factor as online penetration grows. In any case, the core purpose of this survey is not to deliver absolute numbers, but rather to track the activities and changes within the digital space – as well as gaining understanding about how offline media and online media are used together.

Authorship and Research Acknowledgements for the 2013 Digital News Report

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:10:05 +0000

Executive Summary and Key Findings of the 2013 Report

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:15:18 +0000

News is becoming more mobile, more social, and more real-time. This year’s survey reveals continuing shifts in how, when, and where people access the news, with digital patterns becoming more entrenched – particularly amongst the younger half of the population. Audiences increasingly want news on any device, in any format, and at any time of day. But our survey reveals that the multi-platform and digital revolution is not proceeding at an even pace in all countries. What happens in the US does not necessary follow automatically in Europe or elsewhere. Geography, culture, and government policy also play their part, with Germany and France still showing strong allegiance to traditional forms of media. We also see marked differences in ‘participatory cultures’, with very different rates of take up in social media, commenting, and voting across our surveyed countries. For traditional brands – and especially newspapers – these changes bring ever-greater competition and more disruption to business models. But this year’s survey offers some signs of hope for those investing in original news content. More people say they've paid for digital news in the past 10 months and we have data for the first time about the types and frequency of digital payment. Traditional brands continue to attract the largest online audiences and we find that trust in news brands remains uniquely valued by young and old. We lay out our data on subsequent pages and in full on our website, but first here is a summary of our key findings.

Rapid Growth in Both Mobile and Tablet Use for News

Tablet usage has doubled in the 10 months since the last survey in those countries covered in both 2012 and 2013. Weekly news use has risen from 8% to 16% of our UK sample and from 13% to 25% in Denmark.[1. These figures are not exactly comparable because we routed the questions slightly differently last year. They are however consistent with other data showing a sharp increase in news traffic from tablets.]

Percent accessing news via tablet by country

Q8a/Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007)

Mobile usage is also up substantially. In many countries smartphone users are now in the majority[2. Ofcom Technology tracker Oct.–Dec. 2012 shows 55% smartphone ownership in the UK. A Pew Internet Project survey from Aug.–Sept. 2012 found 45% of US adults owned a smartphone (66% among 18–29 year olds).] and most of them use these devices to access news every week. Denmark leads the way with 43% weekly news usage from a smartphone. Germany lags with 22%.

Trend to Multi-Platform Consumption

While the computer remains the primary device for accessing digital news, the key underlying trend is about growth in access from multiple devices. One-third of our entire global sample now gets news on at least two devices and 9% use more than three.

This is important because, along with other researchers,[3. This is confirmed by other research – see Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, Mobile Devices and News Consumption, http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/ we find that as people acquire more devices they consume more news in aggregate (time spent) – but also access news more often throughout the day.[4. This aggregate information is also borne out at country level (see p. xx).]

Frequency of access grows with devices (all countries)

Scroll data area to see more

Device	Several times a day
ALL News users	62%
Computer	68%
Smartphone	73%
Tablet	75%
Tablet and smartphone	86%
All three	88%

Q1b: Typically, how often do you access news (in any way)?

Base: All markets (n=11004)

Some devices are used more heavily for news than others. 85% of computer users say they access news on that device each week, compared with 63% of smartphone users, 60% of tablet users, 54% of smart TV users, and only 17% for the e-reader. But multi-platform is not just about digital news. Across all of our countries, an average of 49% of those who access news on a tablet say they also read a printed newspaper at least once each week; 81% also watch TV news and we see similar patterns with smartphone users.

Percent of tablet and smartphone users using other media sources weekly (all countries)

Digital may be impacting traditional platforms but it is not yet replacing them. For most people digital news is extending the range of options available.

Uneven Pace of Change – Differences between and within Countries

Despite the general growth of online and multi-platform news, we find that a sizeable minority is sticking with traditional platforms such as TV, radio, and print, particularly in Germany and France. Despite this being an online survey, one in three of our French and German samples said they had only used traditional news platforms in the previous week. In Germany, we find that 58% of our sample are using only traditional or mainly traditional news platforms[5. We have segmented our samples using both platform- and interest-based approaches, which are explained on p. xx.] – compared with 35% in the US and 29% in Japan. Amongst online news users, we also see marked differences between countries over the extent to which traditional news brands are being disrupted. In countries like the UK and Denmark, traditional news brands continue to attract 80% or more of the online audience, whilst in Japan and the US ‘pure players’ and aggregators have attracted a much bigger market share. In the UK, the strength of broadcast brands is largely accounted for by the BBC, while in both the US and Japan it is a newer player, Yahoo that attracts most users with 32% and 63% respectively. Social media and blogs are used more as a source of news in Spain, Italy, urban Brazil, and the US, than in our other countries.

How traditional news brands perform online by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Broadcast brands	45%	20%	36%	31%	18%	35%	35%	42%	38%
Newspaper brands	35%	25%	42%	37%	26%	54%	31%	37%	26%
New online brands	24%	28%	25%	38%	26%	18%	41%	43%	66%
Social media, blogs	23%	21%	35%	35%	20%	33%	32%	51%	25%

Q3: Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Thirdly we see marked differences in behaviour within countries – with a clear divide between younger and older groups. Younger people are more likely to use social media and aggregator brands and in all countries they show a strong preference for online. For ‘under 45s’ – almost half the population – the internet is now the MAIN source of news as well as their most frequently accessed source. For ‘over 45s’ the main source remains TV, with other traditional platforms also important.

MAIN source of news by age (all countries)

Q4: You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week (n=10843)

This is a split defined more by age than any other demographic factor and reflects the habits of those who have grown up with the internet or have adapted to it as part of their working lives. It should be noted that our numbers understate the importance of traditional platforms because of our (online) sample. However this also means that the platform differences noted above are likely to be even more marked amongst the older groups.

Newspaper Readership and Purchase

This is the first year we have collected data of newspaper (printed) purchase, so the most interesting findings are around the differences between our nine surveyed countries rather than changes over time. Claimed newspaper purchase (at least once a week) remains high in most countries. It is strongest in Japan (68%), Italy (59%), and Germany (56%) and lowest in France (39%) and the US (42%). There are sharp differences in the balance of ad hoc purchase (newsstand/shop) vs ongoing commitment (mainly home delivery). Japan has 84% home delivery whereas in Italy 81% of purchases are at the newsstand or shops. Germany has a healthy balance, with a strong leaning to home delivery.

Paying for Digital News

Whilst 50% of our global sample (average) said they had bought a printed newspaper in the last week, only 5% said they had paid for digital news in the same time period. This is partly because the majority of online newspapers still do not charge for news – although that is changing rapidly with the erection of paywalls, combined subscriptions, and app-based purchases. Since our last survey, we’ve seen a significant rise in the number of respondents paying for online news – albeit from a low base. In the UK 9% (+5) of our sample said they had paid for digital news. France is at 13% (+5) and USA 12% (+3).

Percent paying for digital news by country

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007)

Percentages that said yes in the last week, month, year or longer than a year

In the United States, we find that smartphone and tablet users are significantly more likely to pay than other online news users. Even after controlling for the following variables: interest in news, age, gender, education and income, they are on average almost twice as likely to pay as those who don’t use these devices. We do not see the same device impact in the UK where the eco-system around paid news is less developed and there are a large number of high quality free news apps in the market. [6. The methodology behind our controlled regression test around the impact of device can be found here (link to to a page)] All four of the countries surveyed for the first time in 2013 show higher percentages of people who have paid for digital news in the last year – with Brazil (24%) and Italy (21%) leading the way. Italy and Spain’s figures are largely driven by one-off payments for apps and articles while the US and Denmark statistics are more fuelled by ongoing digital subscription. Of those who are not currently paying, more than one in ten (14% on average) said they were very likely or somewhat likely to pay for digital news in the future (‘for sources that you like’). In Brazil the figure was a striking 58%.

Where and When we Access the News

There are new data in this year’s survey from the UK and Denmark about the devices and locations used for accessing news. These show tablets are still mainly used in the home – and specifically in the living room. Everywhere else, given the choice, the smartphone is preferred over the tablet as a way of accessing news. Portability trumps screen size. In the workplace 71% of news access comes via the computer, while in the car, radio still dominates (84%). On public transport in Denmark, people are twice as likely to use a mobile phone for news (63%) as to read a printed newspaper (33%). In the UK, the data show 48% use mobile phones, 34% use print, and 6% access news via a tablet.

Media used to access news on public transport (UK and Denmark)

UK3B: Please mention the key news media you used in these locations.

Base: Those who access news while travelling via public transport UK (n=270) Den (n=92)

Pathways to News – the Rise of the New Gatekeepers

Last year, we were only able to ask the question about how people discover news in the UK. Now we are able to see results from all nine countries, with significant differences emerging. Previous US research[7. Pew State of the Media report 2012.], along with our survey last year, suggested that brand was still the most important pathway to news, followed by search, and then aggregators and social media. This does not appear to be a universal pattern. In France and Germany, search engines are the most important gateway – used about twice as often as in the UK. In Brazil, social media are the top-ranked gateway for our urban-based online sample (60% said it was one of the five most important ways of finding news). The same is true in Spain (45% social media compared with 40% for search). Japanese consumers, by contrast, are more likely to get news from aggregators and portals, followed by search.

Most important gateways to news

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Brand	34%	32%	38%	35%	16%	55%	20%	47%	28%
Search	24%	40%	40%	49%	45%	30%	33%	44%	39%
Social	17%	15%	45%	38%	14%	22%	30%	60%	12%
Aggregators	17%	16%	17%	16%	12%	7%	26%	37%	43%

Q10: Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories? Chose up to five.

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Beneath the headline numbers, however, again we see significant generational differences, with social media now rated more important than search amongst the ‘under 45s’. By contrast, amongst the ‘over 45s’ in the UK, only 9% think social media are an important way of finding news.

Those using social media to FIND news (selected countries)

Q10: Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories? (select up to FIVE).

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Germany (n=1062) Urban Brazil (n=985)

This evidence from nine countries paints a picture where brands are being increasingly dis-intermediated by a growing range of pathways to their content. This is especially the case for light and occasional users and for younger users. Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon now have a significant and growing stake in the news industry. Their prominence as gateways enables them to take a share of advertising revenue and/or a cut of subscription revenues if, for example, people access via a branded app. Apple is a particularly dominant force in the news business in some countries – the UK, Denmark, and the US – but less so elsewhere.

Market share of Apple devices by country

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
iPhones	39%	26%	25%	33%	34%	47%	43%	28%	56%
iPads	63%	48%	42%	45%	51%	80%	58%	39%	70%

Q8a: Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use for any purpose? (Multiple answers allowed).

In Denmark, Japan, the US (and the UK) there is a relatively equal split between Apple iPhones and other devices (mostly Android). Elsewhere, other operating systems such as Android and Blackberry tend to dominate. Apple has only a quarter of the market in Germany (26%) and Spain (25%).

The Enduring Role of Brands and the Role of Trust

Our survey cast further light on the importance of trusted news brands. In all countries we asked if people agreed that they preferred to get news from sites they know and trust. The figures were universally high, with 90% supporting the proposition in Brazil, 82% in the US, and 77% in the UK. People who consume heavily and are most absorbed by news are far more likely to agree with the statement (90% of UK multiple device users).

Trust and brand recognition by (selected) country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Fra	US	Bra	Jap
Prefer news from sites I know/trust	77%	76%	82%	90%	71%
Don't notice which sites I look at	16%	37%	24%	34%	44%

Q9: Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you online, to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements.

Base: All UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Japan (n=985) France (n=973) Urban Brazil (n=985) % agree

Asking the question in a different way (‘I don’t notice which sites I’m looking at…’) showed a slightly different picture. The UK, which has strong traditional news brands, showed the lowest levels of agreement (16%). Brazil (34%), France (37%), and Japan (44%) – which all demonstrate greater usage of aggregators or newer ‘pure player’ brands – had the highest levels. One key factor in reducing brand recognition appears to be social media. Heavy social media users in the UK are more likely to agree that ‘they don’t notice which sites’ they are using (23%). Trust in traditional brands was also high when compared with blogs or social media. Broadcaster websites in the UK were trusted by 79%, with newspapers showing over 60%. In comparison, Facebook (8%) and Twitter (9%) were widely mistrusted – although heavy social media users were significantly more likely to trust what they found. Trust in news brands increases significantly with the amount of usage, so it is not surprising that smartphone and tablet news users also show more trust in traditional brands. We also find, in terms of their behaviour, that users of these devices are much more likely to go directly to a brand (50%) using a desktop icon, on a smartphone, compared to the overall sample (34%). The more devices – and the heavier the use – the better they tend to do.

The Impact of Tablets and Smartphones on Brand Performance

This year we also asked respondents in all countries about specific news brands they accessed on different devices (computers, tablets, and smartphones) to see if there was an impact on market share. We find that brands that have a reputation for breaking news, like Sky News in the UK, TF1 in France, and CNN in the US, tend to do better on mobile devices. Sky News has 15% share on the web and 25% on mobile in the UK, driven by a strong app offer and promotion from TV. In contrast, old-style web aggregators like Yahoo and MSN – where news services are linked to default browser settings – seem to be losing out in an app-based world – at least in the UK and US.

Breaking news brands vs aggregators market share by platform

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Computer	Mobile	Gain/Loss	Tablet
Sky News	15%	35%	+10%	21%
CNN	16%	19%	+3%	16%
TF1	10%	16%	+6%	14%
Yahoo! (US)	37%	25%	-12%	27%
Yahoo! (UK)	20%	8%	-12%	9%
MSN (US)	14%	10%	-4%	10%

Q8c: You say you access news via a Computer,/mobile, tablet. When using that device which of the following news sources have you used in the last week?

Base various

These differences, however, are very much the exception. Most brands do about the same in terms of market share on mobile and tablet as the general web, with the same problems of discovery given the extent of global competition.

Selected traditional news brands market share by platform

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Computer	Mobile	Tablet
Bild (Germany)	21%	21%	16%
Daily Mail (UK)	18%	14%	16%
La Republica (Italy)	34%	37%	38%
Le Monde (France)	16%	18%	15%
El Mundo (Spain)	24%	17%	22%
New York Times (US)	11%	9%	12%

Q8c: You say you access news via a Computer,/mobile, tablet. When using that device which of the following news sources have you used in the last week?

Base various

As tablets and smartphones become more mainstream, people seem to be accessing the brands they feel comfortable with elsewhere. Although niche players can do well, scale and the ability of brands to cut through across platform are likely to become increasingly important.

Partiality in News

There is a growing debate in parts of Europe about the continuing relevance of impartial news provision – particularly on television. Many parts of the world (the US, Italy, and Brazil) already have a more partial, less regulated media system. Our survey found a strong preference in all countries for news that has ‘no point of view’ – led by Japan (81%), France (78%), Germany (76%), and the UK (70%). Brazil was the big outlier with only 28%.

Attitudes to partial or impartial news (all country view)

Q5c: Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer? (three options)

Base: All markets (n=11004) % agree Respondent quotes from UK

In general about a quarter of our samples preferred news that shared their viewpoint – lowest in Denmark (13%) and Japan (15%). The Brazilians (29%) and Danes (27%) love to be challenged by their news provider, whereas the Germans (1%) and Japanese (4%) do not.

Types of News

We find that digital news is gradually moving away from the article and picture format that has dominated for almost 20 years. Short video clips and the streaming of live news TV or radio coverage are becoming more popular. Americans consume the largest amount of short form video (27%), almost twice as much as those in the UK (14%), but when put together with podcasts and TV and radio streams almost half (47%) of our UK sample now uses news audio or video each week. Another recent innovation has been the development of live blogs as a way of covering breaking news and sports stories. 35% of our Japanese sample used these live pages at least once a week, with the French (19%), Italians and Spanish (16%) also enthusiastic. Only 8% of our Danish sample consumes live blogs – but they prefer to read longer articles (40%).

Sharing and Participation around News

As last year, we find that there are marked international differences in the level and types of online participation with news. Taking one example – commenting on a news story via a social network – we can see that the Spanish (27%) Italians (26%), and Americans (21%) are more than twice as likely to comment on a news story via a social network as the British (10%). Brazilians are around five times more likely to comment than Germans or Japanese.

International differences around commenting on news (in social networks)

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

More generally, Brazil (92%), Italy (85%), and Spain (84%) have the highest levels of participation and engagement when we aggregate 12 separate types of online and offline engagement. This compares with Japan (64%), which has the lowest level of participation, along with Northern European countries such as Denmark, the UK, and Germany. This suggests that cultural factors (rather than access to technical tools) play the biggest part in the extent of online engagement with news. The sharing of news through online networks continues to grow. In Brazil, 44% of our sample of online users said they share a news story on a weekly basis via a social network. 32% did so by email. In the UK 18% had shared a news story in the last week by email or social network but amongst those actively interested in news the figures are much higher. 29% of those with a high interest in news share a news link at least once a week. There is conflicting evidence about whether adoption of new devices is encouraging these trends. In United States, Apple smartphone users are 41% more likely to share news than other digital users –when controlling for the following factors: interest in news, age, gender, education and income. Tablets, on the other hand, do not seem to significantly encourage sharing in the same way when taking into account these variables. Facebook, email, and Twitter dominate the sharing of news content in the UK, where no other network gets more than 3% weekly usage. We do not have data on social network usage from elsewhere but other research shows the mix of networks can differ significantly. In the UK we have developed a model of participation that shows that the majority of our sample now participates in some way with news each week. We have identified a group of intense participators (10%) who engage proactively and share stories widely, often many times a day, and a group of easy participators (30%) who like and rate stories and post occasional comments. A further group participates only offline (23%) by talking about news to friends and colleagues and the remaining 37% are passive each week.

Smart TVs and Connected News

Finally, our survey focused on the fast-growing market in internet-connected TVs, including some specific additional questions in two countries: France and the UK.

Market share of Smart TVs by country

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Smart TV	4%	6%	11%	12%	11%	8%	4%	13%	5%

Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who use these devices for any purpose UK (n=1949) US (n=1943) Spain (n=922) Japan (n=871) Italy (n=863) Germany (n=1012) France (n=836) Denmark (n=895) Urban Brazil (n=960)

Overall, the Brazilians (13%), Italians (12%), French (11%), and Spanish (11%) use connected TVs most for news – running at about three times the levels seen in the UK or the US. Our respondents strongly agreed with the proposition that they would like to have more control over the scheduling of news content (like on a PC), 46% agreed in the UK and 64% in France. Also our sample was keen to have on-demand content fronted by a presenter they were familiar with in France (57%) and also the UK (52%). When the whole sample was asked about potential interest in different types of on-demand news services on a television, there was a preference expressed for video content over text and a particular interest in breaking news alerts for TV (64% interest in France and 56% interest in the UK). Otherwise the most popular on-demand content on a TV was weather (53% France and 48% UK).

Conclusion

This year’s data offer contradictory evidence about the nature and rate of change in the news industry. The overwhelming message is that audiences increasingly expect news that they can access anytime, anywhere. But that doesn’t mean they only want online news. Audiences may be embracing news on tablets and smartphones but they still want to catch up with broadcast news and they enjoy taking time with the printed page. It’s a multi-platform world and becoming more so. At the same time – and pulling in a different direction – we see the strong influence of habit, culture, and tradition. We see countries like Germany and France that are slow to change and we see significant groups – mainly older – within all countries who are refusing to join in the digital and multi-platform news revolution altogether. These divisions between and within countries are making it increasingly difficult to address audience needs with the simplicity that was possible in the past. Embracing digital is clearly the future, but news brands can’t afford to leave behind groups who still carry huge influence and drive most of the revenue. Clearly news brands still matter but a strong name and long heritage is no longer enough. Our data show that there still is a yearning – in an ocean of content – for trusted news across a range of subject areas, but newer brands like Yahoo and the Huffington Post are also proving they can fill that role alongside a raft of specialist providers, blogs, and social media too. Against this background, it is not surprising to see more and more anguished debates around editorial and distribution strategies. Most news organisations are reconfiguring their workflows for the multi-platform age – trying to drive more output to more platforms with the same number (or fewer) journalists. Finding new audiences and revenues is proving more challenging. Some news organisations are looking to exploit niches, others are pushing for scale and paywalls are going up around the world. As ever, success will depend on a combination of clear strategies and a strong understanding of changing audience behaviours. In that respect, we hope this annual survey provides useful and insightful data to help inform the challenges to come.

Chapter One: News Access and Consumption

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:25:04 +0000

In this section we lay out the overall shape of news consumption, the time spent on different devices, and also explain in more detail the segmentation we have used to drive our insights. We also explore interest in different types of news, such as political and entertainment news, along with attitudes to partiality and polarisation of news.

Background

In order to understand the results it is important to set out the demographics and internet use in each country, which will contribute to some of the international differences that we find. We also offer a brief pen portrait of the media landscape in our nine surveyed countries, to help contextualise the results.

Internet penetration, gender and age breakdown by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Internet pop	53m	67m	32m	36m	52m	5m	245m	88m	101m
M	48%	48%	49%	48%	49%	50%	48%	49%	49%
F	52%	52%	51%	52%	51%	50%	50%	51%	51%
18-24	12%	10%	11%	9%	12%	13%	9%	21%	9%
25-34	17%	14%	21%	18%	17%	16%	18%	24%	15%
35-44	17%	18%	19%	19%	18%	19%	19%	21%	17%
45-54	19%	18%	15%	16%	18%	21%	15%	16%	15%
55+	36%	39%	33%	38%	35%	31%	37%	18%	44%

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). The 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.

United Kingdom

The media environment is characterised by a vigorous and highly competitive national press – including a strong tabloid sector accounting for the majority of newspapers sold daily – and the best-known public broadcaster in the world. The BBC reaches around 80% of all consumers with news on all platforms each week.

Germany

The country’s federal structure has shaped its media environment with a number of regional and national public broadcasters competing for audiences with powerful commercial operators. Each of the 16 regions regulates its own private and public broadcasting. Germany is home to some of the world's largest media conglomerates, including Bertelsmann and the publisher Axel Springer. There are several national newspapers, but the press market is strongest at a regional level, with more than 300 titles. Newspapers and magazines have also taken a lead online, with public service broadcasters facing restrictions on the extent of their digital activities.

Spain

The media in Spain have witnessed a significant expansion in recent years with the emergence of new commercial operators and the launch of digital services. Radio Television Espanola (RTVE) is the public broadcaster. There are 13 regional TV stations backed by regional governments and many local stations. Ownership of daily newspapers is concentrated within large media groups with popular news brands such as El Pais and El Mundo leading the charge online.

Italy

Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset empire operates Italy's top private TV stations, and the public broadcaster, Rai, has also been subject to political influence. Between them, Rai and Mediaset dominate Italy's TV market, which remains the main source of news for the bulk of the population. The Italian press is highly regionalised, reflecting the country's history and character. Most newspapers are privately owned, often linked to a political party, or run by a large media group. Newspaper readership figures (overall) are low compared to other European countries.

France

France has more than 100 daily newspapers. Most of them are in private hands and are not linked to political parties and the most successful papers are often regional rather than national. Online, many of the best known national titles such as Le Monde and Le Figaro face competition from new players such as Mediapart, Rue89, and now the Huffington Post. Television news remains popular, with viewership split between France Télévisions, privately owned TF1, and a range of cable and satellite providers. France's long-established commercial radio, particularly RTL and Europe 1, still commands large audiences, along with a range of publicly funded stations such as France Inter.

Denmark

Denmark's main public broadcaster, Danmarks Radio (DR), operates six TV networks alongside national and regional radio stations. It is funded by a licence fee and is also a strong presence online. TV2, a government-owned commercial broadcaster, operates a round the clock TV news channel along with a number of niche channels. Popular newspapers include Jyllands-Posten, Ekstra-Bladet, Berlingske Tidende, BT, and Politiken, all of which have a healthy market share online and have performed particularly well compared with the websites of news broadcasters.

United States

There are more than 1,500 daily newspapers in the US, most of them with a local or regional readership. Print circulations are in long-term decline as readers turn to the internet. More than 300 US newspapers, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, have now introduced paywalls – twice as many as at this time last year.[1. http://mashable.com/2012/11/04/paywalls-infographic/] In TV news, the big networks ABC, CBS, and NBC dominated for decades until the take-up of cable and satellite and the arrival of Fox which is now the best rated cable news network. There are around 10,000 commercial radio stations, including many dedicated to news, sports, and talk. The US is the home of the internet and so it is appropriate that one of the early pioneers, Yahoo, is the single biggest news provider online. Traditional news companies face new threats from pure players like the Huffington Post, now owned by AOL.

Brazil

South America's biggest media market is home to thousands of radio stations and hundreds of TV channels. Media ownership is highly concentrated. Domestic conglomerates such as Globo, Brazil's most-successful broadcaster, dominate the market and run TV and radio networks, newspapers, and successful online operations. Brazilians are among the world's top users of blogs and social networks and use of online is growing fast. Google's Orkut and Facebook are the two biggest social networks.

Japan

There are five national terrestrial TV companies, including publicly funded NHK, which also runs national radio networks. Newspaper readership is particularly high, with around 80% of Japanese reading a paper every day. National dailies sell in millions, circulations boosted by afternoon and evening editions. An increasing number of newspapers charge for access to their websites. Japan was amongst the first to offer internet access via mobile phones, using walled-garden services like iMode. These feature phones are gradually being replaced by smartphones.

Frequency of Access and Interest in News

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:30:03 +0000

Our survey of online users shows some differences in how frequently news is accessed by consumers in different countries across all platforms – TV, radio, and online. The Japanese access news most frequently, with 9 in 10 accessing news at least once a day compared with around three in four Americans in our sample. Across the five countries surveyed in 2012 (UK, US, France, Germany, and Denmark) the individual country figures are broadly comparable to last year but we have seen a general uplift of more than 5%, which could relate to the increased use of smartphones and tablets. We have seen more pronounced changes in the UK and France, with increases of +11% and +7% respectively.

Daily news consumption by country

Q1b: Typically, how often do you access news (in any way)? By news we mean international, national, regional/local news and other topical events accessed via radio, TV, newspaper or online.

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

In general, daily news consumption is significantly higher amongst males in all of our surveyed countries. It is also significantly higher amongst those aged 35+ and those using smartphones.

Interest in News

As well as frequency of access, we also asked about levels of interest in the news. Here, our sample from urban Brazil claimed the highest interest in news – while Italy and the UK showed the greatest number of people who were only somewhat , not very, or not at all interested in news.

Interest in news by country

Germany and Spain have most interest in our European countries

Q1c: How interested, if at all, would you say you are in news?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Chart shows % net: extremely/very interested not very interested = somewhat, not very interested, not at all interested

Across all our countries, interest in news increases with age, with the 55+ group registering 20 percentage points higher than the 18–24s. Again, men say they are more interested in news than women.

Interest in news increases with age (ALL countries)

	Male	Female	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
Interested in news	78%	70%	60%	68%	72%	77%	80%

Q1c: How interested, if at all, would you say you are in news?

Base: All markets (n=11004)

Segmentation Approaches

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:35:00 +0000

We have combined these metrics of frequency and interest to give us a first non-overlapping categorisation of the news universe that we can apply across all of our countries.

News Lovers: These are people who access the news several times a day and say they are extremely interested in the news.
Daily Briefers: These are people who also access the news several times a day but they say they are a bit less interested (very or somewhat) in the news.
Casual Users: These are people who consume less frequently – anything between once a day to once a month – and they also tend to be less interested in the news with a majority only somewhat interested in news.
Non Users: The people who excluded themselves from the survey who say they access news less often than once a month (depending on the country, this was between 2% in Japan, Denmark, and Brazil, 7% in the United States, and 9% in the UK).

We’ll refer back to these groupings throughout this study, but as we shall see, identifying and understanding the different habits of these groups will be important for news organisations. News Lovers consume more, share more, are wealthier, and are more likely to pay for news, but Daily Briefers are important in reaching mass audiences, which remains important for advertisers. The majority of consumers across countries can be considered ‘Daily Briefers’. The US has the highest proportion of Casual Users, but also a high proportion of News Lovers. Denmark has both the highest proportion of News Lovers and the lowest share of Casual Users, along with Brazil.

News interest segmentation by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
News Lovers	22%	22%	17%	24%	17%	27%	26%	25%	21%
Daily Briefers	51%	55%	56%	51%	58%	55%	41%	58%	63%
Casual Users	28%	24%	26%	26%	26%	18%	33%	18%	16%

UK example

Within a country like United the Kingdom, we can roughly map these groups to get a sense of the total size of each group. Assuming 50m UK adults over 18, internet penetration of 84%, and 9% non-news users, this would produce the addressable groups shown in Figure 1.2b.

UK online users segmented by level interest and frequency of access

Indicative base of 50m UK adults, 84% internet access and 9% of them not accessing news (not interested) in the last month

News Lovers: Are much more likely to own a smartphone and tablet, they are twice as likely to use Twitter for news as the average. They tend to be male (57%) and have higher incomes and social grade (heavy skew to AB). They are particularly interested in politics and international news but only show an average interest in entertainment and celebrity news. They are heavy online users but are twice as likely to use quality ‘broadsheet’ printed newspapers along with the BBC and Sky News for television news. They are twice as likely to have paid for a digital news service in the last week as Daily Briefers.
Casual Users: Tend to be female (60%) and more traditional in their media habits. They seem to be particularly attached to print, especially mid-market and popular newspapers and magazines. A significant minority of this group use only traditional media sources (31%). They are particularly uninterested by international and political news. They tend to have lower incomes and be from lower social grades (C2DE). Many own smartphones and tablets but are less likely to use them for news than the other groups.

Platform segmentation

In a second categorisation, we have split our samples by platform use. This non-overlapping segmentation is achieved by looking at the number and type of devices used to access news (see Figure 1.2c).

Audience segments by platform used to access news

These segments were cross-checked this with claimed time spent (where data was available in the UK) to ensure this approach was robust.

When applying this to all our countries we can see that many European countries tend to have a stronger attachment to traditional methods than say the United States, Brazil, and Japan. Despite this being an online sample, one in three of both the French and Germans – and one in four in the UK – say they have only used traditional ways of accessing news in the last week. In both countries over 55% of our sample is using traditional only or mainly traditional news consumption (compared with 35% in the US and 29% in Japan). The Japanese and our sample from urban Brazil are leading the charge for mainly online and exclusively online news habits.

Segments based on platform preference (by country)

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Internet penetration	84%	83%	67%	58%	80%	90%	78%	46%	80%
Online only*	8%	6%	9%	11%	6%	6%	11%	11%	13%
Mainly online	7%	5%	10%	11%	6%	9%	14%	18%	10%
Half half**	39%	31%	38%	40%	33%	39%	40%	48%	48%
Mainly traditional	20%	25%	22%	20%	24%	28%	12%	15%	16%
Traditional only***	25%	33%	20%	19%	32%	18%	23%	9%	13%

* Online only: This is a smaller segment and a slightly schizophrenic one. They include some heavy news users but also a large number who are not particularly interested in news at all. This segment has a relatively high proportion of 18-24s.

** The half and half segment contains the secondary group of heavy multi-channel users. This sub-group makes up around 10% of the total sample and its members combine multiple traditional and online sources each week They have much in common with news lovers, they are more likely to pay for news, and are heavily into social media. We will refer to this sub-group from time to time.

*** Traditional only: These users tend to be older with a female bias across all countries.

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Sources and Access to News

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:40:28 +0000

We asked respondents to tell us about the sources they used for news. Our questions broke this down into different types of television, radio, print, and online news, so we could understand the full granularity and complexity. In an online context, for example, it is useful to be able to distinguish between the websites of traditional media outlets, aggregators, social media, and blogs. We can then aggregate these sources back together to get a picture of the overall platform balance between TV, radio, print, and online for the respondents to this online survey across all of our countries.

Platforms used to access news on a weekly basis (Frequency)

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
TV	79%	82%	72%	74%	84%	85%	72%	75%	69%
Radio	37%	51%	39%	34%	44%	53%	28%	19%	24%
Print	59%	63%	61%	59%	48%	49%	47%	50%	63%
Online	74%	66%	79%	80%	68%	81%	75%	90%	85%

Q3: Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

France and Germany have the lowest levels of online news access, with both countries showing strong allegiance to traditional news platforms. Online and television news remain the two most frequently accessed platforms for news among our online survey respondents in all our countries. Online is furthest ahead in Japan and with our urban sample in Brazil. When taking into account those who are offline (56% in Brazil and 42% in Italy, for example), television news is likely to be ahead pretty much everywhere. We also asked respondents about their MAIN or most important source of news. Here we see a similar story. Television and online are the two platforms that our respondents value or rely on most. Once again Germany and France show themselves with a strong preference for TV over online, with Brazil and Japan narrowly preferring online.

MAIN news platform by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
TV	41%	43%	33%	39%	57%	44%	43%	38%	35%
Radio	7%	13%	9%	5%	12%	8%	5%	2%	4%
Print	15%	18%	15%	13%	6%	11%	9%	6%	20%
Online	35%	25%	41%	42%	23%	35%	39%	53%	39%

Q4: You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is MOST IMPORTANT or which would you say is your main news?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

However, the picture changes when we look at the importance assigned by different age groups. Looking at ALL our countries together, we can see that there is a significant divide developing between the under 35s who prefer online and those aged over 45 who strongly prefer television.

Main news platform by age (Online vs Television) - ALL countries

Q4: You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week (n=10843)

All countries follow this pattern with the exception of France, where young people still show a strong loyalty to television news and have not embraced internet news in a significant way.

Main platform for news by age: France

Q4: You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week France (n=963), US (n=1916)

Main platform for news by age: United States

Q4: You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week France (n=963), US (n=1916)

Watch a range of views on the relevance of printed newspapers We can also see the impact of age when we look at UK data showing the time people spend on different devices. Not only do the young value online news more than TV, they also spend more time with computers – along with considerable amounts of additional time on smartphones and tablets. Older groups spend far more time with traditional media, such as TV news, radio news, and print.

Mean time spent accessing news by device per day UK (minutes)

Traditional forms of accessing news are more popular among older age groups

QS1: On a typical day, how much time do you spend accessing news on EACH of the following?

Base All UK=2078

Chart shows mean time spent per day in minutes

Resources and Charts for the 2012 Digital News Report

nic — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:23:19 +0000

You can view or download a slide presentation of all of the charts and tables in the 2012 report. You can download the survey data for the 2012 report, although we would encourage you to contact the Reuters Institute if you are planning to use this raw data as part of your project. We encourage you to use, share and remix the data, charts and essays in this report. All we ask in return is that you credit the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism or the Reuters Institute Digital News Report as set out in our terms and conditions. The questions and base sizes are included underneath the relevant chart or table and this website also contains more detail about the methodology used.

Media Coverage for the 2012 Digital News Report

nic — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:31:37 +0000

Here is a list of some of the press coverage from the the Reuters Digital News Report 2012 BBC News UK 'falls behind' in news access BBC News Some 75% of people in the UK read, watch or listen to a news story every day, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism survey suggests. Germans most hooked on to news with nine in ten accessing it ... Newstrack India Nine out of ten Germans access news everyday, according to a survey. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Survey found ... Germans buck trend with love of newspapers Reuters The survey was conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. It involved a representative ... Young tablet owners more willing to pay for news paidContent.org Paying for online news is still a minority ... in the UK, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism's new ... Social media top news source for under 25s Telegraph.co.uk The first Reuters Institute Digital Report has found that 43 per cent of Britons aged between 16 ... Report: More people share news by email than Twitter Journalism.co.uk Reuters Institute finds 55 per cent of UK respondents to its survey shared news by Facebook within the past week, 33 per cent by email, 23 per cent by Twitter. Young tablet owners more willing to pay for news Yahoo! Finance ... according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism's new Digital News Report 2012. And only six percent of survey respondents said they would be ... Facebook Plays Key Part In How People Discover, Share News AllFacebook Reuters Institute also illustrated how different age groups take in news. Not surprisingly, the younger generation flocks to Facebook more often than older adults. Among those aged 16-24, 43 percent receive their news through sites like Facebook and ... In a fit of irony, young tablet owners may save the news industry The Next Web , Alex Wilhelm Audiences Turn To TV, Online Platforms For News Huffington Post Survey: Smartphones remain favorite mobile news source among young adults Poynter Institute (Web) by Jeff Sonderman

When and Where Do We Access the News?

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:45:48 +0000

Typically consumers in the United Kingdom access the news first thing in the morning or early evening. Younger people tend to access in a more even way throughout the day. Older people such as the over 55s are more likely to follow the breakfast, lunch, and early evening peaks, compared with all the groupings under 45. Even the 35–44s seem to be losing the commitment for appointment-to-view news bulletins in the early and late evening.

News access across the day by age (UK)

QS2: When do you typically access the news?

Base: UK=2078 18 to 24 (n=269) 25 to 34: (n=286) 35 to 44: (n=321) 45 to 54 (n=383) 55+ (n=819)

Looking at our segments, we can see that traditional users are more likely to have fixed times of day for consuming the news, whereas the mainly online and heavy multi-channel groups tend to access throughout the day (50% and 61% respectively) reflecting the greater ease of access to online news outside the home. Heavy multi-channel users also extend their news consumption right through to bedtime.

News access across the day by platform segment (UK)

QS2: When do you typically access the news?

Base: UK=2078 Mainly Online (n=162) Half/ half (n=791) Mainly traditional (n=400) Half/ half moderate (n=597) Heavy multichannel (n=194)

Locations for news

For the first time this year we have been able to look in detail at locations and devices used for news across the day in two of our countries, Denmark and the UK. The overall patterns in both countries are almost identical, with most news use in the home – followed by commuting and work.

Where news is accessed (UK vs Denmark)

QS3A: Where were you when you looked at/listened to the news over the last few days?

Base: UK=2078, Denmark=994

When we look at the specific platforms used in each location, we can see how the internet plays a bigger role at work and on the move. In general traditional media are not being replaced, although print is clearly being substituted in some areas. Television is the main source of news in the living room but the computer takes over in personal spaces at home and at work. Radio dominates in the car. One element to note is the amount of media that are consumed in the communal space, with computers, smartphones, and tablets now competing with newspapers, magazines, and radio.

News sources uses by location (Denmark)

QS3A: Where were you when you looked at/listened to the news over the last few days?

Base: UK=2078, Denmark=994

We see the greatest effects of substitution on the daily commute via public transport, traditionally a heartland for newspaper reading. In the UK and Denmark, the mobile phone has overtaken print as the main way of consuming news on the way to work. In Denmark, people are twice as likely to use a mobile phone for news (63%) than read a printed newspaper (33%). On UK public transport 48% use mobile phones, 34% use print, and 6% access news via a tablet – though print is still ahead in London (56%), probably because of availability of strong free newspapers and limited internet access on the Underground. The tablet remains largely confined to the home – certainly in the UK – although the arrival of smaller more mobile 7” tablets may change the mix in years to come. Once again, the shift towards digital is being led by younger age groups, with the over 45s largely sticking with print.

Changing face of media use on public transport (UK)

Scroll data area to see more

	London	South East	North
Mobile	46%	56%	48%
Print	56%	25%	28%

QS3B: Please mention the key news media you used in these locations

Base: While travelling via public transport UK (n=270) Den (n=92),

Those who have looked at news on public transport in last days London (n=66), South East (n=61, North (n=71)

The mobile phone is also by far the most important source of news when ‘out and about generally’. Of those who looked for news in this way, 76% used a mobile phone in the UK, compared with 18% using printed newspapers. In Denmark the numbers are 85% by phone and 13% reading newspapers in print. Despite platform substitution there is no evidence that brands are being substituted. Some of the most successful brands on the move in both countries are free newspapers such as Metro in the UK, which has been pursuing an aggressive digital strategy and is widely used on tablet and mobile, as well as in print. In terms of personal transport – largely cars but also bikes – mobile phones are also making inroads as a source of news, not least because they can access audio-based news podcasts or other on-demand news content which can plug into headphones or a car sound system.

Changing face of private transport (UK and Denmark)

UK3B: Please mention the key news media you used in these locations.

Base: While travelling via private transport UK (n=400) Denmark (n=283)

Interest in Different Types of News

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:50:08 +0000

We asked all our respondents to select their five most important types of news. As with last year, domestic news is the most popular type of news, closely followed by international, local, and regional news. Mirroring political and media structures, we see that regional news is most important in Germany. Local news matters more in a vast country like the United States where city newspapers and local TV stations have become a core part of the media diet. Our sample from urban Brazil tends to place more importance on business and financial news, health and education news, and science and technology news.

Interest in types of news by country

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
National	71%	70%	64%	62%	66%	70%	57%	73%	62%
International	53%	67%	44%	42%	54%	66%	56%	42%	48%
Local	49%	47%	42%	49%	31%	48%	59%	52%	30%
Regional	44%	53%	43%	38%	41%	27%	31%	16%	37%
Business & Fin	20%	18%	14%	16%	18%	24%	22%	30%	27%
Economic news	44%	31%	41%	40%	35%	36%	52%	29%	48%
Ents & Celeb	20%	18%	13%	15%	13%	14%	14%	24%	18%
Health & Education	28%	27%	38%	35%	36%	29%	29%	55%	18%
Arts & Culture	11%	8%	21%	19%	17%	16%	9%	23%	20%
Sports news	31%	28%	36%	33%	27%	31%	23%	35%	32%
Politics	37%	50%	43%	52%	45%	51%	54%	34%	60%
Science & Tech	22%	29%	30%	31%	31%	30%	26%	40%	26%

Q2 Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five.

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Looking at an aggregated view of our entire sample of 11,000 people we can see significant differences by age and gender. Men are much more interested in sports news, political news, and business and economic news. Women place more importance on health and education news, local news, and especially entertainment and celebrity news. In terms of age, interest in political and economic news grows as people get older. In contrast, entertainment and science and technology news are of greater interest for younger groups.

Interest in news by age and gender (all countries)

Scroll data area to see more

	Male	Female	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
National	63%	68%	60%	62%	67%	69%	68%
International	54%	52%	48%	47%	49%	54%	59%
Local	42%	52%	36%	41%	49%	51%	51%
Regional	32%	42%	25%	31%	36%	40%	43%
Business & Finance	27%	15%	17%	20%	21%	20%	22%
Economic	46%	36%	30%	34%	37%	44%	49%
Ent & Celeb	9%	24%	45%	45%	50%	14%	9%
Health & Education	21%	43%	35%	35%	31%	31%	30%
Arts & Culture	11%	19%	19%	16%	14%	12%	15%
Sports	44%	16%	28%	29%	33%	32%	28%
Politics	52%	42%	36%	35%	42%	48%	58%
Science & Tech	35%	22%	40%	32%	27%	27%	25%

Q2: Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five.

Base: All markets (n=11004) 18-24 (n=1244), 25-34 (n=1927) 35-44 (n=2043) 45-54 (n=1889), 55+ (n=3901)

We can also look at the impact of platform usage on different types of news through our multi-country segmentation. Traditional users tend to be comfortable with the broad subject areas dealt with in television and radio news bulletins, such as regional news and country news. Those who use multiple online sources (mainly online and heavy multi-channel) are more likely to value niche areas such as entertainment as well as science and technology news – subjects that the internet is able to cover in far greater depth.

Interest in news by platform segment

Scroll data area to see more

	Heavy multichannel	Mainly online	Half / half moderate	Mainly traditional	Traditional only
National	69%	67%	67%	72%	63%
International	53%	58%	50%	61%	48%
Local	46%	44%	48%	49%	52%
Regional	32%	30%	37%	41%	44%
Business & Finance	28%	26%	20%	24%	16%
Economic	47%	44%	41%	46%	39%
Ents & Celeb	19%	21%	18%	15%	12%
Health & Education	33%	33%	32%	34%	27%
Arts & Culture	20%	20%	14%	17%	10%
Sports	35%	33%	31%	34%	27%
Politics	56%	53%	45%	55%	43%
Science & Tech	36%	41%	29%	27%	19%

Q2: Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five

Base: All countries (n=11004), Heavy multichannel (n=1200), Mainly online (n=1090), Half/half mod (n=3055), Mainly traditional (n=2105), Traditional only (n=2365)

In our other segment, News Lovers are more interested in politics and business and financial news. In contrast, Daily Briefers and Casual Users are relatively more interested in local news, regional news, and health and education news.

Political news and political engagement

This year we have been able to ask detailed questions about political news in Germany and the United Kingdom and this offers the opportunity to compare the ways in which political news is found and consumed – as well as exploring levels of political participation online. Researchers are particularly interested in understanding these issues because a strong democracy is felt to depend on a high quality of information – where a range of views can be easy obtained and debated. So how do our two countries match up?

Interest in politics – Germany vs UK

QS4a: How interested would you say you are in politics?

Base: UK (n=2078); Germany (n=1062)

Overall, interest in politics is significantly higher in Germany than in the United Kingdom. In Germany 54% of our sample say they are either extremely interested or very interested in politics, compared with just 33% in the UK. In addition, twice as many of our UK respondents (25%) said they were not very interested or not at all interested in politics compared with those in Germany (12%). The two countries have similar levels of internet penetration and age profiles and there were no significant elections during our survey.

Interest in political news

The degree of interest in political news varies considerably by age and gender. In general, men take a more active interest than women, and older people more than the young. This is particularly the case in Germany, but less so in the UK where younger people show interest in politics close to the average. There is no obvious enthusiasm for politics amongst older groups in the UK either.

Interest in politics by age and gender

Scroll data area to see more

	ALL	Male	Female	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
Ger	54%	65%	44%	37%	42%	50%	58%	63%
UK	33%	42%	24%	33%	28%	29%	32%	37%

QS4a: How interested would you say you are in politics?

Base: UK (n=2078); Germany (n=1062)

In the UK, there is also some evidence from our survey of a low level of political interest among working-class voters – something that has been a long-standing concern of left of centre political parties. Among council tenants, only 26% had a high level of interest in politics, compared with 39% for those who owned their own homes.

Sources of political news

In both the UK and Germany, broadcasters (via TV, radio, and internet) are top sources of news. Reflecting the German federal model, local/regional newspapers are more important than in the UK where political power is much more centralised. Political magazines (e.g. Focus) are much more widely read in Germany than in the UK, where publications like the New Statesman and The Spectator tend to be reserved for narrow political elites and national newspapers tend to see their role as helping to set the political agenda.

Sources of political news UK vs Germany

QS4b: Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with political and government issues?

Base: Interested in political news: UK (n=1924) Germany (n= 968)

* includes websites and mobile sites

Political engagement

Internet news users in the United Kingdom show slightly more willingness to engage online with political activities than their German counterparts despite a lower level of overall interest.

Online engagement and activism UK vs Germany

QS4c: In which, if any, of the following ways have you used the internet in the last year to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion? Please select all that apply

Base: Those interested in political news: UK (n=1924) Germany (n= 968)

Although general levels of online engagement with politics are still relatively low, particular groups of users are adopting these new techniques more enthusiastically. Of those who are interested in political news (75% of the sample in UK and 88% in Germany) at least a quarter had signed an online petition on politics in the past year. A small percentage were following a politician via social networks, but this rises to one in four social media users and heavy multi-channel users (see Figure 1.2c for explanation of this group). 18–24s are four times more likely to follow a politician via social media than the over 55s in Germany and six times as likely in the UK.

Forms of online political engagement

Signing online petition

Scroll data area to see more

	Germany	UK
ALL	25%	38%
18-24	28%	46%
55+	24%	41%
Social media users	35%	52%
Heavy multichannel	47%	59%

Following a politician via social media

Scroll data area to see more

	Germany	UK
ALL	6%	8%
18-24	17%	19%
55+	4%	3%
Social media users	16%	26%
Heavy multichannel	13%	27%

QS4c: In which, if any, of the following ways have you used the internet in the last year to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion? Please select all that apply

Base: Interested in political news: UK (n=1924) Germany (n= 968)

Entertainment news

One of the most striking findings from last year’s survey was that the United Kingdom had the lowest level of interest in political news but the highest level of interest in entertainment and celebrity news. The UK stands out again in this respect in the 2013 survey (see Figure 1.5a) against all our countries apart from urban Brazil. This year we have drilled down in more detail to see what is driving these trends in the UK.

Interest in entertainment vs political news in the UK

QS4a/QS5a: How interested would you say you are in politics news/entertainment and celebrity news?

Base: UK=2078

Political news is much more valued overall, but it is clear that entertainment news is much more polarised. People either love it or hate it. Interest is driven by women far more than by men and by the under 45s.

Interest in entertainment news by age and gender

Scroll data area to see more

	Male	Female	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
Very / extremely interested	10%	21%	21%	33%	22%	11%	5%

QS5a: How interested would you say you are in entertainment and celebrity news?
Base: UK=2078 , Extremely or very interested (n=323)

Top Brands

For those interested in entertainment news

Offline
- Sun
- Star
- Metro
Online
- Mail Online
- Sun Online
- MSN
Specialist
- Digital Spy
- Facebook

In terms of sources of entertainment news, national newspapers and their websites play a significant role and broadcasters a less significant role compared with other genres. For those with the strongest interest in the subject social media and celebrity-focused magazines are as important as national newspapers and broadcasters. There is also a significant role for online blogs and specialist sites like TMZ and Digital Spy. Together with the strong entertainment focus of sites like Mail Online, there is evidence that online is fuelling interest in this form of news, providing more entertainment news at a greater level of frequency than in a mainly analogue world.

Sources for entertainment and celebrity news (UK)

QS5b: Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with entertainment and celebrity news?

Base: ALL Interested in entertainment news:1528 Net very and extremely interested (n=323)

* includes websites and mobile sites

Interest in international news in the UK

International news has the smallest number of people who say they are not interested, compared with the other two categories. This may be because this category covers such a wide range of stories or because it is less socially acceptable to say you are not interested in events outside your own country.

Interest in international vs political vs entertainment news

QS4a/5a/6a: How interested would you say you are in politics news/entertainment and celebrity news/international news?

Base: UK(n=2078)

International news providers

In terms of sources for international news, one striking finding is how foreign broadcasters and newspapers have become an important part of the media mix in the UK, with a combination of multi-channel TV and the choice provided by the internet. This is particularly the case for those who are most interested in the subject.

Sources for international news (UK)

QS6b: Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with international news?

Base: Those Interested in international news (n=1998), Extremely and very interested (n=678)

* includes websites and mobile sites

Comparing the influence of UK newspapers on different types of news

There has been much written about the importance of UK newspapers in providing information and defining the agenda around subjects like politics and international news, together with a diet of scoops about the royal family and television celebrities. By looking at those most interested in these different types of news we can see that newspapers in the UK have not lost influence in the move to online. Broadsheet newspapers, like The Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Guardian, play if anything a more important role online where users tend to be more promiscuous and interested news users will often gravitate towards the most distinctive content. We see the same effect with entertainment news. In this case, though, the distinctive and exclusive content is produced by mid-market and popular newspapers and interested audiences are more likely to find this content than is the case offline.

Interest in different types of news by newspaper type: Offline sources

QS4a/5a/6a: How interested would you say you are in politics news/entertainment and celebrity news/international news?

Base: UK (n=2078) ALL = all those net interested - very, extremely -, International (n=789) Politics (n=685), Entertainment (n=332), Broadsheet (n=570, 324), Midmarket (n=756, 349), Popular (n=623, 161)

Base: UK=2078; Germany=1064

Interest in different types of news by newspaper type: Online sources

QS4a/5a/6a: How interested would you say you are in politics news/entertainment and celebrity news/international news?

Base: UK=2078; Germany=1064

Chapter Two: Paying for News

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:55:31 +0000

In this section we look at the key data affecting the business of journalism in the multi-platform era. How many people are paying for digital news compared with print? What type of payments apply online? And are new mobile and personal devices encouraging payment for online news?

Newspaper Purchase across Countries

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:01 +0000

This is the first year we have collected data on newspaper purchase so the most interesting findings are around the differences between our surveyed countries. We have removed Italy, Spain, and Brazil because the relatively low levels of internet penetration are likely to lead to misleading results when measuring an offline activity. The remaining results are broadly in line with officially published readership figures in these countries, which also see Japan topping the league for newspaper purchase.

Weekly newspaper purchase by country

Q6: Have you bought (paid for) a printed newspaper in the last week?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028)) Japan (n=978) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007)

Denmark and France are least likely to have paid for a printed newspaper. In the case of Denmark this is partly due to substitution with free newspapers and online. Paid newspaper circulation has halved in the past 15 years in Denmark.[1. http://www.newspaperinnovation.com/index.php/category/circulation.] In France, paid newspaper circulation has been historically lower without the mass market ‘tabloid’ papers found in countries like Germany and the United Kingdom. On the other hand, France does have a number of successful free newspapers like 20 Minutes, DirectMatin-Plus, and Metro. When looking at where people buy newspapers, Italy, Spain, UK, and urban Brazil are more likely to use a news stand or shop. In Germany, Denmark, US, and Japan home delivery is more prevalent – suggesting that newspapers may be able to build further on a continuing relationship with customers in digital or print. It is no coincidence that Germany and Japan, which have seen the most resilience in newspaper sales, are the countries with the highest level of home delivery (a proxy for a subscription relationship).

Newspaper purchase by type (ad hoc vs ongoing commitment)

Q6: Have you bought (paid for) a printed newspaper in the last week?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028)) Japan (n=978) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007)

Paying for Digital News

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:05:57 +0000

Whilst 50% of our global sample said they had bought a printed newspaper in the last week, only 5% said they had paid for digital news in the same time period. This is partly because the majority of online newspapers still do not charge for news – although that is changing rapidly with the erection of paywalls, combined subscriptions, and app-based purchases. In the UK, we have seen a significant jump in the percentage paying for news since our last survey – from 4% to 9% paying for some kind of digital news in the last year. There are marked differences with countries where populations were late adopters of online services or in which the legacy of free online news provision is less pronounced. The highest rates of paying for digital news are thus seen in Brazil, Italy, Spain, Japan, and France.

Number paying for digital news in last year

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid-for digital news service?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

In terms of who is prepared to pay for digital news, older groups are most reluctant to pay for digital news, with 25–34 year olds the most willing to do so across all of our countries. We also see an income effect (illustrated in France and Germany), with those households earning over €50K p.a. around twice as likely to pay as those earning less than €30K a year. Watch a range of views on paying for digital news In the UK, among those with a personal income of £25K to £50K, a quarter are 25 to 34, suggesting that this age group is more affluent and therefore willing to pay for digital content.

Who is paying for digital news?: Age breakdown

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Base: UK 18 to 24 (n=269) 25 to 34: (n=286) 35 to 44: (n=321) 45 to 54 (n=383) 55+ (n=819)0 to €30k France, Germany(n=487,364) €25 to €50k (n=287,230) €50k+(n=100,226)

Chart shows % yes

Who is paying for digital news?: Household income

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Base: UK 18 to 24 (n=269) 25 to 34: (n=286) 35 to 44: (n=321) 45 to 54 (n=383) 55+ (n=819)0 to €30k France, Germany(n=487,364) €25 to €50k (n=287,230) €50k+(n=100,226)

Chart shows % yes

Two other important factors relate to interest in news and device ownership. Our News Lover segment is twice as likely to pay as either Daily Briefers or Casual Users. Tablet owners are twice as likely to pay as computer users, but much of this difference is likely to relate to higher personal and household income of this group and their greater interest in news.

Paid for digital content by interest segment

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Base: All Countries (n=11004) News Lovers (n=2565) Daily Briefers: (n=5968) Casual Users: (n=2471) Tablet users (n=1639) Smartphone users (n=3156) Computer users (n=7444) Chart shows % yes in last year

Paid for digital content by device

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Types of digital payment

Notable differences in patterns of payment are evident across nations, with distinct differences appearing between nations where one-day or single-article, or single-app purchase is predominant (Spain, Italy, France) and those where subscriptions to digital news are more common (US, Denmark).

Types of digital payment by country

Q7a: You said you have accessed paid for digital news content in the last year, which, if any, of the following types of payment have you used?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

The most popular type of one-off payment in all countries is for downloading and using an app or making an in-app purchase. In France, Spain, and Italy, around one-third of those who said they paid for news made an app purchase in the last year. The figures were slightly lower in the US, UK, and Denmark, perhaps because a number of news publishers have moved to making apps an ongoing subscription payment or part of a print/subscription bundle. Looking specifically at those who use both tablets and smartphones in the United States, we can see this group is four times more likely to pay than the average American in our sample. They are also twice as likely to pay as News Lovers.

Paying for news by device and by interest – the US

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Base: (US=2028) Tablet and Smartphone users US (n=187) News Lovers US (n=557), iPhone (n=277) Other smartphone (n=337), iPad (n=206), Other tablet (n=149)

Platform matters

People with Apple devices are more likely to pay than those using other Operating Systems.

	iPad	Other tablet	iPhone	Other phone
Last week	14%	11%	10%	10%
Ever	29%	22%	23%	20%

Most of this relates to ongoing subscription not one-off app purchase.

	iPad	Other tablet	iPhone	Other phone
Single app	20%	44%	18%	29%
Subscr	37%	37%	41%	29%

Testing for the impact of device on willingness to pay

These differences could be explained by device functionality and the eco-system of paid news that has grown up around these devices or they could relate the fact that smartphone and tablet owners tend to come from higher incomes and have a higher interest in news. To explore this further, we identified a number of demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education and income that may play a role in influencing a person’s likelihood to pay for news. By taking these variables into account, along with the interest in the news, we can include them in a regression model and ‘control’ for their relationship with device usage and paying for news. The chart below summarises the results which show that in the United States, these devices are significantly encouraging payment for news when controlling for these factors. It also suggests that users of Apple devices are more likely to pay than those who use other smartphones and tablets. Users of iPads are 147% more likely to pay for news and iPhone users are 77% more likely to pay.

Impact of device after controlling for demographic and usage factors US

	iPad	Other tablet	iPhone	Other phone
Paid in last year	+147%	+75%	+77%	+54%

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Base: (US=2028)

% difference compared with general digital users after controlling for gender, age, education level, income and interest in news

In the United Kingdom, we do not see quite such a pronounced effect. Smartphone and tablet users are only a little more likely to pay for news than online news users. And when running our model, controlling for demographic variables, we do not find any statistically significant positive correlation with device. This may relate to the lower levels of payment in the UK generally and to the fact that some of the most popular news apps (BBC, Sky and Metro) are provided free.

Paying for news by device and by interest – the UK

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Base: (UK=2078) Tablet and Smartphone users (n=143) News Lovers (n=448)

For those who aren’t currently paying for digital news, a significant percentage expects to pay at some point in the future. Urban Brazil has the highest willingness to pay in the future but consumers in Italy and Spain show more willingness than Northern European countries. News Lovers (around 20% of the sample in most countries) are much more likely to pay. Men say they are much more likely pay than women.

Likelihood to pay for digital news in the future by country

Q7b: You said you have not paid for digital content in the last year, how likely or unlikely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Chart shows net very likely or somewhat likely

Chapter Three: Online News in Detail

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:10:01 +0000

In this section we look in more detail at online consumption habits; which devices people use to access online news, what they access, and how they find and share the content they enjoy.

The Growth of Multi-Platform News

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:15:02 +0000

Devices for accessing the news and the impact of tablets and smartphones

Overall we find that more people are accessing news through a greater number of devices than ever before. The computer remains the most important device for online news, but for many this is now supplemented by heavy usage of smartphones and tablets. Across all our countries 46% of our sample use a smartphone and 31% say they used the device for news at least once in the past week. One in four (25%) use a tablet, with 16% on average using it for news. In countries like the UK, tablet usage for news has doubled in 10 months. Denmark has the highest weekly news usage of smartphones at 43%, with Japan showing the lowest level at 19% – though this is largely because it also provides mobile access to the internet via platforms such as iMode which are still dominated by feature phones. In terms of European countries, we see France and Germany showing the lowest levels of online news access via tablets and smartphones.

Online news access by device by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Computer	67%	71%	56%	58%	50%	58%	71%	81%	68%
Smartphone	29%	22%	35%	25%	24%	43%	28%	23%	19%
Tablet	16%	10%	13%	14%	11%	25%	16%	114%	6%
E-reader	2%	1%	2%	1%	1%	1%	2%	4%	1%
Smart TV	3%	5%	10%	10%	9%	7%	4%	12%	4%

Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

NOTE: Data has been rebased to account for the total sample size but is not an accurate indication of ownership levels and will not be wholly comparable with last year.

The laptop or desktop remains the most important single device for accessing news but smartphones and tablets are not far behind in terms of the proportion of users accessing news each week. E-readers are used far less for news content, even though a number of publishers have created digital editions for them. Connected televisions, which have access to text and video on demand services in a number of countries, are becoming increasingly popular, although the definition and use for news is hard to explain with a survey.

Most important devices for news – weekly percentage use

Q8a/Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you ever used/have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Apple devices in particular are more heavily used for news than those running other operating systems. This will be related to the slightly more upmarket demographics for these devices but also because of the wide availability and promotion of news apps and mobile websites for this platform. In general, however, Apple devices are now a minority in most countries, particularly in Spain and Brazil where Android and Blackberry are far more popular. In Northern Europe and the United States the iPad remains the dominant tablet for news, particularly in Denmark where it outperforms other manufacturers by a ratio of more than four to one.

Demographic effects of different devices

Smartphone news usage across all our countries is heavily focused on the under 45s. Older groups are largely sticking with computers. In terms of age, tablets show a more even spread, with a significant bulge with the 25–44 age group.

Accessing news per device by age (all countries)

Q8a /Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use?/ have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: Those who use a digital device for any purpose (n=10182)

Tablet and smartphone news users are generally to be found in higher education and income brackets, which may explain the greater interest in news. In the United States, the richest one-third of our sample[1. In fact slightly over one-third, at 39%] – earning over $60,000 – account for 60% of smartphone news usage, 53% of tablet news usage, and 40% of computer news usage. In the UK we also see smartphones showing a bigger income effect than tablets, whereas computer news use is spread relatively equally across income.

Accessing news per device by household income - US

Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: US Computer (n=1515) Smartphone (n=594), Tablet (n=337) Household income 0-$35K (n=579), $35-$60K (n=426), $60K+ (n=598)

Accessing news per device by household income - UK

Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: UK Computer (n=1394), Smartphone (n=612), Tablet (n=340) Household income 0-25K (n=585), £25-£50K (n=560), £50-£100K (n=245)

Multi-platform usage extends options

The growth of smartphones and tablets has not generally come at the expense of other media, but is instead increasing the range of options. Looking at tablet owners in the United States and the UK, for example, around four out of five continue to access news on television, with a healthy number still reading printed newspapers each week. There is some evidence of substitution of print in the United States where the average use by tablet users (37%) and smartphone users (36%) is considerably less than the sample average (49%). In the United Kingdom, however, tablet users are just as likely to read a printed newspaper as the average (57%).

Tablet users also get news from...

Q3: Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Base: UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Tablet users UK (n=340) US (n=337)

Smartphone users also get news from...

Q3: Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Base: UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Smartphone users UK (n=612) US (n=594)

Looking specifically at those who use online news across all our sampled countries we can see that a quarter of our sample (26%) accesses news on a computer and a smartphone each week. There are also strong overlaps between the computer and the tablet (15%), while a growing number of people (7%) say they access news on all three devices on a weekly basis.

Device overlaps

Q8b: Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All those who have used computers, tablets or smartphones for news in the past week

Smartphone usage increases frequency but not depth

Our data show that mobile phones are used more frequently for accessing quick news updates during the day (79% net agree in the UK and 77% in the US), with only a small proportion agreeing that the mobile is frequently accessed for in-depth news. Tablets on the other hand are valued for quick updates and in-depth news. Fewer than one in five mobile phone users agree that the experience is better than a PC – not surprising given the small screen size and often poorly formatted content. The advantages are more around convenience than experience. On a tablet, on the other hand, a significant proportion (43% in the UK) agree that the experience – which often includes optimised touch and swipe interfaces – is better than a computer. Tablet users are also more likely to pay for news than smartphone users.

Mobile phone preferences (US and UK)

QS7a: You’ve told us that you read news on a MOBILE, with that in mind, please could you tell us how much you agree or disagree with the following statements.

Base US: Read news on a mobile (n=583)

Base UK: Read news on a mobile (n=585)

Tablet preferences (US and UK)

QS7b: You’ve told us that you read news on a TABLET, with that in mind, please could you tell us how much you agree or disagree with the following statements.

Base US: Read news on a tablet (n=329)

Base UK: Read news on a tablet (n=331)

These preference statements are supported by quantitative data that show both smartphone and tablet users access news more frequently than those using computers. The more devices people access, the more frequently they access news. On the other hand these devices are used for many other things, such as email and social networking – so the scope for distraction is inevitably greater than with traditional platforms like a printed newspaper. Average time spent on news with a tablet is lower than for a computer and considerably lower for a smartphone.

Frequency of access grows with devices

United States

Scroll data area to see more

Device	Several times a day
ALL News users	56%
Computer	65%
Smartphone	76%
Tablet	77%
All three	90%

Denmark

Scroll data area to see more

Device	Several times a day
ALL News users	76%
Computer	79%
Smartphone	83%
Tablet	84%
All three	93%

Q1b: Typically, how often do you access news (in any way).

Base: US (n=2028) Denmark (n=1007)

Types of News Accessed Online

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:20:44 +0000

In terms of online content in general we can see articles and story lists (e.g. a news front page) remain the most accessed on a weekly basis. Some countries seem to have taken faster to video and audio news content, in particular the United States, Spain, and Brazil. Pictures and graphics are also popular in Japan, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Types of online news content accessed by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Lists &articles	52%	58%	63%	71%	46%	58%	64%	66%	67%
Video & audio	47%	43%	52%	48%	48%	39%	55%	64%	35%
Live pages	11%	8%	16%	16%	19%	8%	11%	15%	35%
Pics & graphics	15%	24%	21%	23%	15%	16%	23%	32%	27%
Apps	19%	13%	24%	17%	17%	25%	19%	20%	13%
Other	1%	0%	2%	1%	2%	1%	2%	3%	0%
None of these	15%	17%	7%	6%	14%	13%	4%	4%	8%

Video usage of short news clips on news websites is still relatively low at just 14% in the UK, but watching live news video seems to be on the increase, at 24% compared with 18% last year. The tablet, which is often marketed for its multimedia capabilities seems to be encouraging more video consumption in particular, with 38% watching a live TV news channel or live video news feed in the past week.

Type of video and audio content consumed in last week (UK)

Q11: Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Aggregated lists from a longer set

Base: UK (n=2078) Main smartphone (n=152), Main tablet (n=89)

Live pages

Over the past year, video has increasingly been a component of live pages, for example, in the coverage of the Leveson Inquiry in the UK and the 2012 Olympics in a number of countries. Video is often combined with live updates in chronological order and comments and pictures from social media sites. These ‘Live Pages’ have become a feature of many news sites and this ‘web native’ format has become an attractive alternative to an article when covering a breaking news story. Live pages are particularly popular in Japan, where the biggest news site Yahoo regularly covers breaking news in this way, and also in France.

Use of live pages (Japan)

Q11: Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base: Japan (n=979); Use live pages (n= 341)

Frequency of access (Japan)

Q11: Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base: Japan (n=979); Access several times day (n=784)

Live pages are accessed most heavily on a computer at work and by those who are most interested in news.

Online News Sources

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:25:43 +0000

Whilst TV, radio, and print remain largely the preserve of traditional news organisations, the online sphere has opened up huge new competition. Lower barriers to entry and the ability to operate across national boundaries has encouraged the growth of new players like Yahoo, Google News, and the Huffington Post (which now operates in five European countries). We’ve also seen the emergence of local pure players like Mediapart and Rue 89 in France and Politico and Buzzfeed in the United States. And blogs and social media are increasingly being seen as a regular source of news. The extent to which these new players have taken market share and advertising revenue has depended on many factors, including the strength of existing media, their willingness to innovate, as well as the structure of the media market in general. Either way the overall picture remains uneven, with traditional media most dominant in countries like the UK and Denmark. Aggregators and new players have had the biggest impact in Japan and the United States, while social media have the strongest foothold in Brazil, Spain, and Italy.

Strength of traditional news brands online compared by country

Q3: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: Online users in each market (UK=1534 ; US=1470; Germany=698 ; France=658 Denmark=816 ; Urban Brazil=892; Italy = 775; Spain=776; Japan = 831)

As we saw in the Executive Summary in the UK and Japan broadcaster brands make up the majority of this traditional news brand usage. In Denmark and Spain and a number of other countries, it is former newspapers that have picked up majority market share. Driving further into the detail we can see very different media stories that lie behind this top-level view.

UK: Bastion of strong media brands

The BBC and a few other traditional brands dominate the UK online news market. More than half of our internet-based sample said they accessed BBC News via its website or mobile and tablet applications. BBC News has an even higher market share offline (66% of our sample). Even so it has successfully transitioned most of its natural audiences to the newer media, unlike long-term rival ITV News.

Top UK online brands

Q5: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week UK (n= 2078)

Top UK offline brands

Q5: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week UK (n= 2078)

Brand performance has remained largely stable since our survey 10 months ago. One new entrant is the Huffington Post which, with 7% of respondents citing it, has in less than two years built an online audience as large as the Sun, one of Britain’s most successful newspaper brands.

Japan: The power of aggregation

In sharp contrast to the UK, the top Japanese online media sites are pure players and aggregators. Unlike the BBC, public broadcaster NHK has been unable to turn its TV and radio success into online audiences. Instead it was the US pioneer Yahoo – together with Japanese partner SoftBank – that invested early and hard and has reaped the rewards.

Top Japanese online brands

Q5. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week Japan (n=955)

Top Japanese offline brands

Q5. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week Japan (n=955)

United States: A mixed picture of pure players and traditional brands

Yahoo is also the most used online news brand in the United States (32%) but television news brands like Fox, CNN, and NBC also have a strong online presence. We can also see how the internet has created a larger and more vibrant national media. The costs of offline distribution across vast distances had tended to create a more locally based media culture, particularly in print. Now any publisher can gain access to a vast market at marginal cost. One of the biggest beneficiaries has been the Huffington Post – now owned by AOL - which in just a few short years has gained a bigger national reach than the New York Times and the Washington Post and is now investing heavily in online video and television news output.[1. http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/huffington-post-live-cable-tv-deal

Top US online brands

Q5.: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week US (n=1973)

Top US offline brands

Q5.: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week US (n=1973)

France: Fragmented online brands

As we’ve noted elsewhere in this report, France remains an unusual case in its reliance on traditional media and especially television news. Online news usage is lower than in other countries but is also highly fragmented. Newspapers lead the way but no single brand has been able to drive significant national audiences. At the same time there is very little interest in imported US brands like Yahoo or the French version of the Huffington Post. In sharp contrast to the US and UK, television brands have failed to make much of an impact online. The most successful online news site is a free newspaper (20minutes) but other innovators include online-only providers like Rue89 and investigative journal Mediapart.

Top French online brands

Q5: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week France (n= 965)

Top French offline brands

Q5: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week France (n= 965)

Germany: Traditional media

In Germany, we see a similar picture with strong traditional brands achieving significant market share offline but a much more fragmented picture online. This is partly because public broadcasters have been restricted in the level of investment they have been able to make in online services; meanwhile print publications such as Spiegel and Bild are doing quite well online, alongside the new entrant Google News. In general, the strong regional structure of the German media may have contributed to the lack of national players of scale able to push online innovation and consumption.

Top German online brands

Q5: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week Germany (n= 1048)

Top German offline brands

Q5: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week Germany (n= 1048)

It is possible to discern some overall patterns in these very different stories. In general, traditional brands cannot expect to achieve the same level of reach online as they deliver offline. They are no longer protected by high barriers to entry and face much wider competition. This has been especially true for broadcast brands as they move to the web (see 'Brand winners and losers' below). On the other hand, a very few brands have been able to deliver very significant market share (the BBC in the UK and Yahoo in Japan and the US). Here, early mover advantage has set down patterns that may persist for years to come. And a small number of stronger newspaper brands has also gained market share by consistent investment in online news. In general, broadcasters have tended to lose most market share especially those who had privileged access to limited spectrum. Whilst most newspapers have also lost market share, some with strong brands have been able to find new audiences at home and abroad.

Brand winners and losers

Newspaper winners

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Offline	Online	Gain
Guardian	4%	40%	+6%
Der Spiegel	12%	17%	+5%
New York Times	6%	9%	+3%
Le Monde	6%	13%	+7%

Broadcasting losers

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Offline	Online	Gain
ZDF (Germany)	45%	9%	-36%
TF1 (France)	48%	11%	-37%
NHK (Japan)	50%	10%	-40%
ITV News (UK)	33%	3%	-30%

Q5: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who have used news sources in the last week (various)

The Importance of Brand and the Role of Trust

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:30:07 +0000

Despite almost unlimited news options online, most people still tend to use a small number of sources. Our findings suggest that news brands continue to play an important role in all our countries, particularly in Brazil, Spain, Italy, and the United States, where over 80% said they accessed news from sites they know and trust. We also asked if online news users noticed which sites they were using when they clicked on news links. In some countries, significant numbers say they just look at the news that interests them, but brand matters more in some countries than others. In the UK only 16% said they didn’t notice what sites they were using.

Preference for accessing news via trusted sites (all countries)

Q9 : Thinking about the different kind of news available to you online, to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements:

Base: UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

% agree

One key factor in reducing brand recognition appears to be social media. Heavy social media users in the UK are more likely to agree that ‘they don’t notice which sites they are using’ (23%). Looking at our segments across all countries, people who are most interested in news say that they value trusted brands most strongly. In contrast, casual users are less likely to notice which site they are viewing.

Preference for accessing news via trusted sites by segment (all countries)

Q9: Thinking about the different kind of news available to you online, to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements:

Base: All markets (n=11004)

% agree

In the UK – where there has been much discussion about the ethics of the press and broadcasting in recent years – we asked people to rate trust in different types of online news, including traditional media, foreign media, as well as social media and blogs.

Trust in different types of online news providers (UK)

Q9a: Thinking about the types of sites, mobile sites or apps where you get news online, in broad terms how trustworthy do you find the news content of the following?

Base: UK=2078

Overall, online news from national broadcasters is most trusted (79% quite or very), followed by national newspapers (60%). In contrast, Facebook (8%) and Twitter (10%) are least trusted, with foreign broadcasters somewhere in the middle (21% trustworthy). Levels of trust tend to decline amongst the oldest groups for all media types. The 25–34 year olds show greater trust than other groups in social media and foreign broadcasters. This suggests that this group of digital natives is more open-minded when it comes to trying alternative sources of online news.

Trust in different types of online news providers by age (UK)

Q9a: Thinking about the types of sites, mobile sites or apps where you get news online, in broad terms how trustworthy do you find the news content of the following?

Base: UK=2078 18 to 24 (n=269) 25 to 34: (n=286) 35 to 44: (n=321) 45 to 54 (n=383) 55+ (n=819)

Chart shows net: very/quite trustworthy

Gateways: How Audiences Discover News Online

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:35:58 +0000

Although in many countries audiences place the highest trust on online news from familiar providers, they are using an increasingly varied set of ways to find that content. Google, Facebook, and Apple have become – to a greater or lesser extent – intermediaries for a large proportion of news journeys online. As a result, they have been able to take a significant share of the available advertising revenue around news, making the funding of trusted content arguably more uncertain. Our data show brand, search, and social media the most important discovery mechanisms, with search particularly important in European countries like France and Germany.

Top ways of finding news

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Branded site	34%	32%	38%	35%	16%	55%	50%	47%	28%
Search engine	24%	40%	40%	49%	45%	30%	33%	44%	39%
News search	10%	16%	23%	40%	22%	1%	14%	34%	29%
Aggregator	17%	16%	17%	16%	12%	7%	26%	37%	43%
Newsreader 'app'	3%	3%	1%	4%	3%	4%	6%	7%	3%
Social network	17%	15%	45%	38%	14%	22%	30%	60%	12%
Blog	2%	3%	9%	8%	3%	2%	9%	13%	8%
Email	7%	22%	19%	20%	24%	22%	22%	25%	17%
News alert	8%	12%	11%	9%	19%	16%	18%	19%	8%
Alerted by friends etc	18%	20%	23%	21%	12%	15%	26%	33%	13%

Q10: Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

But perhaps the biggest trend in this data is the growing importance of social discovery. For the under 35s – looking at the aggregated data across all of our countries – this is now the most important way in which people find news stories. For older groups, other ways of navigating to news, such as search, remain more important than social media.

Top gateways – social media vs search by age (all countries)

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: All markets (n=11004)

Within this average, though, we see significant differences in behaviour by country. In the UK strong brands remain the main way of finding news for all age groups, but in the United States search and social media are more important. In all countries, younger groups are far more likely to use social media for news discovery.

Top UK gateways to news

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: UK (n=2078)

Top US gateways to news

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: US (n=2028)

Germany relies on a mixture of search and brand, with 18–44s twice as likely to use social media as the over 55s. The Brazilians use more gateways in total – reflecting their higher interest in news – but uniquely all age groups say social media is their most important way of finding news online.

Top German gateways to news

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: Germany (n=1064) U45 (n=445) O45 (n=619)

Top Brazilian gateways to news

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: Brazil (n=986; ) U45 (n=649), O45 (n=336)

Smartphones and tablets strengthen brands

Our data also suggest that those who use smartphones and tablets are more likely to go straight to a news brand. To some extent this is a function of their greater interest in news. But the data also indicate that certain mechanisms – like social newsreading apps and ‘push’ news alerts – are disproportionately used on these devices to discover news content.

Impact of device on the discovery of news: US

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: All US=2028 Tablet and Smartphone users US (n=187) News Lovers US (n=557)

Impact of device on the discovery of news: UK

Q10 : Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: All UK=2078; Tablet and Smartphone users UK (n=143) News Lovers UK (n=448)

Apps or mobile websites

The growth of news apps on tablets and smartphones has raised questions about the new gatekeeping role of Apple and Google in particular. Our UK data suggest that news apps are more important for smartphones than for tablets. This may be because apps make better use of the smaller screen size available on a smartphone, although it will be interesting to see how this changes with the roll out of more ‘web apps’ and responsively designed websites.[1. Many news sites (e.g. Guardian, BBC, Boston Globe) have developed a single output that formats itself automatically to fit a range of mobile and tablet screen sizes. The Financial Times has developed an html5 web app that is not dependent on Apple and can store content on the go.] Apple users in the UK are significantly more likely to download a news app from a store (52% vs 31% for non iPhone users).

Percent using news apps and web browsers by device (UK)

QS11a/b Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE/TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you?

Base UK : All who have accessed news via a smartphone in the last week (n=612) All who have accessed news via a tablet in the last week (n=340)

We also asked our UK smartphone and tablet users whether they accessed news via branded link or an aggregator like a search engine or social network. On both devices, respondents said the desktop icon was the most important route to news, suggesting that strong news brands may be benefiting from the historic shift to mobile.

Accessing news via a branded link (UK)

QS12a/b Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE/TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you?

Base UK : All who have accessed news via a smartphone in the last week (n=612) All who have accessed news via a tablet in the last week (n=340)

To explore this further, we asked people specifically which brands they used on which device across a range of countries. There are three broad conclusions:

Brands that grew up with the web browser, helped in many cases by default browser settings – Yahoo and MSN – are losing out on tablet and smartphone in the UK and United States at least.
Brands that have built a reputation for breaking news – Sky News, CNN, and Der Spiegel – have gained market share on mobile, but not necessarily on the tablet.
Other strong brands – New York Times, Fox News, Daily Mail, the Guardian – tend to pick a similar market share across platforms. People tend to use the brands they are comfortable with elsewhere rather than change preference based on platform.

Brand winners and losers: Impact of platform on market share

UK

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Computer	Mobile	Tablet
BBC	68%	69%	63%
Sky	15%	25% (+10%)	21% (+7%)
Daily Mail	18%	14%	16%
Guardian	12%	11%	11%
Yahoo!	20%	8% (-12%)	9% (-11%)
MSN	10%	4% (-6%)	4% (-6%)

US

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Computer	Mobile	Tablet
Yahoo!	37%	25% (-12%)	27% (-10%)
Fox	22%	21%	23%
CNN	16%	19% (+3%)	16%
New York Times	11%	9%	12%
USA Today	5%	8%	13%
MSN	14%	10% (-4%)	10% (-4%)

Germany

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Computer	Mobile	Tablet
Bild	21%	21%	16%
Spiegel	22%	27% (+5%)	22%
NTV	11%	15% (+4%)	15% (+4%)
Yahoo!	7%	6%	5%
MSN	7%	4%	4%

Japan

Scroll data area to see more

Brand	Computer	Mobile	Tablet
Yahoo!	74%	70%	N/A
Nikkei.com	15%	13%	N/A
MHK	9%	6%	N/A
Yomiuri.co.jp	9%	7%	N/A
MSN	13%	10%	N/A

Q8b :You say you access news via a computer, smartphone, tablet, when using that device which of the following news sources have you used in the last week?

Base: US Computer (n=1311), Smartphone (n=556), Tablet (n=312) UK Computer (n= 1394), Smartphone (n=612), Tablet (n=340) Japan Computer (n=605), Smartphone (n=170), Tablet (n=51), Germany; Computer (n=612), Smartphone (n=212), Tablet (n=105)

One other explanation for some of these differences is that the aggregator brands in the US and UK (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) appeal more to lower income households that have not acquired these new devices. It will be interesting to see if these differences in market share even out as tablet and smartphone use becomes more mainstream.

Participation and Engagement Online

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:40:57 +0000

There are significant differences in the level of participation in the news across countries. At a headline level, Brazil, the US, Spain, and Italy are most likely to post comments, share links, and talk about news. The Japanese and Germans are least likely to do so. Americans, for example, are twice as likely to comment on a news story online or ‘like’ a news story, compared with the Germans or the British.

Types of online (and offline) participation around news

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Share news story via SN	11%	8%	30%	33%	14%	13%	22%	44%	8%
Share news story via email	10%	10%	24%	19%	18%	10%	23%	32%	4%
Rate/Like news story	6%	9%	26%	29%	1%	12%	14%	41%	10%
Comment on a news story via SN	10%	8%	27%	26%	10%	11%	21%	38%	7%
Comment via news website	7%	8%	8%	16%	8%	5%	16%	22%	4%
Write a blog on news issue	1%	2%	3%	5%	2%	2%	4%	5%	4%
Post picture or video to SN site	4%	5%	10%	10%	6%	5%	12%	21%	3%
Post picture or video to news site	2%	2%	5%	6%	4%	1%	3%	6%	3%
Vote in online poll	11%	16%	21%	24%	11%	14%	30%	31%	7%
Take part in a campaign	4%	4%	5%	7%	5%	3%	8%	7%	2%
Talk with friends ONLINE about news	16%	11%	30%	30%	16%	10%	31%	39%	9%
Talk with friends OFFLINE about news	44%	39%	55%	50%	34%	49%	51%	43%	17%

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

At a fundamental level, we see very different ‘participatory cultures’ around news. 60% of our Japanese sample says they did not participate in any of the 12 ways suggested to them in our survey in the past week, compared with only 8% in Brazil and 15% in Italy. One interesting change since last year is a decline in online participation in France. The number taking part in online polls about news for example has fallen from 40% to 11%. Last year’s survey coincided with the run-up to the French presidential elections and these data suggest that a political campaign can significantly increase the amount of online participation. It should be noted that Italy was also in a pre-election period during our 2013 survey, which may explain the higher than average figures in a number of categories.

The impact of elections on online participation (France 2012 v 2013)

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: France (n=972)

A number of types of online participation are strongly correlated with age. In general, we see higher online participation with younger age groups and amongst men. Specifically, young people are more likely to share a news link, comment on news, or post a picture in a social network, whereas older groups are more likely to use traditional methods like email or commenting via a trusted news site. In general, we see higher online participation with younger age groups and amongst men.

Young prefer sharing and commenting via social networks

% sharing by social network vs email

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: All markets (n=11004)

% commenting via social network vs news site

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: All markets (n=11004)

Across our countries, around one in five share a news story via email (17%) or a social network (20%) each week. Amongst those who share news, our UK data allow us to drill down into which networks are most important. Facebook, email, and Twitter account for the vast majority of activity, though other networks are popular elsewhere, e.g. Reddit in the US, Orkut in Brazil, and a range of other networks in Japan.

Most important social networks for sharing news (UK)

% sharing news

	Male	Female	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
% sharing news	21%	16%	27%	29%	19%	16%	11%

Shared news via ...

QS8b/8c Thinking about how you share news, in the last week have you passed on a link to an online news story, video etc. via email, social networking or other means?/Through which of the following means?

Base: UK=2078; Share news (n=377)

Looking again at devices, those using smartphones and tablets are participating more heavily in news than the general sample. They do more of everything.

Participating in news (tablet and smartphone users): US

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: US=2028 Tablet and Smartphone users US (n=187)

Participating in news (tablet and smartphone users): UK

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: UK=2078; Tablet and Smartphone users UK (n=143)

In explaining these differences, we again ran our regression model to see if we could separate the impact of device from other factors like age, gender, education, income and interest in news. In the United States we found a significant relationship with Apple smartphones, where users were 41% more likely to share news than other digital news users. Tablet usage does not seem to have an impact on sharing news when controlling for these other variables and in the UK neither tablets nor smartphones showed a significant relationship.

New model of participation

In the UK we have attempted this year a new classification of how people participate with online news. This was created by coding responses to questions about contributing to the news according to levels of proactivity (e.g. posting a comment, writing a blog) and reactivity (liking a news story, voting, etc.). We then combined this with the frequency with which each activity takes place. Offline activities relate to the question we asked about discussing news with friends or colleagues.

Model of participation – Segmented by ways participated in news and frequency of participation

This model draws on research published by the BBC in 2012, which demonstrated that a significant majority of the population is now actively participating online[1. Holly Goodier, ‘The Participation Choice’, BBC Online.] – even if most of the proactive discussion is still confined to a minority. When we applied these techniques to our online news sample, we also found that the majority (63%) is participating in some way each week, with 40% doing so online. Easy participation – such as liking, sharing and voting – turns out to be the most popular set of activities driven by the increasing availability of these tools on websites and social networks. But we have also identified a group of ‘intense participators’ who drive much of the proactive online engagement, especially around politics and entertainment/celebrity news.

New model of online participation – UK

If we drill further into the data, we can see that the 25–34 group is particularly proactive (35% of all intense participators). The intense group is also heavily male. In contrast, the majority of those who are passive or contribute occasionally offline come from older groups, particularly the over 55s. People who like to talk about news offline tend to be female.

Types of users segmented by age

Scroll data area to see more

	Intense	Easy Proactive	Easy Reactors	Offline Heavy	Offline Occasional	Passive
18-24	17%	17%	13%	10%	9%	9%
25-34	35%	20%	19%	20%	11%	13%
35-44	18%	18%	15%	20%	15%	17%
45-54	17%	19%	18%	26%	20%	17%
55+	13%	26%	35%	25%	45%	42%
Male	61%	53%	48%	41%	37%	49%
Female	39%	47%	52%	59%	63%	51%

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: UK (n=2078) Intense (n=182) Easy Proactive (n=284) Easy Reactors (n=327) Offline(n=494) Passive (n=791) Offline Heavy (n=125) Offline Occasional (n=369)

In years to come, we can expect more of the offline participators to come online. It will also be interesting to see if the wide differences between countries persist in terms of adoption of new social and participatory techniques.

The Digital Revolution Remains Unevenly Distributed

rasmus.nielsen — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:55:59 +0000

This year’s Digital News Report documents that the digital revolution continues to make uneven progress. First, progress continues to be uneven between countries. Most obvious in our nine-country survey are the digital divides between on the one hand middle-income Brazil with less than 50% of the population online and on the other hand the eight high-income countries, all of which have more than half the population actively using the internet (and many of whom have 80% or more online). Second, progress remains uneven within countries. Even in affluent, developed democracies like France, Germany, and the United States, about a fifth of the population are not regular internet users, let alone smartphone or tablet owners. Third, progress takes different forms from country to country, and the 2013 Digital News Survey gives us detailed, comparative data to start mapping the different ways in which people in different countries use digital technologies to access, share, and interact with news. The results reported here make immediately clear that even countries with similarly high levels of internet use and mobile web access in some cases have developed quite different patterns of use, perhaps reflecting different ‘participatory cultures’ – at least when it comes to news. In this essay, I will highlight some of the most important and interesting similarities and differences in terms of the different forms the digital revolution has taken, focusing in particular on three aspects. First, the global rise of a small number of US-based digital intermediaries in the form of Google, Facebook, and – to a lesser extent – Apple. Second, differences in terms of the importance of brand names, search engines, and social networking sites as gateways to news in different countries. Third, the more pronounced differences in terms of how actively people in different countries – even different countries with similarly high levels of internet use and the like – share news, comment on news, or otherwise engage online with current affairs.

The rise of global digital intermediaries

Google and Facebook, a fifteen-year-old search engine company and a social networking service that has only just turned nine, have become key parts of the news media ecology in every country covered in this report. In the growing markets for smartphones and tablets and accompanying application distribution platforms (like the App Store and Google Play), Apple plays a dominant role in several countries, though competing device manufacturers like Samsung and competing operating systems like Google’s Android means that the mobile market is significantly less concentrated than search or social networking services. Given the central importance of search and social networking services as gateways to news, and the growing importance of mobile platforms, these dominant digital intermediaries occupy increasingly important positions as new gatekeepers online.[1. Robin Foster, News Plurality in a Digital World (RISJ, 2012).] (Much talk of disintermediation aside, much of the success of these companies is based precisely on their role as some of the most significant intermediaries between media users and the content and services they access.) Reliable data on the market share of Google, Facebook, and Apple in various countries is not easily available, but estimates produced by market intelligence companies tracking the search, social networking, and mobile markets gives an indication of their position, and our survey adds new details. The search engine optimisation company webcertain, for example, estimates that Google’s search engine market share is between 87% (Italy) and 97% (Denmark) in the six Western European countries covered here.[2. http://globalcentral.net/assets/cb757434/Search-Social-2012-Done.pdf.] In Brazil, the company is equally dominant. On its home turf in the United States, Google accounts for about two-thirds of search and faces competition from both Microsoft’s Bing (16%) and Yahoo (13%). Only Japan is an outlier in this respect, as Yahoo! Japan continues to be largest search engine there with a market share of approximately 50% – well ahead of Google’s 40% share. (Since 2010, however, Yahoo! Japan has actually used Google’s search engine to power its search results.) Google has thus come to dominate market for search across the world, and as a consequence attracts a very large share of global online advertising – more than 40% according to a recent estimate.[3. http://zenithoptimedia.blogspot.dk/2011/12/quadrennial-events-to-help-ad-market.html.] Though overall growth in the number of active users seems to have tapered off in many developed democracies, Facebook seems to be approaching a similarly dominant position in the market for social networking services. With the exception of Germany, where Facebook penetration is only about 36% of the online population, the social media monitoring and marketing company Socialbakers estimates that the California-based social networking site in early 2013 served between 49% (France) and 66% (Italy) of the online population of the six Western European countries covered here.[4. http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/.] Reach is similarly high in Brazil, where an estimated 72% of the online population are active Facebook users and in the US, where about 62% of the online population are active users. Again, Japan is an outlier, with the local network Mixi as the market leader with about 25% of the online population as active users and Facebook number two with about 15%. With this one exception, Facebook is by far the most important social networking site in the countries we cover. The markets for smartphones and tablets are so far less concentrated than the markets for search and for social networking services. Figure 4.1 provides data on the percentage of the population in each of the nine countries covered here who are internet users, who are smartphone users, and who are tablet users. In italics, the table includes the share of smartphone and tablet users who report they use Apple devices. (Interestingly, the smartphone + tablet market is the only sector mapped here where one of the globally dominant US-based companies has as strong a position in Japan as elsewhere.) Apple continues to be a hugely important player in mobile markets and its tight control over its App Store and iTunes platforms continues to represent content providers, including news organisations, with a range of strategic challenges. But the company’s early near-total dominance of both the smartphone and the tablet markets has been broken by competition in terms of hardware from companies like Samsung and in terms of operating systems and application distribution platforms by Google’s aggressive move into mobile.

Internet, smartphone, and tablet use (with Apple market shares)

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Internet	84%	83%	67%	58%	80%	90%	78%	46%	80%
Smartphone	42%	36%	37%	24%	33%	55%	36%	20%	21%
Tablet	24%	15%	15%	13%	16%	32%	22%	14%	10%
Apple phone share	40%	26%	25%	33%	34%	48%	43%	29%	58%
Apple table market share	64%	50%	41%	43%	53%	81%	57%	40%	69%

Q8a: Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use for any purpose?’

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Percentages of smartphone use and tablet use are calculated as parts of the total population. Data on internet use from YouGov.

How many people are on the internet, how many people have mobile web access, and what people do online varies in important and sometimes pronounced ways from country to country. But a limited number of US-based digital intermediaries have, through a combination of powerful algorithms, shrewd harnessing of economies of scale and network effects, and good design, come to occupy key positions online across the globe.

Varying gateways to news

The rise of new global digital intermediaries like Google, Facebook, and Apple influence the flow of traffic online and increase the competition for digital advertising, often putting pressure on industry incumbents like newspapers and broadcasters historically accustomed to exercising considerable market power as key intermediaries between advertisers and audiences. In particular in the European Union, where these US-based companies are frequently more dominant than they are at home, their rise has worried publishers’ associations, advocacy groups, and various regulators concerned primarily with competition, data protection, and privacy issues. But how important are these new digital intermediaries actually, compared to established players, when it comes to how people find news online? This year’s Digital News Report provides useful comparative data on this question, summarised in Figure 4.2 below.

Brands, search, and social as gateways to news online

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Branded sites	34%	32%	38%	35%	16%	55%	20%	47%	28%
Search	24%	40%	40%	49%	45%	30%	33%	44%	39%
Social networks	17%	15%	45%	38%	14%	22%	30%	60%	12%

Q10: Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

The survey results reveal a number of similarities but also interesting and important differences in terms of how people find news online. In general, there is no question that search and social media are becoming increasingly important gateways to news, supplementing users going directly to branded sites – but they are not equally important in all countries. First of all, branded websites (of news organisations like broadcasters, newspapers, or online-only providers) remain an important gateway to news. In most of Western Europe, about a third of the respondents report that going directly to sites like the BBC or the Daily Mail Online in the UK or El Mundo or El Pais in Spain is amongst the main ways they come across news online. In France, branded sites are particularly weak, whereas in Denmark branded sites, most notably those of the public service broadcaster DR and the country’s leading tabloid Ekstrabladet, draw large numbers of online news users. In Brazil, our urban survey respondents rate branded sites one of their main gateways to news, whereas branded sites appear weaker in both the US and Japan. Second, there are some clear differences in terms of how many online news users name search engines as amongst their main gateway to news, and these differences do not correlate in any simple way with either the market share of a given search engine (like Google) or the overall ICT development index of the country in question. Search engines (by virtue of its market share almost invariably Google) represent the most widely named gateway to news online across much of Central and Southern Europe, with between 40% (Germany) and 49% (Italy) of online news users naming search as the main way in which they come across news stories. (It is noteworthy that publishers from these countries are also amongst those who have been most vocally concerned about Google’s dominant position.) Amongst urban online Brazilians and Japanese internet users, search engines are equally important, whereas they are slightly less so in Denmark, the UK, and the US. Third, the differences between the nine countries are even more pronounced when it comes to social networking sites as gateways to news. Social networks (predominantly Facebook) represent the most widely used way of finding news online for urban Brazilian internet users, and a widely used gateway in the US (30%), Italy (38%), and Spain (45%). In all these countries, social networking sites, a signature ‘web 2.0’-phenomenon, are by now significantly more important than more ‘web 1.0’-like phenomena like aggregators and portals such as Yahoo and MSN as ways of accessing news. In contrast, only between 14% (France) and 22% (Denmark) of respondents across the rest of Western Europe name social networking sites as one of the main ways of accessing news online. (Comparison across age groups suggests, however, that different generations have partially different approaches to finding news online – branded sites and search seem about equally important for all but younger demographics use social networking sites more, also for news.)

Different participatory cultures

One question is how people access news online, another is what they do with it. The digital revolution has been accompanied by much speculation about the interactive and participatory potentials of new technologies that allow people to share, comment, and create their own content. So far, it has been less clear who – and how many – actually embrace and realise these possibilities, and whether they do it when it comes to news specifically. Here, the findings from this year’s Digital News Report are particularly interesting as they document a much lower level of overall engagement than some might have expected, as well as significant differences from country to country, suggesting the existence of different ‘participatory cultures’.[5. Henry Jenkins, amongst others, has offered the notion of ‘participatory culture’ as a complement to existing notions of ‘consumer cultures’ to capture cultural practices that combine low barriers to expression and engagement, high levels of sharing and user-creation, and a shared feeling that participation makes sense. Needless to say, such cultures can be rooted in many types of social communities and need not follow national boundaries, even though our data show that national differences exist in participatory practices concerning news use online. See e.g. Henry Jenkins et al., Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture (NML, 2006).] Figure 4.3 collects the main findings regarding how people share, comment on, and create news online.

Sharing, commenting, and creating news

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	US	Urban Brazil	Japan
Share via email	10%	10%	24%	19%	18%	10%	23%	32%	4%
Share via Social Network	11%	8%	30%	33%	14%	13%	22%	44%	8%
Comment via Social network	10%	8%	27%	26%	10%	11%	21%	38%	7%
Write a news blog	1%	2%	3%	5%	2%	2%	4%	5%	4%
Talk with friends	44%	39%	55%	50%	34%	49%	51%	43%	17%

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Multiple answers allowed, only some responses included here.

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

First of all, it is striking that, even amongst our survey respondents (online news users) and in countries like the UK or the US, where about two-thirds of all internet users are also Facebook users, talking with friends and colleagues about news in offline social settings is far and away the most widespread form of ‘participatory news use’. (Going beyond our sample of online adults, this is arguably even more so.) Second, it is clear the online forms of sharing, commenting on, and writing about news remain minority pursuits in every single one of the nine countries covered here – even amongst our sample of online news users, and even in countries like Denmark, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US, where internet use has been a majority phenomenon for a decade or more. Most of our respondents presumably use email routinely, yet only between 4% (Japan) and 32% (amongst urban Brazilians online) use email during an average week to share news stories with others. In a few countries (Brazil, Italy) sharing and commenting on news via social networking sites is more widespread, but generally, this is not the case, though between half and two-thirds of the online population are Facebook users in many of these countries. Moving up the ladder of participation to more individual and typically more time-consuming forms of content production like writing a personal blog, only a small minority engages in such activities on a regular basis. Looking at these numbers in light of standard indicators of ICT development like the International Telecommunications Union’s IDI, it is clear that online participation is not related in any simple way to the domestication and ubiquity of digital technologies themselves. Denmark has higher levels of internet penetration, broadband access, smartphone usage, and tablet ownership than, for example, the US, and yet also has significantly lower levels of people sharing, commenting, and producing news online. Indeed, the US stands out in this year’s survey, as it did in the 2012 RISJ Digital News Report, as having a far more widespread participatory culture online than most Western European countries, even those with higher levels of internet access. Japan, by contrast, has particularly low degrees of popular participation in sharing, commenting on, and creating news content online, despite being one of the most technological advanced countries in the world (in a way, this should be no surprise as the low number of Japanese reporting that they talk with friends and colleagues about news offline suggests low levels of interest in sharing at the outset). The results from Brazil, Italy, and Spain all point to more widespread participation online, though the numbers in all these countries have to be treated with some caution due to the lower levels of overall internet penetration in each, suggesting our respondents differ more from the general population there than elsewhere.

Conclusion

The results reported here document that the digital revolution is making uneven progress in several respects. While the rise of a few US-based digital intermediaries with global reach is a phenomenon that cuts across all the countries covered here, there are some significant differences in what people do online, both in terms of how people in different countries find news and in terms of the proportion of the online population in each country who actively engage with news by sharing it, commenting on it, or creating it themselves. Throughout, it is important to keep in mind that despite decades of ongoing digitisation, news media use remains overwhelmingly cross-platform, a mix of digital and analogue, of broadcast, internet, and often also print – even amongst the youngest demographics surveyed here (18 to 24 and 25 to 34), online-only news use is a minority phenomenon and mixed-media use the norm. But the overall direction of travel is clear. Digital is growing ever-more important, analogue less so, more and more ‘old media’ are being rapidly digitised not only in production but also in terms of transmission and use. In the process, they are often transformed – even if sometimes in unexpected ways. Assessing the democratic implications of these differences and explaining the different ways in which online news usage has developed in different countries will be a central part of understanding how journalism and democracy function in an increasingly digital media environment. Clearly, technology alone does not drive these developments. In future reports, we will continue to track both the similarities and differences in how these tendencies develop across the world.

Lagging Behind or Choosing a Different Path? Information Behaviour in Germany

Uwe Hasebrink — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:50:08 +0000

As the Reuters Institute Digital News Report in 2012 and 2013 both show, Germany is a quite specific case with regard to information behaviour. Germans seem to be more loyal to established (mass media) news sources, and they are less likely to embrace new and individualised news services. This essay starts with a synopsis of the characteristics of Germans’ information behaviour and discusses potential reasons for these particularities. This discussion will provide a basis on which to answer the question whether these results indicate that Germans are lagging behind the international trend in the development of news consumption or whether Germans are rather choosing a particular path into the new media environment.

Specific patterns of news consumption in Germany

According to the Reuters Institute news survey, news consumption in Germany is characterised by the following pattern. General interest in news is quite high among Germans; regional news in particular is more important than in any other market, and there is much higher interest in political news than in say the UK. Consistent with last year, traditional media (TV, radio and newspapers) are particularly strong in Germany: news from newspapers 63% (highest with Japan), radio 51% (second highest after Denmark, clearly above all the other countries), and TV 82% (third highest after Denmark and France) are used by the majority of the German population. On the other hand Germans are least likely to use online news (66%) and second lowest (21%, after France) in social media and blogs. In addition Germany is lowest in tablet use for news as well as in mobile usage for news, and Germans are least likely to pay for digital news. The relatively low level of use of mobile and other online services that are rather characterised by short headlines might be the reason for the finding that Germans are most likely to read longer stories or articles than people in other countries. In terms of the Reuters Institute user typology, 58% of the German population belong to either the ‘traditional only’ (33%, highest percentage of all countries) or ‘mainly traditional’ (25%, second highest) segments of news users. As in other countries this percentage is lower among the youngest age group (20% ‘traditional only’, 21% ‘mainly traditional’). The most frequent segments in the youngest age group are those who combine some traditional and some online sources (in sum 78%); this is an indicator for a pattern of news consumption which represents a balanced functional combination of established mass media and new individualised digital services.

The role of regional information in news consumption

The German information environment (for a recent overview see Schroeder et al., 2011) is characterised by the pre-eminent role of regional communication spaces. Starting with the four military zones after the Second World War, the 16 states (Länder) of the Federal Republic of Germany still form a constitutive framework for political and cultural life today. This has been mirrored by the development of a highly regionalised newspaper landscape with a dominant role of regional or even local newspapers published by regional or local publishing companies. Over recent decades, and particularly during the recent crisis of newspapers, a major process of concentration has taken place, leading to a landscape that is dominated by a few strong publishing houses; however, this process has not changed the fact that the majority of Germans read ‘their’ regional newspaper every day. Among the nine countries surveyed, Germany is the European country that comes out highest both in terms of those buying a newspaper once a week (56%) and those with a subscription that includes home delivery (33%). The development of radio in the western part of the country – until the middle of the 1980s exclusively offered by public broadcasters – reflected the regional structure, too. Public broadcasting stations were founded for each state or in some cases for two or more states. After unification in 1990 this regional structure was applied to the eastern part as well. The legal framework for commercial radio is also defined by each of the single states; thus the most relevant commercial radio stations are acting at a regional level. As a result, apart from a few special interest channels in news, culture and classical music the German radio landscape is almost completely regionalised.

The role of national public television

Besides the strong role of regional information provided by regional newspapers and radio, television established itself as the dominant news source for national and international affairs. This was supported by the strong position of public service television. The main news show of the first national channel (Tagesschau on ARD) that has just celebrated its 60th anniversary is by far the most renowned source of information in Germany; this is also true for the younger age group between 14 and 29 years (Hasebrink and Schmidt 2013). For the German television industry the end of this news show at 8.15 p.m. marks the beginning of primetime for almost all channels. In addition, the main news show of the second public channel (heute on ZDF) is also established as a major news source. Given these long established benchmarks for television news and some unsuccessful trials with popular news formats, the bigger commercial channels in Germany have also invested considerable efforts in their main news programmes. As a consequence TV news in Germany still stands for high journalistic standards and trust and has a significant impact on public and political debate.

The limited role of public service media in the online world

In some countries relevant established news providers have been the pacemakers of online development. This is particularly true for the UK where the BBC – as the Reuters Institute data show – successfully transferred its leading role as a trusted traditional news source into the online world. In Germany, despite their leading role among the traditional sources, public broadcasters have been seriously limited by European and national regulation in the development of new services. Instead a number of print media publishers and even commercial news channels have become, at a relatively low level, the most important online sources. One can assume that an earlier and more determined engagement of public service broadcasters in the area of online news would have increased the number of users of online news.

The role of early cable and satellite infrastructure

Another specific factor that shaped the development of the German media environment was the early decision to invest heavily in cable infrastructure. As a consequence, as early as the 1990s German television households were able to receive a large number of free German language channels (30–50) while viewers in other European countries like the UK, France, or Italy had far fewer options to choose from. This offers one explanation as to why the more recent developments in media technology and media services – such as pay TV, digital channels, online services – were less successful in Germany than in other European countries. Given the large amount of high-quality programming available it was harder for new services to demonstrate their added-value.

The role of cultural differences

Whenever we observe comparative findings about intercultural differences in communication behaviour it is tempting to attribute them to cultural differences or to specific national ‘mentalities’. However there is still no consensus in academic research about how to conceptualise cultural differences in communication behaviour. In addition, given the multicultural structure of many of today’s societies, it might be misleading to look for a ‘typically German’ form of communication behaviour. As comparative communication research consistently shows, differences within individual countries are bigger than differences between countries. Nevertheless some findings from comparative research can indicate general patterns of media use and communication behaviour. One such observation suggests that Germans are less likely than people in other countries to embrace new technologies and be willing to experiment with all the options they might offer (Livingstone et al., 2011; Hasebrink, 2012); instead there is a certain tendency to emphasise the potential risks of a new technology. It is not possible to provide more than speculative reasons for this kind of intercultural differences; at least it seems to be a plausible indicator within the general syndrome of German mentality, which might be characterised by a strong need for systematic and reliable structures – technical innovations tend to challenge traditional structures and thus cause some concerns. This interpretation is supported by the finding that Germans are least likely (1%) to state that news should challenge their own views; instead they expect news to be impartial (76%) or to support their own view (23%). The intercultural comparison reveals that Germans rather prefer familiar structures that are not challenged by new exciting technical features or critical opinions.

Conclusions

Taking into account these arguments regarding the German media environment, the specific pattern of news consumption reflected by the Reuters Institute Digital News Report looks highly plausible. Given a well-established, diverse, and trusted set of information sources, Germans seem to be less likely to change their patterns of news consumption than media users in other countries and the leading information brands from television, newspapers, and radio are doing well in retaining their important role. However, this does not mean that new digital services are not being adopted; Germans tend to keep their loyalties to established media while enhancing and supplementing their range of information sources with digital services. This is even true for the youngest group who, while they are most likely to make use of online news, still combine this with information sources provided by established media brands. From a comparative point of view the level of digital news consumption is quite low; however, even in this country, the general trend towards digital news sources is obvious. Most Germans integrate online news into their everyday lives; as in other countries almost all members of the younger generations use a wide range of online services and combine these with traditional sources. In this way, established media brands play an important role as indicators of professional journalism – be it online or offline. The low readiness to pay for online news might be a consequence of the fact that most news media are offering their online news for free. Since Germans do actually spend quite a lot of money on newspaper subscriptions and the broadcasting licence fee, one can expect that there will be a shift from paying for these media to new services.

References

Hasebrink, U. (2012) ‘Young Europeans’ Online Environments: A Typology of User Practices’, in S. Livingstone, L. Haddon, and A. Görzig (eds), Children, Risk and Safety Online: Research and Policy Challenges in Comparative Perspective (Bristol: Policy Press), 127–39.
— and Schmidt, J.-H. (2013) ‘Medienübergreifende Informationsrepertoires: Zur Rolle der Mediengattungen und einzelner Angebote für Information und Meinungsbildung’ (Cross-Media Information Repertoires: On the Role of Media Types and Single Brands for Information Behaviour and Opinion Building), Media Perspektiven, 1/2013: S. 1–12.
Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Görzig, A., and Ólafsson, K. (2011) Risks and Safety on the Internet: The Perspective of European Children (London: EU Kids Online).
Schröder, H. D., Hasebrink, U., Dreyer, S., Loosen, W., and Schröter, F. (2011) Mapping Digital Media: Germany, a report by the Open Society Foundation.

How Live Blogs are Reconfiguring Breaking News

neil.thurman — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:08:17 +0000

Live news pages, also known as live blogs (see Figure 4.4 below), have become one of the most engaging formats for news online. According to the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, who oversees the UK’s second most popular newspaper website, live blogs outperform all other modes of online journalism.[6. Bob Franklin, personal communication, Mar. 2013.] Such anecdotal evidence is supported by hard data showing that live blogs receive more visitors for longer periods of time than conventional articles or picture galleries on the same subject (Thurman and Walters, 2012), and by their increasing prevalence at news sites worldwide, including NYTimes.com, FT.com, and BBC News online.

A live blog at TheGuardian.com, with some typical features highlighted.

Source: Thurman and Walters (2012). Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd)

However, despite their popularity, live blogs have received scant attention from media researchers. The Reuters Institute surveys are helping to fill this gap by providing – for the first time – data on their consumption across a number of countries, and on news consumers’ attitudes to live pages.

Popularity of live blogs by country

Q11: Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

Both this year and last the surveys showed that 11% of UK news consumers had followed a live news page in the previous week. This year’s survey reveals that live news pages are even more popular in the US, Brazil, Italy, Spain, and especially in France (19%) and Japan (35%). Because the survey took place at the same time as the French Parliament was considering whether to introduce same-sex marriage – a debate that was intensely followed due to the increasing number of French parliamentarians who are now on Twitter[7. Nicolas Kayser-Bril, personal communication, 10 Mar. 2013.] – it could be that this figure is a result of the survey’s timing. However, the French online news market is distinguished by the relatively high number of internet-only or ‘pure players’ – such as Slate, Rue 89, Mediapart, and Atlantico – whose innovations, including in their adoption of live blogs, have normalised the format in France.[8. Jean-Christophe Pascal, personal communication, 11 Mar. 2013.] In Japan too, pure-player sites appear to be driving the popularity of live pages. Yahoo! News Japan – the country’s ‘flagship’ news website, used by 64% of Japanese news consumers in this survey – carries a ‘breaking news’ tab leading to a live page. The popularity of Yahoo! News Japan, combined with the rather conventional approach to editorial presentation on the rest of its homepage, are, according to Yasuomi Sawa of Kyodo News, the likely explanation for the popularity of live pages in Japan.[9. Yasuomi Sawa, personal communication, 10 Mar. 2013.] Live news pages are popular then, but with whom? The survey results show distinct differences between Spain, Japan, and the US – where they are accessed more or less equally by men and women; France, UK, and Brazil – where there is a moderate bias towards men; and Italy, Germany, and Denmark – where there is a pronounced bias towards men with, in Germany, more than twice as many men accessing live pages. In Germany live pages, known as ‘news tickers’, are used almost exclusively to cover sport events, in particular football, which have a significant male bias in their audience profile.[10. Christoph Neuberger, personal communication, 12 Mar. 2013.] It is unsurprising that live blogs are popular with heavy internet users. Typically running for six hours (Thurman and Walters, 2012), they demand repeated visits. Their reverse-chronological order and bite-sized updates – every few minutes or so – while essential characteristics of their ability to convey information ‘as live’, also present usability challenges. This Reuters Institute survey shows that, in the UK, 28% of live blog users felt they were hard to understand. Although news organisations have been improving the usability of their live blogs by, for example, allowing users to read them in either chronological or reverse chronological order, they are likely to remain harder to understand than traditional news articles because they lack a conventional narrative structure, often have multiple authors, incorporate a range of external sources such as tweets, and make extensive use of quotes from – and links to – secondary sources.

Consumer attitudes to live pages

QS14Bb Thinking about your use of LIVE news page (short updates in chronological order), please could you tell us how much you agree or disagree with the following statements:

Base: UK (n=2078) Use live pages (n=237)

These characteristics are, of course, also an important part of the reason for their popularity. My own previous research (Thurman and Walters, 2012) showed that readers assessed live blogs’ neutrality and balance positively. This survey confirmed this finding, with 40% of live blog users in the UK agreeing ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ that they were more balanced than article pages because they give a range of opinions and routinely link out to sources and supporting documents. Only 12% disagreed. Because live news pages are produced at speed, there is little time for live blogging journalists to undertake factual verification. What journalists do instead is work with trusted sources, for example, known Twitter accounts, and involve the audience in fact checking. This survey shows that more readers (35%) than not (27%) are unconcerned about any lack of accuracy in live blogs. In addition to their balance, live blogs’ use of a greater range of primary sources and their transparent correction practices are also likely to have helped instil a degree of confidence about their objectivity. However news organisations should not take their readers’ trust as a given. Live pages’ compressed and frequent deadlines and informal tone may encourage the potentially dangerous publication of unverified information. As the Guardian’s Paul Lewis says, ‘the danger in the rush to do regular updates is that we will make a really serious mistake’ (Thurman and Walters, 2012). The Reuters’ Institute survey also asked live blog readers in the UK whether they found the format a convenient way of following news at work. An overwhelming majority (62%) agreed ‘somewhat’ or ‘strongly’, with only 10% disagreeing. Of those respondents who said they access news at work or in a place of study, 17% use live blogs, significantly higher than the figure (11%) for all respondents. Live blogs are particularly suited to following news at work because they match readers’ preferences for news consumption in that setting, by providing easy-to-monitor updates on a single page in a discreet, text-based format. In this year’s Reuters Institute survey we wanted to investigate the popularity of different types of live pages. To do this we used my classification of live blogs (Thurman and Walters, 2012), which divides the format into four types: News, Sport, Series/Subject, and Other Scheduled Event (see Typology of live blogs, below).

Typology of live blogs

Scroll data area to see more

Type	Characteristics
News	Scheduled well in advance, semi-scheduled or completely unscheduled. Major breaking news stories, generally with a more serious tone. Examples include natural disasters, protests and riots, unfolding political scandals.
Sport	Predictable Casual in tone High level of direct interaction with readers Fewer multimedia elements Links and multimedia elements often included for entertainment purposes, may not be directly relevant to story
Series/Subject	Cover a subject, not a single story Usually public affairs topics Examples include: Politics Live, Middle East Live, and a Live Blog on planned reforms to Britain's National Health Service.
Other Scheduled Event	Planned in advance and of finite duration. Cover soft news, such as the Cannes film festival, the Eurovision Song Contest, and television series such as The Apprentice and X Factor, which are live blogged at the same time each week.

Source: Thurman and Walters (2012). Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd).

In my study of live blogs at Guardian.co.uk, I observed they were most regularly used to cover sport (37.6%), followed closely by the running, mainly public-affairs, news stories covered by series/subject live blogs (33.5%). Breaking news live blogs made up 21.9% of the total and scheduled events trailed at 6.8%. One might expect then, given the preponderance of sport live blogs and sport’s popularity with online news consumers (see e.g. Boczkowski, 2010), for readers to favour sport live blogs over the other categories. This survey showed, however, that both news and series/subject live blogs are more popular than sport live blogs with both US and UK news consumers.

Types of live blogs consumed in the UK and US

QS14a/14b: You said that you use LIVE news page (short updates in chronological order) Thinking about this, please select the statements that apply to you.

Base: UK (n=2078) Use live pages (n=237) US (n=2028) Use live pages (n=213)

Could it be, then, that live news pages are making readers more interested in hard news and public-affairs content? While that may, for now, be an interpretation too far, what we can say is that, because the format has developed uniquely for the web, and matches so well with readers’ consumption patterns, it seems to appeal as much through its form as its content. Live blogs’ appeal is likely being reinforced by the increasing consumption of news via mobile devices. 79% of mobile news consumers in the UK (and 77% in the US) say they use their mobile for accessing quick news updates during the day. Live blogs’ short posts (which average about 100 words) suit smartphones’ relatively small screens, and the frequency with which they update mean they warrant repeated daily visits. Some have been critical of how such rivers of news are augmenting traditional discrete articles – even going as far to accuse live pages of being symptomatic of the ‘death of journalism’ (Symes, 2011). However, although live news pages are meeting some readers’ contemporary preferences for snacking on news, often on the go, they may simultaneously be delivering levels of participation and transparency, and an engagement with public affairs, that could contribute to journalism’s reanimation.

References

Boczkowski, Pablo J. (2010) News at Work: Imitation in an Age of Information Abundance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Symes, John (2011) ‘The Guardian Newsblog and the Death of Journalism’, The Louse & the Flea (blog), 22 Feb.
Thurman, Neil, and Anna Walters (2012) ‘Live Blogging: Digital Journalism’s Pivotal Platform? A Case Study of the Production, Consumption, and Form of Live Blogs at Guardian.co.uk’, Digital Journalism, 1(1): 82–101.

The Bottom Line: Do and Will Consumers Pay for Digital News?

robert.picard — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:05:47 +0000

Providers of news are focused on increasing digital revenues to replace income lost because newspapers, news magazines, and news broadcasters have experienced declines in audiences and advertising. Data in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report reveal consumers have increasing experience making payments and suggest their willingness and expectation to pay for news in digital forms is also rising.

Payment for digital news is rising

	UK	Germany	France	Denmark	US
Paid for digital news	9% (+5%)	10% (-4%)	13% (+5%)	10% (-2%)	12% (+3%)

Q7: Have you paid for DIGITAL news content, or accessed a paid for digital news service?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007)

Percentages that said yes in the last week, month, year or longer than a year

The data indicate, on average, 10% of people have paid for news in some digital form – about one-third higher than last year. This growth rate is heightened because of the relatively low base from which it started, but it is clear that there is significant growth in consumers who have paid for digital news in countries such as the UK, Germany, and US. The changing attitude towards payment is occurring because it is no longer a novelty and consumers are expecting more news providers to require payments in the future. Even among those who have never before made digital news purchases, willingness to pay for news in the future averages 14% overall and rises to 19% among heavy news consumers.

Percent likely to pay in the future

Q7b: You said you have not paid for digital content in the last year… How likely or unlikely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like? Base: All (n= 11007); US (n=2028); UK (n=2078)

Chart shows net very likely or somewhat likely

The primary reason that consumers expect to pay for digital news in the future is declining availability of quality free news. This finding is seen in the UK data where 23 per cent of respondents cite it as the reason for expecting to pay, triple the amount for any other reason.

Motivations to pay for digital news sources in the future (UK)

QS18: You said that you don’t currently pay for digital news, but what might motivate you to PAY in the future for DIGITAL news sources that you like?

Base UK : Those that don’t currently pay for digital news (n=1862)

These data support the view that future digital news readers will be more committed to news and represent a smaller cross-section of the community than was previously served by print media in decades past. Digital news thus appears to becoming a product aimed at a niche audiences rather than a widely used consumer product. This is supported by the fact that an average of 48% of respondents reported they have never paid for a newspaper and thus large portions of that group are unlikely to suddenly decide to start paying for digital news. That figure is particularly pronounced in Denmark, France, and the US.

Percentage who have NOT paid for a newspaper in the past week

Chart shows net very likely or somewhat likely

Of those who have paid for newspapers, two important patterns emerge: (1) payments are made at newsstands or shops and (2) home delivery or home delivery plus a digital subscription are involved. The high retailer purchases seen in Italy, Spain, UK, and Brazil indicate high single-copy sales methods; whereas the high print/digital subscriptions and home delivery found in Japan, Germany Denmark, and US indicate habitual subscription-based acquisition. These findings suggest that the predominant pricing methods for digital news purchases will also vary among nations, as publishers adjust to consumer payment preferences. There are some general lessons to be learned from news organisations’ pay experiences and professional and academic research to this point:

Commoditised news does not create economic value because providing the same or similar news to that of others provides no reasons for anyone to pay for it.
Willingness to pay is a matter of tradition and consumer expectation and platforms with better payment interfaces tend to have better payment take-up.
Consumer payments are becoming more important revenue sources on apps for mobile and tablets than for general online payments.
The presence of quality, free competitors affects willingness to pay. If quality digital news is provided free by newspapers or broadcasters in a market, there is reduced demand for paid news services.
Larger legacy news players have advantages when seeking digital payments because brand matters and only a few large players in each market currently are currently able to produce sufficient numbers of consumers to monetise digital activity well.

Experience also teaches lessons about the effects of instituting pay systems and reveals that rigid paywalls reduce website traffic between 85 and 95%. The Times, for example, lost 91% of its traffic when it instituted its system. This can be an acceptable business outcome if more income is gained from consumers than advertising revenue is lost due to reduced traffic. As consumer payments become the dominant revenue source, maximising audience is no longer the primary business driver; maximising income is. Where metered paywalls – systems that allow readers to access some articles before requiring payment – have been implemented, the decline in traffic has typically been between 5 and 15%, thus making it possible to effectively generate both sales income and traffic-driven advertising income. Cooperative pay systems are beginning to work for digital news providers in some locations; especially for small and mid-sized companies, because they create economies of scale, spread costs, and create easy access by new consumers. Two notable developments in joint pay systems have been Press+ in North America and Piano Media in Europe, which are now providing services to nearly 1,000 publications. Firms such as these provide the conditional access systems, payment infrastructure, subscription and single-payment management, and data analytics to publishers, making it easier for them to implement pay systems. Public-affairs magazines are also finding it easier to get the public to pay than newspapers, especially on tablets, because digital payments for magazines are becoming the norm and they offer news analysis and commentary in ways general news sources do not. Research is showing that users of digital services are now expecting to receive more than offline content when they use digital services. They expect to be in control of the experience, with the ability to make choices and influence consumption. In addition, they expect more and different types of content than are available in print, such as access to background information, more connections to original materials, more video, audio, and graphics, and better usability tools. Financial publications, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, are serving this later aspect better than general news providers by providing various stock trackers, research reports, calculators, and investment analysis tools. Developments in paid news have significant strategic implications for news providers. It is increasingly necessary to focus on customer needs. Because digital news is more competitive than print news, its business is about serving customers better than other providers, not just about the revenue needs of the company. If news providers get the first aspect right, the second part will be a natural outcome. Today, a number of large players are generating 15–25% of their total revenue from digital media. In addition, the sizes of audiences being served are increasing 5 to 10 times because the digital platforms are attracting users who did not read the print news products. Some mid-sized players are also starting to harvest benefits. These benefits are developing because the public is starting to make clear how it wants to use digital media and news organisations are learning how to align their content and pricing practices to this new environment. Consequently, news providers are pursuing different strategies with regard to payments. Some (such as the San Francisco Chronicle) are pursuing freemium models, with some general and promotional content offered free and better or premium content behind the paywall; others a metered model, which allows limited access to a few articles as a marketing and ad revenue-generating strategy to irregular users. The majority of papers employing the metered system have set the limit for free access to 10–15 stories monthly. Others (such as The Times) employ ‘hard’ paywalls with payment required for all content. For those newspapers and magazines that haven’t yet begun charging, the key questions are when will they implement digital pay systems, what content will they charge for, on what platforms, under what circumstances, how, and at what price. Some may continue to pursue a free access policy for a time in order to build digital audiences (such as the Guardian), but at some point most will switch to some sort of pay system to remain economically viable. News organisations are increasingly offering separate pricing for print, web, tablet, and phone-based news, with many types of bundles for the services. Digital payments are scalable, allowing news providers to provide a variety of sales options including single articles, one-day access, weekly access, or monthly, quarterly, or annual subscriptions at different price points. Consequently, news providers will need to determine which option, combination of options, or bundling of platforms will be best for their various digital operations. The most visible cases of publishers generating significant digital sales – such as the New York Times – must be viewed as exceptional, however. They tend to be leading national news providers in countries with large populations where digital sales become viable even if they only attract a small percentage of consumers or from countries that have a language (usually English) that can be read widely by international consumers. Digital products offered by Bild in Germany are thus likely to attract more paying consumers than VG in Norway and the Washington Post is likely to attract more international consumers than Kronen Zeitung in Austria. This does not preclude publishers in other nations, or smaller news providers, from pursuing opportunities and obtaining advantages from digital sales, however, but they will need to pursue tailored digital strategies with different expectations. Paywalls alone are not to be expected to replace all the advertising revenue that news organisations are losing in the digital transformation process and user payments will be just one of a widening array of revenue streams: e-commerce, events, syndication, digital services, and income from non-media subsidiary enterprises. Although employing a range of revenue streams is new for many in the industry, it was common for news providers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before advertising revenue grew so large that they were able to reduce other revenue-generating activities. The data indicate improving prospects for digital news payments, but news providers will need to be realistic about financial expectations. The digital world will not yield income at the levels of the 1990s, but revenues and profits do exist. As the digital revenues rise – at different rates on various platforms – many print news providers will be increasingly pressured to shed the assets and cost centres that support print production and switch to digital-only production that is more readily supported by the rising revenue streams.

Smart TVs – the Final Frontier for Interactive News?

dan.brilot — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:00:38 +0000

An often quoted adage in the world of news and media is that ‘content is king’. This year’s Reuters Institute survey has provided plenty of evidence about the growing importance of tablets and smartphones. However, it’s always worth remembering when looking through this kind of data that in fact ‘context is king’ and that ultimately the majority of media (and specifically news) is still very much consumed at home on the ‘first screen’: television. Television sets are still the only ubiquitous devices in the UK, with 97% of the UK population with access to digital TV[11. Ofcom Communications Market Report 2012]. We still observe the continued large-scale consumption of news on the big screen, with television news still the source used by the most people across most markets in the survey (the exceptions being Brazil and Japan). This is changing, especially with younger audiences who clearly state that they prefer online news, with the choice, the control, and the participation that this provides. The arrival of connected or ‘smart TVs’ raises the intriguing possibility of bringing together the two things we love most - the TV and the internet - into a single device. We define smart TVs as televisions that can connect directly to the internet without the help of another device like a set-top box. This is normally done via an ethernet or wi-fi connection. Penetration of smart TVs in most markets in the study is above 10% and growing at a slow but steady rate. Though smart TV penetration is rising very slowly in certain markets (like the UK) penetration is in fact a lot higher in other markets like Denmark (17%) and Brazil (22%). We can also see that news is widely used by smart TV owners, with over a third (34%) of UK owners accessing news on their device, rising to nearly three-quarters (73%) of smart TV owners in France using it for that purpose.

Smart TV usage and usage for news by country

Q8a/Q8b Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use for any purpose/ have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

With a big push from consumer electronics manufacturers to make all large new televisions ‘smart’, it is anticipated that penetration and usage will grow rapidly. According to global technology specialists Gartner, 85% of all flat TVs produced by 2016 will be smart TVs. So what impact will this technology adoption have on our consumption of news and specifically on television-delivered news? YouGov has been tracking the growing usage of linear and on-demand services on smart TVs since the start of 2012. Our surveys show that video on-demand services (such as the BBC iPlayer, YouTube, Netflix, and Lovefilm) are the biggest factor driving both purchase and usage of smart TV devices. But we also find that news is the third most common application (behind linear broadcast and catch-up TV) for smart TV owners in the UK, with well over a third (38%) of UK smart TV owners accessing online news services on a weekly basis. More specifically, throughout last year we have seen significant increases amongst smart TV owners’ usage of a range of ‘apps’[12. An ‘app’ refers to application software. This is a term used to describe computer software that causes a computer to perform useful tasks beyond the running of the computer itself.]

Most popular applications accessed via Smart TVs (UK)

Q8a/Q8b Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use for any purpose/ have you used to access news in the last week?

Source: YouGov Smart TV Tracker, Q2 & Q3, Q4 2012 – proportion of App users who access on a weekly basis (various base sizes).

What this demonstrates is a desire to find out more information related to ‘live’ events at that moment on that device. Very often ‘second screens’ are used to ‘dig deeper’ into an event to find out more information relating to a TV event but it now seems that that capability also sits well on our ‘first screens’. We also see global news brands such as Yahoo!, USA Today, and CNBC gaining traction in UK living rooms on the big screen – mirroring the kind of developments we have seen with the internet over the past decade. Part of the picture could be the fact these are the kind of apps that come preloaded with some TVs and also feature prominently in smart TV apps stores. However, that said, the increase in usage is also down to consumer appetite for the content that they provide.

The Guardian’s TV news app

The openness of smart/connected TV platform and the ease with which apps can be created using web technologies opens up new opportunities for traditional news brands across many markets. Last year, the Guardian launched a smart TV app in the United States, alongside its web and mobile portals aimed at American audiences. Previously, getting carriage via the US cable networks would have been an expensive and tortuous process. We also notice this trend in other markets, especially in Germany where smart TV penetration is higher (already in Q2 2012 it was 11%) and where we see ‘accessing new services’ usage higher than any of the other smart TV applications, with just under a third (29%) using news services on their smart TV on a daily basis. France also appears to be a market where news consumption on smart TVs is particularly prevalent, with 11% of the survey sample accessing news on their smart TV (this is a very high proportion of the overall 14% who use a smart TV). Part of this may relate to the early adoption of interactive news on television in France, with a pioneering system called Antiope and later versions of teletext. Whilst it might appear at first to be counter-intuitive to have text-based content on a big screen, there are a number of other successful precedents in Europe. The BBC ‘Ceefax’ service ran from 1974 to 2012 in the UK and was a text-based service delivered on a television with a focus on time-sensitive text-based information, such as breaking news, financial stock prices, weather, TV listings, and sport. The BBC red button service now continues to provide not only visual but text-based information, with 45% of the UK population using the service on a monthly basis. But news providers are still uncertain whether internet-style content will work on a shared ‘lean back’ device with a large screen. To understand audience demand for different types of content, we asked a series of questions in both the UK and France. When asked about the specific appeal of internet-delivered news content, the most appealing concept across both markets was a breaking news alert (that is pushed to the corner of your screen for a short time), which appealed to just over half (56%) of the UK population and almost two-thirds (64%) of the French one. Weather-related services also fared well. Sports news (text and video clips) was popular with men but of very little interest to women. News lovers – those with a high interest and frequency of access (20% of the sample) – were more likely to show interest in all these categories.

Interest in possible Internet news formats via a TV screen

QS15 Thinking about the possibility of accessing internet news services via your television, how interested would you be in the following types of news

Base: France (n= 972),UK (n=2078)

The popularity of news alerts is in some way surprising because it actively interrupts linear viewing, as opposed to other propositions which would require an active decision to go to a menu system to access internet-based content. Even so, it seems that there is a genuine appeal for disruptive ‘push’ functions, in particular when breaking news is concerned, even when consumers are in ‘pull modes’ of consumption. We often hear of this ‘pull mode’ more commonly referred to as the television ‘lean back’ (passive) medium, where content is just consumed, versus internet-delivered ‘lean forward’ (active) media, where consumers have an opportunity to either make decisions about what content they want to receive (beyond merely the ability to change channel or time-shift) or indeed contribute towards that content or towards the discussion around that content. The complication around internet-delivered services, whether on a smart or a connected TV, is to do with the device being a shared device (as opposed to laptops, tables or smartphones which are mostly ‘personal’ individual devices). However, for news (which could be relevant for all members of the household), this objection might not be an issue (in the way that it is e.g. for social media usage on shared devices such as the television). We observed that when asked if consumers wanted to ‘be in control of my news experience’) almost half (46%) of the UK sample agreed, with this number rising to almost two-thirds (64%) of the French sample agreeing. This clearly shows the desire to move from a top–down model of news communication to one where user choice (beyond merely being able to switch channels) will be a factor in the design and delivery of television-based news services in the future.

Interest in ‘internet style’ news content on a TV screen

QS16 : When thinking about getting internet news via your televisions to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

Base: France (n= 972) UK (n=2078)

Smart or connected television seems to be a natural fit for the delivery of news content, particularly for ‘push’ notices of breaking news and also for in-depth reportage when consumer just don’t have enough from their standard TV bulletin. This feeds into our basic desire to always be kept up to date and the ability to dig deep into a story beyond the headlines. Interactive news and information content is now available on any screen and, as our homes become increasingly connected, that news passes more and more fluidly between the small and the big screen.

Demographic Divides: How Different Groups Experience Online News

alison.preston — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:15:48 +0000

This report has focused predominantly on providing clear analysis of how users in different countries vary in their online news behaviour. This essay focuses on the UK in particular, and examines some key subgroups – age, socio-economic group,[13. Socio-economic group refers to the ‘common currency’ social classification (the ‘ABC1’ system) employed throughout marketing, advertising, and market research. The classification assigns every household to a grade, usually based upon the occupation and employment status of the chief income earner, but in some cases using other characteristics.] in the UK, in particular in the third quarter of 2012 where we saw large jumps in news (and sport) app usage, most likely associated with finding out news and information around the Olympic (and potentially the Paralympic) games. and gender – to provide a more nuanced picture of the variations that can be found relating to news habits and attitudes. Do men and women have significantly different news consumption habits, and do they find the same types of news important? Are younger people consuming more or less news than older age groups, and do they interact with news in different ways? What role does socio-economic group play in consumption habits? This essay begins by setting out the importance that people attach to different types of news. It describes which platforms are used for news, and shows the different types of source people say they use for political and for entertainment news. It examines how different groups find online news – the gateways through which they navigate – and describes the types of online news used and the extent of interactivity carried out. It is important to remember at the outset that this survey is based on online users of news – older people are less likely to have internet access by a considerable margin (46% of 65+ compared to 90% of 16–24s in 2012[14. Ofcom, Communications Market Report (2012).]), and so differences in habit and attitude are certainly even more stark than these findings suggest if widened out to the UK population as a whole. The analysis of differences by age can also offer an indication of the possible direction of travel in news consumption, if younger people’s habits endure as they get older.[15. See Ofcom’s Communications Market Report (2012) for a discussion of the ‘generation gap’ in relation to communications media in general, and whether there are signs that media behaviour among younger people remains similar as they get older (cohort effect) or gets modified as their life stage shifts (life-stage effect).]

The importance of news

First of all, how personally important do people find various news topics? The figure below, 'Personal importance of types of news', shows that, for almost all news topics, online users aged 65+ are more likely to rate them as important than those aged 18–24. The divergence is particularly great for local and regional news and economics news – and even news about the UK is something that 75% of 65+ say is important compared to 61% of 18–24s. This indicates a greater overall engagement among older users with news, which tallies with findings elsewhere,[16. See Kantar Media, Measuring News Consumption and Attitudes (Ofcom, June 2012).] as well as their more frequent news consumption. The three exceptions are science and technology, entertainment and celebrity, and arts news, where younger people are far more likely than older people to find these personally important. Indeed, the 25–34 age group (not shown on the chart) is most likely to find entertainment and celebrity news important (37%) compared to 25% for 18–24s and 7% for 65+.

Personal importance of types of news

Q2: Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five

Base UK (n=2078) 18-24 (n=249), 65+ (n=379)

Turning to differences by socio-economic group, online users in C2DE households are more likely to find local and regional news important than those in ABC1 households (59% of C2DEs say that local news is important compared to 44% of ABC1s). People from AB households are over twice as likely as DEs to find business and financial news important – 28% vs 12%, and considerably more likely to find UK political news important – 43% vs 33%. There are many gender differences, with women finding local and regional news more important, and men business, financial, and economic news. Women are twice as likely to find health news important (38% vs 18%) and three times as likely to nominate entertainment and celebrity news – 29% vs 10%. Men are three times as likely to nominate sports (49% vs 15%) and twice as likely to nominate science/technology (29% vs 16%).

Use of platforms for news

Given the survey sample is one of online users, the internet is a key news platform for most age groups, as Figure 4.19 shows. That said, television remains the most-used platform for news at an overall level (79%) and for those aged 45+. Differences between age groups are substantial – 57% of 18–24s said they’d accessed news on TV in the last week, compared to 90% of those aged 55+. The figures are reversed for online news access, with 83% of 18–24s saying they use the internet for news, compared to 52% of those aged 65+. Newspapers are also much more likely to be used by older groups (70% of 65+) than younger groups (41% of 18–24s). Turning to socio-economic groups, there is no difference for the use of TV across each individual group. However, there are considerable differences for radio: 47% of people from AB households use the radio for news, compared to 28% of those from DE households. By gender, men are more likely than women to use the radio for news.

Use of platforms for news

Q3: Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Base: UK (n=2078) 18-24 (n=249), 24-35 (n=352), 35-44 (n=351), 45-54 (n=385), 55-64 (n=361) 65+ (n=379)

Sources used for different types of news

As well as understanding which sources people say they use in general, we wanted to see whether news sources differ for different types of news. When asked which types of ways they used to keep up with political and government issues, older people are more likely to say they use broadcast and print sources. The pattern for younger people is quite different – some two in five 18–24s say they use word of mouth, and social media, to find out about these issues. Online news users from AB households are more likely to say they use national press sources than those in DE households (60% vs 50%), and more likely to use specialist magazine sources (11% vs 4%).

Sources used for different types of news – political and government

QS4b: Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with political and government issues? Please select all that apply.

UK base sizes (as above)

Turning to entertainment news, the picture is more mixed (Figure 4.21). TV and national press dominate overall, but for younger groups, word of mouth and social media are as likely to be used as the national press and TV. The national press is less likely to be used by 18–24s.

Sources used for different types of news – entertainment and celebrity

QS5a: Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with entertainment and celebrity news? Please select all that apply

UK Base sizes as above

Gateways to online news

The ways that people find news is very important to monitor – discoverability patterns are going to be an increasingly important arena for competitive news providers. Figure 4.22 shows how different age groups say they find news online. Respondents could nominate up to five ways, and so the higher overall numbers for those aged under 45 indicate they are more likely to use a variety of means, with those aged 35–44 most likely to do so. Branded news sites are the most popular means for all age groups. However, for over one quarter of 18–24s, search engines and word of mouth are used (28% and 27% respectively). In terms of socio-economic group, ABs are much more likely than DEs to use a branded news site (39% vs 25%). Otherwise, there is little difference for most elements including search engines or social media. People in DE groups are most likely to say they don’t know how they find their news (25% compared to 12% of ABs).

How users come across online news

Q10. Thinking about how you FIND news online, which are the main ways that you come across news stories? (Please choose up to five)

UK Base sizes as above

When these types of gateway are aggregated, at an overall level a majority (54%) say that they mainly access news via a branded news provider. Each age group is also more likely to give this response. However, one-third of 18–34s say that they mainly access news via a search engine, social network, or aggregator, and this is also true of one in five online users aged 45+. New ways of reaching news content are thus the norm for a significant minority of online news users, and if younger people continue to use these newer forms of discoverability as they grow older, then branded news as a core means of navigation looks set to diminish further.

Main ways of accessing news online

QS12c: Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a LAPTOP OR DESKTOP computer, which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer.

Base: All who have accessed news via a pc/laptop in the last week (n=1394 weighted, 1405 unweighted)

Types of online news source

In addition to understanding how people get to online news, it is also important to identify which types of online news content they are using. As Figure 4.24 illustrates, ‘traditional’ news media dominate in terms of news source, for younger groups as well as older groups. Nearly half of online news respondents (45%) say they use broadcast websites, and 35% that they use newspaper websites. The dominance of broadcast websites is most probably attributable to the BBC News website. Younger age groups are more likely to say they use various types of online news source, with older age groups being less likely to nominate a variety of news sources overall. Two in five 18–24s say they use social media for news, and three in ten 25–34s. By gender, men are more likely than women to use most online sources, although there is no difference in the use of social media for news.

Sources of online news

Q3: Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

UK base sizes as above

We also asked online users to nominate the ways that they were accessing news content, to gauge the extent to which people are reading or watching news, or using other means of consumption. As Figure 4.25 shows, print-based use is most common, with two in five saying they read news headlines and one in three saying they read longer news stories. Around one-quarter say they watch live TV news channels online, with those aged 65+ more likely to do so than 18–24s. Conversely, 18–24s are more likely to use apps, and to read news blogs, than older users. It is of note that older users, despite being online, are employing ‘traditional’ means of consumption on the platform. It will be interesting to see whether this pattern changes as the older user base grows, or whether this will endure for some time to come. People in AB households are more likely to look at headlines (41% vs 33%) and read longer stories (36% vs 24%) than those in DE households, although there is no difference in terms of watching live TV online.

Types of online news used

Q11: Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base UK (n=2078) 18-24 (n=249), 65+ (n=379)

Interaction with online news

Finally, this essay examines the demographic differences in relation to how people share news online. Figure 4.26 shows the extent to which news users are active in terms of sharing news stories online. Three in ten online (29%) users aged 25–34 say they have passed on a link to some type of online news story, and a quarter (27%) of 18–24s. This decreases to 10% of online users aged 65+. Overall, nearly one in five (18%) of online news users say they have shared a story. Those from AB households are more likely to say they have shared a story than those in DE households (21% vs 15%), and men (21%) are more likely than women (16%) to say they have done so.

Whether shared news stories online

QS8b: Thinking about how you share news, in the last week have you passed on a link to an online news story, video etc. via email, social

UK base sizes as above

Online users were also asked to nominate the various ways that they share or participate in news coverage. Nearly half (44%) say they do this face to face or on the phone, while nearly one quarter (23%) of 18–24s say they communicate online about a story. One in five 18–24s say they share a news story using social networking, and around one in eight of this age group say they comment on stories. Online users aged 65+ are far less likely to comment or share stories in this way, although they are more likely than 18–24s to share a story via email. There is little difference by socio-economic group, but men are more likely than women to say they vote in an online poll (13% vs 9%) and comment on a news story on a news website (10% vs 5%). Women are however more likely to say they talk with friends and colleagues face to face or on the phone (49% vs 39%).

How users interact with news

Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? (select all that apply)

UK base sizes as above

In summary, we have seen a variety of differences between different ages, socio-economic groups, and gender. Younger people are, unsurprisingly, more likely to be employing newer, less news-brand-oriented, means of navigation. That said, one in five older users say they mainly access their news via these means. In terms of consumption, younger users are more likely to be accessing news in a variety of ways, although overall older people are more frequent consumers of news. Online usage for older users is more likely to be ‘traditional’ in focus than younger users. However, it is important to note that, across various measures, there are three broad age groups where activity is largely similar – those aged under 35, those aged between 35 and 54, and those aged over 55. In other words, while for much activity 18–24s are at the vanguard, 25–34s are often not far behind. There are differences by gender, particularly in relation to the types of news that men and women find important, and to the use made of different types of online news source. While men are more likely to share stories online, women are more likely to talk about them in person. Different types of news resonate by socio-economic group, with local and regional news being more important to lower socio-economic groups, and political, business, and finance news being more important to higher socio-economic groups. Branded news sites are used more by higher socio-economic groups, and reading news online is more prevalent in these groups as well. These findings are an important reminder that news consumption and habits remain sharply divided for various groups within society. While some of these differences may well become less stark in future years, others may endure – particularly around interest in news, and the continued preference for older users to navigate via news brand.

Partiality and Polarisation of News

paolo.mancini — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:10:34 +0000

I am very happy to comment on the data emerging from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report. These data confirm, at least partially, what we wrote in Comparing Media Systems (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). In particular they confirm the accuracy of the definition of one of the models we outlined there, ‘the polarised pluralist model’, and its main constitutive elements. But, first, let’s look at the data: in general, across all the countries the majority of respondents say they prefer news with ‘no particular point of view’. Such differences as there are between the countries are relatively minor, other than for the urban Brazilian respondents who appear to be outliers in this ranking. Indeed, their behaviour differs significantly from all the others: Brazilian consumers seem to be far less interested in getting detached news.

Consumer preferences around news by country

Q5c: Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer news that...

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985)

% agree

In many respects the preference for more neutral news is obvious. Conventional wisdom favours neutral news and predicts that the ‘ideal’ news consumer will also prefer it: journalists are supposed to produce neutral and detached news and ‘the good citizen’ is supposed to seek it out. Even if this is indeed the dominant approach, the percentage of those who look for news ‘that share their point of view’ is remarkable. In total, in all countries where the survey has been conducted, 23% of the respondents stated a preference for ‘news that share their own point of view’, in face of 65.6% who look for neutral news and 11.2% who prefer news that ‘challenge their point of view’. Combining together the answers of those who prefer partisan news (confirming or challenging a pre-existing point of view), a total of 34.3% is reached.

Consumer preferences around news (all countries)

Impartial news	Share your view	Challenge your view	Total partial news
65.6%	23%	11.2%	34.3%

Q5c. Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer news that ...

Base: All markets (n=11004)

This is an important result that goes in the direction of the polarisation thesis that many scholars have already outlined. Markus Prior, in particular, has in several pieces linked the development of partisan media to the increasing polarisation of American political arena (Prior, 2007). This trend is in particular linked to the rise of commercialisation and more recently to the advent of the web that together have progressively encouraged the shift from the mass audience to a series of ‘niche audiences’: Jomini Stroud has discussed this transformation at length in her recent book (Jomini Stroud, 2011). Her point is very simple and confirms many earlier observations: because of the abundance and the increasing commercialisation that characterise the contemporary mass media system, the mass audience is replaced by ‘niche’ audiences. Each media outlet addresses a specific segment of the population defined on the basis of different dimensions. Often these are ideological and political dimensions: liberal people look for liberal media, conservative people look for conservative media, etc. In this way existing opinions are just confirmed and reinforced as many people prefer to seek out familiar and recognisable ideas. The internet seems to further strengthen the tendency towards segmentation of the public: amongst the enormous number of possible sources made available by the web, consumers are likely to tune in to sources that focus on their interests, that share their opinions, that address problems and issues they are already familiar with. In this regard Cass Sunstein has proposed the idea of the ‘Daily Me’: people are likely to look more and more for their own image in the news. Sunstein’s words are useful in pointing out this particular behaviour, mostly when it relates to news:

Perhaps you have no interest at all in ‘news’. Maybe you find ‘news’ impossibly boring. If so, you need not see it at all. Maybe you select programs and stories involving only music and weather. Or perhaps your interests are more specialized still, concentrating on opera, or Beethoven, or Bob Dylan, or modern dance, or some subset of one or more of the above (Maybe you like early Dylan and hate late Dylan). (Sunstein 2007, p. 2)

Media segmentation is mostly based on the attempt to give the consumer content and perspectives he is supposed to like and to agree with. The ‘Daily Me’ stresses this tendency of mass media consumers to look for their own image in what is offered by the increasing number of sources that are available today. Polarisation may be the consequence of audience segmentation: the various ‘niches’ are reinforced in their pre-existing feelings and opinions. The distance between the different positions and attitudes that already exist within society is thereby increased. Rather than constructing a common sphere where different views can meet and negotiate their specific interests, new media for the most part, together with the more general impact of the very crowded mass media market driven by market logic, fosters the division of the large mass audience into smaller niche audiences, each of them mostly interested in the strengthening of its own identity. In the Reuters Institute survey, 23% of the respondents agree that they prefer to tune in to sources that share ‘their own point of view’. The fact that 11.2% of the respondents state that they choose to get connected with sources that ‘challenge their own point of view’ confirms the acknowledgement of the existence of ‘partial’ web sources and therefore the possibility of choosing among very clearly distinct sources. But I was also reassured by other results from the Reuters Institute survey which tend to confirm the hypothesis that we stressed in Comparing Media Systems. The countries where the level of polarisation appears highest (people are more willing to tune in to sources that share their point of view) are those we labelled as ‘polarised – pluralist’: namely Spain, Italy, and France. In these Mediterranean countries there are more online respondents than in the other countries surveyed who state a clear preference for news sources that share their point of view. Actually the country with highest percentage of these consumers is ‘urban Brazil’, which many observers consider close to the ‘polarised – pluralist’ model, even if with some remarkable differences compared to the European version of this model (Albuquerque, 2012). Indeed, for this author, news media in Brazil, as in many other Latin American countries (Waisbord, 2000), present a high level of political parallelism and instrumentalisation, the state also plays an important role in affecting the media, professionalism in journalism is weak, deep cleavages of a historical, social, and economic nature divide the country, so that citizens are more inclined to refer to those sources of information that they perceive close to their ideas and opinions. Ideological and political polarisation seems to be a featuring characterisation of these countries even if, in South America, the influence of commercialisation may appear stronger than in Europe also because of the more direct and closer role played by the United States. In these countries behaviour on the web seems perfectly consistent with widespread consumption attitudes where the affiliation to a particular point of view or political perspective takes precedence over membership of any wider non-partisan community. These countries present internal divisions of economic and cultural nature that also derive from historical habits and that are deeper and more rooted than elsewhere. These divisions produce consumption patterns that align partisan content with partisan consumers. Consumers are not particularly interested in listening to different and contrasting voices, rather they seem to be more inclined to separate themselves from alternative positions and perspectives. In the end this particular choice of consumption may widen the distance among different parts of the society, thereby reinforcing social and political polarisation.

Consumer preferences by age (all countries)

Q5c: Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer...

Base: All markets (n=11004)

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report offers another interesting perspective on the theme of polarisation: young consumers are more likely to seek out sources that ‘share their point of view’: with 28.7% of those who are between 25 and 35 years saying they prefer ‘sources that share their point of view’, compared to just 20% of those over 55. In part, this is unsurprising: young people are usually ‘more extreme’ in their behaviour, more inclined and willing to be part of a specific group than older ones. The web reinforces this tendency: Facebook puts together old and new friends and blogs are mostly addressed to those who already share some specific interests. Approaches to news consumption reflect the same tendencies.

References

A. de Albuquerque (2012) ‘On Models and Margins: Comparative Media Models Viewed from a Brazilian Perspective’, in D. Hallin and P. Mancini (eds), Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
D. Hallin and P. Mancini (2004) Comparing Media Systems: Three Model of Press and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
N. Jomini Stroud (2011) Niche News: The Politics of News Choice (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).
M. Prior (2007) Post-Broadcast Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press).
C. Sunstein (2007) Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press).
S. Waisbord (2000) ‘Media in South America: Between the Rock of the State and the Hard Place of the Market’, in J. Curran and M. J. Park (eds), De-westernizing Media Studies (London: Routledge).

The Partiality and Polarisation of News

nic — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:53:06 +0000

In most democratic countries, broadcast media have historically been required to adhere to strong standards of impartiality in news. This is because of the perceived power of television and the limitations in broadcast spectrum, which inevitably restricted competition. In contrast, newspapers have largely been allowed to follow a more partial news agenda, especially in opinion pieces and political reporting. But in the past decade, in the United States, a new breed of partial news channels such as Fox News have gained popularity and a number of senior media figures have suggested that rules on impartiality on television are now outdated.[1. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/mark-thompson-bbc-fox-news. See R. Sambrook, Delivering Trust: Impartiality and Objectivity in the Digital Age (RISJ, 2012) for a discussion of the issue.] Our data indicate that there is still strong support for impartial news, particularly in countries with strong public service traditions (Japan, Germany, France, UK) but there are very different attitudes in Brazil, which has largely followed an American commercial model. The Germans (1%), French (4%), and Japanese (4%) in particular don’t like news media – of any kind – to challenge their viewpoints, compared with people in Denmark, Brazil, and the UK.

Preference for impartial news, compared with news that shares or challenges your point of view

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Ger	Spa	Ita	Fra	Den	US	Bra	Jap
Share point of view	19%	23%	31%	25%	18%	13%	24%	43%	15%
No point of view	70%	76%	58%	65%	78%	60%	68%	28%	81%
Challenge view	10%	1%	11%	11%	4%	27%	8%	29%	4%

Q5c: Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer? (choice of statements)

Base: All markets UK (n=2078) US (n=2028) Spain (n=979) Japan (n=978) Italy (n=965) Germany (n=1062) France (n=973) Denmark (n=1007) Urban Brazil (n=985) % agree

When analysing UK data, where we also have written comments where respondents explain their choices, it became clear that people who are very interested in the news find it hard to answer this question because they like impartial news AND a wider range of perspectives. Casual users are happier to default to one or two sources, which in the UK tends to be an impartial broadcast news source like the BBC.

Preference for impartial or partial news by segment (UK)

Q5c: Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer? (choice of statements)

Base: UK (n=2078), News Lovers (n=448) Daily Briefers (n= 1059), Casual Users (n=572) Intense Participators (n=201), Extremely interested in politics (n=227)

People who are ‘intense participators’ (heavy and proactive users of social media channels) are no more likely to consume news that shares their point of view than people who are generally interested in news. If anything they are also slightly more likely to look for news that challenges their point of view. This tends to contradict the ‘virtual echo chamber’ theory[2. First proposed by Professor Cass Sunstein in 2001.] (at least in the UK), which suggests that digital and social media might lead people to take more entrenched views and miss out on a more balanced perspective. In the United Kingdom, the press tends to support one of the two main parties, Labour or the Conservatives. It is striking, but not surprising, that our data show that supporters of these parties are more likely to consume news that shares their point of view compared with supporters of smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats and nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland.

Preference for impartial or partial news by political party allegiance (UK)

Q5c: Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer? (choice of statements)

Base: (UK=2078) % agree

Explore the 2013 Report

simonl — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 09:20:03 +0000

Download the 2013 report

Resources and Charts for the 2013 Digital News Report

nic — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 09:33:19 +0000

A slide presentation of most of the charts and tables in the 2013 report is available here. Individual charts are also downloadable using the left side menus. We encourage you to use, share and remix the data, charts and essays in this report. All we ask in return is that you credit the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism or the Reuters Institute Digital News Report as set out in our terms and conditions. We will also be happy to provide the underlying data tables or more information about them on request. If you would like to access these tables for your research project, please contact the Reuters Institute. The questions and base sizes are included underneath the relevant chart or table and this website also contains more detail about the methodology used.

Media Coverage for the 2013 Digital News Report

nic — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:30:34 +0000

Partners for the 2013 Digital News Report

simonl — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:58:57 +0000

Executive Summary and Key Findings of the 2014 Report

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 09:45:28 +0000

This year’s data provide further evidence of a new wave of disruption and change in digital news. In particular, we see mobile and social consumption reaching a new level of intensity, we see the different behaviours of young and old becoming more pronounced, and new kinds of journalistic organisation emerging.

The use of smartphones and tablets has jumped significantly in the past year, with fewer people using their computers for news. More than a third of online news users across all countries (39%) use two or more digital devices each week for news and a fifth (20%) now say the mobile phone is their primary access point.
The number of people paying for digital news has remained stable over the past 12 months, although we have seen a significant switch to more valuable ongoing digital subscription in most countries.
Our new (and unique) social media index for news shows Facebook is by far the most important network for news everywhere. Although Twitter is widely used in the US, Spain, and the UK, it is far less influential in many other European countries. Google+ is emerging as increasingly important for news, along with messaging application WhatsApp.
European respondents remain strongly committed to news that tries to be neutral (or impartial) but Americans are more interested in hearing from brands and reporters that are open about their own views and biases.
Traditional brands remain strong in most markets, with cross-platform newspaper reach averaging 75% in most countries, but pure players and aggregators are now more or as popular in the US, Japan, and Brazil.
US social sharing news sites like Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Upworthy are beginning to make inroads around the world, with new formats and a fresh tone of voice aimed at younger people. Our survey shows a new category of weird news proving more/as popular than entertainment news.

Rapid Growth in Both Mobile and Tablet Use for News

Over the past year we have seen another significant jump in the adoption of both smartphones and tablets for news – as consumers embrace the benefits of smaller, personal, always-on devices. Germany and France have had a catch-up year, while others like Denmark have surged further ahead with 52% of the sample using a smartphone for news and 34% using a tablet on a weekly basis. On average over a third of our global sample (37%) is accessing news from a smartphone each week and one in five (20%) from a tablet. In turn, this is driving more frequent access to news and from more locations.

Smartphone use for news – all countries

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FR	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
2014	31%	33%	32%	35%	52%	41%	44%	36%	35%	26%
2013	28%	29%	22%	24%	43%	-	35%	25%	23%	19%
Change	3%	4%	10%	9%	9%	N/A	9%	11%	12%	7%

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: Total country samples 2014 (18859) and 2013 (11004)

Tablet use for news – all countries

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FR	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
2014	19%	23%	15%	18%	34%	23%	21%	18%	20%	10%
2013	16%	16%	10%	11%	25%	-	13%	14%	14%	6%
Change	3%	7%	5%	7%	9%	N/A	8%	2%	6%	4%

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: Total country samples 2014 and 2013

As more people come on board, the profile of multi-platform users is getting more mainstream. Smartphone news users are getting older – we have seen a significant jump in usage by the 25–44 group – while falling prices have enabled tablet use to spread to less affluent groups and to the young. Overall, we are moving away from use of a single device for news (traditionally the fixed computer or laptop) with particularly large drops in France and Germany.

Use of one device for news weekly – all countries

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FR	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
2013	55%	49%	62%	63%	42%	-	56%	64%	61%	69%
2014	54%	44%	50%	54%	35%	44%	48%	61%	52%	62%
Change	-1%	-5%	-12%	-9%	-7%	N/A	-8%	-3%	-9%	-7%

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: Those who use devices UK= 2019, France=1815, Germany=1853, Denmark=1914, Italy= 1958, Spain=1988, Japan=1836, Brazil=955, US=2070, Finland=1470

Across our sample almost four in ten (39%) of those who use digital devices for news now use more than two to access the news, up from 33% in 2013. The number using more than three devices has grown from 9% to 12%. On average a fifth (20%) of all users of digital devices say that the smartphone is now their MAIN way of accessing online news, with 10% using the tablet as their primary access point.

Main source of digital news (2013 figures in brackets for UK only)

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	US	GER	FR	DEN	FIN	IT	BRA	SP	JAP
Computer	57% (-23%)	69%	60%	61%	54%	74%	69%	62%	63%	79%
Mobile	24% (+11%)	17%	24%	22%	24%	15%	19%	18%	22%	15%
Tablet	16% (+11%)	10%	9%	8%	18%	9%	8%	8%	9%	3%

Q8b.5. You’ve said you use the following devices to access news in the last week, which is your MAIN way of accessing online news?

Base: Those who use devices to access news UK=1591, France=1630, Germany=1506, Denmark=1746, Italy=1876, Spain=1806, Japan=1708, Brazil=893, US=1800, Finland=1361

Industry Impact and the Role of Apps

These changes matter because new devices are not just increasing the frequency of news but also the way it is packaged, distributed, and discovered. On smartphones, we find that news apps – rather than mobile websites – are often the main way of accessing news. In the UK, almost 50% of smartphone users say they mainly use apps. This figure has risen considerably over the past year (+6%) – as has the split between news apps and mobile browsing on tablets (+9%).

App or mobile website to access news – UK

Scroll data area to see more

	Smartphone	Tablet
Mainly use apps	47% (+6)	37% (+9)
Mainly browser	38% (-4)	48% (-5)
About same	10% (-1)	10% (-4)

Q9a. Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE, which of the following statements most applies to you?

Base: Mobile users=709, tablet users=486

This is surprising given that most news organisations have introduced responsive websites that are better optimised for mobile. To some extent these data may reflect the strong penetration in the UK of Apple smartphones, which have tended to favour the use of apps. By contrast, in Finland where many people use Nokia phones, the use of apps on smartphones is far lower (around 30%), with most users preferring their web browser for news.

% of those using news apps on smartphone or tablet – selected countries

Scroll data area to see more

	News apps %
Denmark	19%
UK	16%
US	15%
Spain	13%
Germany	12%

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base: All

The use of apps varies considerably between countries and is mainly – but not entirely – dependent on the number of people using smartphones and tablets. News apps are proportionately used more on smartphones than tablets and the age profile is very different. In the UK, most (67%) of those using news apps on a tablet are over 45, whereas on the smartphone the majority of app usage is by the under 45s.

% using news apps by age group – UK

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base: Smartphone app users=267, tablet app users=152

The proportion of Apple iOS to other operating systems such as Android varies considerably between countries. Apple continues to be the biggest player in the US, UK, and Denmark but elsewhere other devices and operating systems are far more important – particularly for smartphones.

Proportion of Apple smartphones + tablets per country

Scroll data area to see more

MOST	% Apple	LEAST	% Apple
Denmark	58%	Germany	28%
US	46%	Finland	24%
UK	45%	Spain	23%

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: Total country samples

This is important because our data show that Apple users are much more likely to access news on their smartphones and tablets and are more likely to pay for digital news. Even after adjusting for other variables such as income, education, and interest in news, we find that Apple tablet users in the United States were more than one and half times as likely to pay for digital news – and in the UK twice as likely. Also in the UK, tablets from other manufacturers are also significantly increasing payment for news but at a lower level.

Smartphone Encourages Fewer News Sources

Another important finding from our research is that users tend to use a narrower range of news sources on a smartphone than they do on a desktop or tablet. Across all of our countries, over one-third (37%) use just a single source each week on a smartphone – compared with 30% on a desktop or laptop. In some countries the difference is even starker, with 55% of UK smartphone users saying they use one news source each week compared with 45% of computer users. This suggests a growing dependence on a small number of news apps, perhaps related to limited screen real estate available on a smartphone. In the UK the top trusted breaking news sources like the BBC and Sky – both of which have strong app propositions – seem to be benefiting from this ‘smartphone effect’, while aggregator brands like Yahoo and MSN are losing out.

Selected UK brands – smartphone vs. computer

Scroll data area to see more

	Mobile	Computer	Difference
BBC	67%	65%	2
Sky	25%	15%	10
MSN	2%	7%	-5%
Yahoo	3%	11%	-8%

Q19a. You say you access news via a smartphone/computer. When using that device what news sources have you accessed in the last week?

Base: Smartphone users=635, computer=1236

But multi-platform is not just about digital news. Across all of our countries, an average of 50% of those who access news on a tablet say they also read a printed newspaper at least once each week; 86% also watch TV news and we see similar patterns with smartphone users.

Heavy smartphone users are more likely to keep up to date with news throughout the day compared with an average news user (74% vs 66%). In Denmark and the UK, smartphones have overtaken print as the main way of accessing news on public transport such as trains and buses (69% vs 21% and 53% vs 40% respectively). New digital devices are changing consumption patterns particularly amongst the young but they are a long way from replacing traditional platforms, which remain important for all.

Paying for Online News

The growth in digital payment we saw between 2012 and 2013 seems to have stabilised in most markets – although some individual publishers are bucking the trend. Across our sample, just over one in ten (11%) say they have paid for digital news in the last year – either via a one-off purchase or ongoing subscription. This is in line with publisher experience where new paywalls and paid apps often find easy growth for a while and then stall – after the supply of loyal users runs out. In the absence of significant growth in the overall numbers, news organisations are focusing on maximizing revenue from those who are prepared to pay. Among this group we find that the majority (59%) are now making ongoing payments in the form of digital subscriptions – normally on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. There are two exceptions to this: Spain where more people are making one-off payments and Finland where there are more people paying for print and digital bundles.

Move to subscription (% of paying digital subscribers with ongoing subscription)* - selected countries

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FR	DEN	BRA
2013	60%	42%	37%	28%	63%	40%
2014	68%	63%	54%	47%	75%	65%
Change	8%	21%	17%	19%	12%	25%

Q7ai. Which of the following types of payment have you used to pay for ONLINE news?

Base: US=238, UK=139, Germany=173, France=216, Denmark=206, Brazil=233

* net subscribers include those with direct digital sub, combined print or with ISP or cable operator

In the UK, just over one-third of all digital subscribers have signed up with The Times, followed by the Telegraph and the Sun which both introduced paywalls in 2013. In the US, large numbers of digital subscribers have signed up for either the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. In France, it is Le Monde and Mediapart leading the way and in Germany, the recently launched Bild+ from Axel Springer is having an impact especially on mobile and tablet platforms. The low figures for the likelihood to pay in the future (for those not already paying) make particularly worrying reading in the UK and may be explained by the abundant supply of quality free news from the BBC, Sky, Mail Online, and the Guardian. But in other markets such as (urban) Brazil, Spain, and Italy there is more potential for growth.

% non-payers prepared to pay for online news in the future

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FR	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
Likely*	11%	7%	15%	10%	11%	11%	21%	23%	61%	8%

Q7aii. You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year. How likely or unlikely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like?

Base: Those who have not paid for online digital content in the last year (various)

* those saying they were very or somewhat likely to pay in the future for brands they liked

Reasons for Subscription – and Reasons for Staying

In this year’s report, we’ve also explored the motivations for online payment in a number of countries (US, UK, Germany, Spain, and Finland).

Reasons for signing up for online news subscription – selected

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	GER	SPN	FR	FIN	USA
A brand I prefer for news	35%	34%	23%	31%	23%	33%
Broad range of news coverage	46%	26%	42%	49%	46%	47%
Quality of specific area (eg sport, arts, technology, business)	10%	28%	28%	22%	16%	21%
Quality of specific columnists, writers and journalists	31%	22%	34%	40%	11%	35%
Enables access wherever and whenever I want	42%	43%	37%	39%	63%	49%
No other way to access valued content	16%	24%	15%	19%	9%	20%

Q7b. What were the most important factors in taking out an online news subscription?

Base: All who subscribe UK: 93; Germany: 93; Spain 83; France 103: Finland 131; USA 171

Alongside the quality of content, important factors in getting people to subscribe in the first place seem to be a desire to access favourite content anytime on any platform, combined with a fear of not being able to access that content for free. It is not surprising, then, that news publisher marketing efforts have focused on pushing their paid smartphone and tablet options heavily as part of the drive for wider bundled print and digital subscriptions. In contrast, our survey suggests that keeping subscribers tends to be more about the actual experience of the content, along with its quality. The quality of individual writers is a particularly important factor in France and the United States, both countries where journalists have traditionally had a high profile. It appears that the process of subscribing tends to reinforce the value placed by readers in the brand and its writers – either through the increased usage of the brand, a rationalisation of the decision to pay, or because paid content is valued more highly.

Social Media and the News

This year’s report contains new and unique data on the extent to which different social networks are used for news in particular countries – along with evidence about their role in sharing and discovery around breaking news.

Top social networks and top networks for news – all countries

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for reading, watching, sharing, or discussing news in the last week?

Base: Combined sample=18337

In aggregate Facebook is by far the biggest network with 60% using it for any purpose and over a third of our sample (35%) saying they used it for news. The popularity of other networks, however, like Twitter, Google+, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Reddit varies considerably. Twitter is widely used in Spain (21%), the UK (12%), and US (8%) – in part because leading broadcasters (BBC, CNN) and newspapers (El País, New York Times, Guardian) have promoted its use in wider coverage. By contrast it is less used in Germany (3%) and Finland (6%) where Google+ is twice as popular for news. YouTube is heavily used for news in Italy (23%), France (16%), and the US (17%) but much less in the UK (6%) and Denmark (5%). Strong brands in countries like the UK have been reluctant to put too much video content onto YouTube, hoping they can continue to attract users directly to their own websites. The age profiles for news are also significantly different everywhere, with Facebook broadly representative of all ages and Twitter focused on younger groups. In Spain 60% of our sample use WhatsApp and 26% said they are using it for news, with El País the first major Spanish site to enable direct sharing. We also see high usage in Germany and Italy. But our research also reveals other important networks and social aggregators. In Finland there are two important local networks: Suomi 24 (8%) and Ampparit (12%). In Brazil, Orkut is still used by 12% of the population. Japan has popular networks such as Mixi, and Line, while Germany has a number of networks including Xing for business connections.

Gateways and News Discovery

A key issue for the industry is the extent to which news brands are being disaggregated by search engines, social networks, and portals. Our 2014 results again highlight the very different habits around news discovery across our countries. In UK, Denmark, and Finland, countries with strong news brands, users tend to start their journeys with a trusted news provider, but it is a very different picture elsewhere, with search still the main gateway in France, Germany, Italy, the US, and Brazil.

Top gateways to news – % finding by brand, search, social network, and email

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FRA	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
Brand	33%	45%	27%	22%	46%	57%	46%	39%	46%	20%
Search	40%	29%	42%	40%	15%	26%	35%	59%	59%	41%
Social	28%	17%	15%	14%	16%	24%	38%	34%	46%	12%
Email	27%	9%	12%	24%	16%	11%	12%	12%	22%	18%

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories LAST WEEK? (Please select all that apply)

Base: Total sample per country

In Italy, Google News is accessed by 25% of weekly online news users and in Germany by 11% compared with only 2% in Finland and 5% in the UK. These international differences are at the heart of the current battles over the role of aggregators like Google in the European market. On the other hand our data also reveal how search is helping users get quickly to favourite brands. In breaking down different types of search query we find that more than half (56%) relate to navigation to a particular website. Effectively these are ‘pass-throughs’ to a trusted brand. In terms of social media, we asked additional questions in the UK about how networks like Facebook and Twitter are used for news discovery. Of those consumers who use Twitter for news, our UK survey shows they are highly active during an average week

57% click further to read or watch (story, video, or picture)
60% actively share or favourite or comment on the news
65% check their newsfeed to see what’s new

Of those who use Facebook for news, respondents show broadly similar types of engagement. They are, however, significantly less likely to click on a news story than Twitter users (though the aggregate effect is bigger because of the number of users). They are more likely to click on a news video. Twitter and Reddit have amongst the highest proportion accessing news (around 50% of their users use them for news each week) reinforcing their reputation as influencer networks and for surfacing news. Amongst those respondents in the UK who used social networks for discovering an important breaking story such as a natural disaster or political crisis, 65% said they would turn to Twitter and 54% to Facebook – even though Facebook has three times as many users in general. Working with polling partner YouGov, we have also analysed UK social media usage in Twitter. This shows that media brands or journalists post much of the content that is discovered and valued in Twitter. Our analysis shows that 64% of people on Twitter in the UK (c.5.4 million) get news from one or more type of ‘news account’, with 48% of them following a journalist, two in five (40%) following a breaking news account and just over one in three (35%) following a general news brand.

Sharing and Participation

In total 16% of our UK sample share a news story via a social network (12%) or email (6%). This hasn’t changed much in three years. The figures are considerably higher in the US, Italy, and Spain.

Top sharing nations – % sharing via email or social network weekly

Scroll data area to see more

Country	% sharing
Brazil	54%
Italy	44%
Spain	40%
US	35%
Finland	24%
Denmark	23%
France	21%
UK	16%

Young people are more likely to share or comment using social networks whereas older groups are more likely to share news via email and comment on a news site. But apart from the tools they use, the overall desire to talk about and share news appears to be affected more by national culture than by age.

The Rise of Visual Journalism

Over the last year newspapers, broadcasters, and digital pure players have been producing more visual content, pictures, data-rich charts, animated gifs, and video itself. This is partly because of the multimedia capabilities of new devices, partly because distinctive visual content works well in social media – but also for commercial reasons. Video in particular is attracting much higher advertising premiums. Despite this, our research shows that, for the moment at least, most users remain wedded to words (traditional articles and lists), though we do find that pictures and videos are relatively more important in the US, Brazil, and southern European countries like Italy and Spain.

Formats of news consumed weekly by country

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FRA	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
Lists/stories	72%	68%	69%	71%	58%	80%	73%	84%	81%	85%
Video/audio	34%	18%	21%	18%	22%	23%	33%	31%	32%	11%
Live pages	9%	8%	6%	8%	7%	7%	12%	15%	18%	12%
Pictures/graphics	24%	15%	25%	19%	8%	23%	23%	20%	32%	25%

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base: Total country samples

This year we asked a number of additional questions about the appeal of video content in five countries (UK, US, Spain, Germany, and Finland) and the balance between text and video content. In most of these countries we found just a small percentage (10% at most) that prefer online news to be video-led. Some of these are to be found in the United States where services like NowThisNews and Vice News have been gaining traction and where newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have expanded video teams considerably. But even here, more than two-thirds of our sample (70%) only consume or mostly consume news in text. Our research into video also shows that many users are put off by technical problems and by small screen size. News clips that add context to a text story are valued most by users. In terms of topics, videos about celebrity, fun, and sports news are especially popular, while local news video content is rarely consumed despite a high level of general interest.

Impartial News and the Value of Reporters vs Brands

This year we have also explored whether traditional journalistic disciplines of objectivity and impartiality are still relevant or wanted in a digital news environment. Some practitioners like the blogger and political journalist Glenn Greenwald have suggested a new approach in which journalists should argue a particular point of view – while being open about their sources and their biases. Our survey suggests that consumers at this stage strongly prefer traditional approaches. This may be because their views are shaped by what they already know but most respondents support the notion that a reporter’s job is to present a range of views and let the reader/viewer decide – especially in the UK and Germany. However nearly a third of Italian consumers prefer a reporter to argue a particular point of view, reflecting the more partisan journalistic practice of parts of the media there.

Do you prefer news with range of views vs news that argues a particular view?

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FRA	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
Range of views	79%	85%	87%	88%	74%	73%	81%	69%	71%	81%
Particular view	21%	15%	13%	12%	26%	27%	19%	31%	29%	19%

Q5c. Thinking about different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer where the reporter tries to reflect …

Base: Total country samples

In addition our survey showed that audiences TRUST sources more that try to be neutral over those that are open about their views and biases. We also looked at the issue of whether, as some commentators[1. See the Tow Center, ‘Post Industrial Journalism’.] have argued, individual journalists are overtaking the organisation as key drivers of trust and engagement. We see some support for that view particularly in France, Spain, and the US – whereas we find the brand itself is a more important driver in the UK, Japan, Denmark, and Finland.

Importance of brand and reporter in creating trust

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FRA	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
Brand Important	57%	63%	64%	63%	57%	57%	55%	72%	82%	37%
Reporter important	53%	44%	35%	60%	40%	31%	60%	66%	72%	31%

Q5e. To what extent are the following important to you in terms of whether you trust a source of news. Net important = those responding quite or very important

Base: Total country samples

The growing importance of individual reporters has been fuelled by the ease with which new enterprises can be set up and distribute content in the internet era. In the US in particular we see increasingly successful news organisations such as Business Insider (Henry Blodget), the Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan), Vox Media (Ezra Klein) that are built around their journalistic stars. In most other countries, newspaper columnists and high-profile reporters still largely ride on the coat tails of established brands for traffic and reach.

Rise of New Players and Social Aggregators and the Growth of Weird News

Across the world we are seeing the rising impact of pure players that are bringing a new tone of voice and innovations in format and business models. Some are now international players creating new disruption in many of our surveyed countries. The Huffington Post operates 11 international editions, many of which are joint enterprises with traditional news groups such as Le Monde in France and L’Espresso group in Italy. Buzzfeed runs sites in the UK and Germany and has recently launched versions in French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Huffington Post and Buzzfeed (weekly usage) by country

Scroll data area to see more

	Huff Post	Buzzfeed
US	17%	5%
UK	9%	3%
Italy	5%	-
France	5%	1%
Spain	4%	1%
Germany	3%	<1%
Brazil	-	1%

Q5b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Showing answers for Huff Post and Buzzfeed only

Base: Total country samples

These sites attract younger audiences and generate much of their traffic from mobile and social media. They have also been experimenting with new ‘native’ advertising formats where sponsored messages appear as part of the content itself. Part of their appeal is the ‘fun’ nature of much of the content, which is mixed with more serious news stories. In this year’s survey we have tracked this new category of Fun or Weird news for the first time. Overall, we find this category is accessed more often than celebrity and entertainment news. It is particularly popular with Japanese (28%), French (22%), and Italians (21%) and is mainly driven by young men and women – whereas entertainment and celebrity news skews heavily towards 18–35-year-old women.

Fun news vs entertainment news by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	Finland	USA	Urban Brazil	Japan
Fun/weird news	15%	14%	18%	21%	22%	18%	14%	16%	15%	28%
Entertainment and celebrity news	17%	15%	14%	13%	13%	12%	16%	15%	22%	24%

Q2. Which of the following types of news is most important to you? (Please choose up to five options.)

Base: Total country samples

These latest disruptions from social sharing sites come on top of Web 1.0 portals and aggregators such as Yahoo, MSN, and Google News. Google News is the most accessed news website in Italy and also a leading player in France and Germany. In combination, we see that in countries like the United States pure players and aggregators now attract almost as many users as traditional media online. Japan is a special case where Yahoo holds over 60% of the market and where the national broadcaster NHK has been restricted in its internet activities. Strong brands have done well in the UK, while in Finland – protected by language and by the relatively small size of its market – there is far less disruption (see chart).

Traditional brand websites vs pure players and aggregators – selected countries

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Base: UK=2082, Finland=1520, US=2197, Japan=1973

In this year’s report we have also looked in particular detail at the position of newspapers which play an important role in democratic countries – not least because they still employ the vast majority of journalists creating original content. Overall we find that cross-platform reach (print and online) still averages around 75% in most countries but online-only newspaper reach varies wildly from 31% in Japan to 82% in Finland.

Conclusion

This year’s data represent to some extent a continuation of trends we have seen before, but in combination the impact feels more intense. With many news organisations now getting the majority of their web traffic from mobile and tablets there is a growing realisation that this is just the start of a new wave of disruption. The smartphone is pushing the internet into a more personal space and extending our access points for news and information. Tablets are offering new possibilities for monetisation but in these converged multimedia spaces news is just one form of content competing for attention with all the rest. Media companies are rethinking their strategies to fit new platforms and changing needs, but for many this remains a battle for survival. There are new opportunities everywhere but also dynamic competitors emerging with fresh thinking. Money must be found to invest in new products but older groups still want news delivered in a traditional way. Embracing digital is clearly the future, but news brands can’t afford to leave behind groups who still carry huge influence and drive most of the revenue. Like last year we also see the uneven nature of digital change both between and within countries. We see how some countries are protected to a degree by culture, language, or regulation, while others face the full force of digital competition. We see everywhere how young people are finding, consuming, and sharing news and information in very different ways – putting mobile and online first. And yet in this web of contradictions we find evidence that trusted news brands and trusted reporters remain important to almost everybody. The names of those brands may be changing, along with the means of delivery, but notions of credibility, immediacy, and relevance remain core ingredients of success.

Survey Methodology for the 2014 Digital News Report

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 09:25:03 +0000

This study has been commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to understand how news is being consumed in a range of countries. Research was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2014.

The data were weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data, such as age, gender, region, newspaper readership, and social grade, to reflect the total population of each country. The sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet.
As this survey deals with news consumption, we filtered out anyone who said that they had not consumed any news in the past month, in order to ensure that irrelevant responses didn’t adversely affect data quality. This category was between 1% and 3% in most countries but as high as 8% in the UK.
A comprehensive online questionnaire was designed to capture all aspects of news consumption.
Core questions were asked in France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Italy, Japan, Brazil, and the US, as well as the UK, where there was a slightly longer questionnaire.

Scroll data area to see more

Country	Starting sample	Non news users	Final sample	Total population	Internet penetration
USA	2384	8%	2197	313,847,465	78%
UK	2271	8%	2082	63,047,162	84%
Germany	2116	3%	2063	81,305,856	83%
France	2039	5%	1946	65,630,692	80%
Denmark	2075	2%	2036	5,543,453	90%
Finland	1532	1%	1520	5,262,930	89%
Spain	2082	3%	2017	47,042,984	67%
Italy	2041	2%	2010	61,261,254	58%
Urban Brazil	1037	2%	1015	193,946,886	46%
Japan	2015	2%	1973	127,368,088	80%

* Please note that Brazil is representative of an urban population rather than a national population, which must be taken into consideration when interpreting results.

Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com – population estimate 2012

YouGov's online panel based research methods

David Eastbury Associate Director, International Omnibus at YouGov explains the methodologies around online panels and non-probabilistic sampling techniques Internet surveys administered through panels have become a feature of the research landscape in the last decade. YouGov pioneered the use of online research in the UK and has been pretty much a lone voice in advocating the use of the internet for social research. Online is not a suitable method for all research objectives. For example, it would be inappropriate for an online survey to be used to estimate the incidence of paying income tax online or for identifying service needs on a disadvantaged housing estate. However, online research can be used for a wide variety of topics and given that in the Digital News Survey we are asking about usage of and attitudes towards digital news and screening out those who don’t access it, online is an appropriate methodology. There are a number of technical and survey related issues as well as advantages that should be discussed which include:

How online panels, such as the YouGov one operate and how they compare to more traditional surveys
Response rates
Interviewer bias
Social distance
Accuracy
Pace of interview

YouGov has a panel of over 400,000 adults in the UK who have signed up to undertake research. These people cover a wide range of ages, gender, social grade, ethnicity and tenure. The panel is large enough to enable us to select both nationally representative samples that reflect the actual breakdown of the population on the key demographics of age, gender, region, social grade, ethnicity, newspaper readership and specific samples such as legal service users. The panel sizes for our other markets are detailed below:

Scroll data area to see more

Country	Panel	Panel sizes
UK	YouGov	442,100
Germany	YouGov	140,500
Spain	Partner	208,565
Italy	Partner	83,300
France	YouGov	83,300
Denmark	YouGov	41,815
Finland	YouGov	10,495
USA	YouGov	1,704,900
Urban Brazil	Partner	364,965
Japan	Partner	364,965

By definition a person can only be a member of the panel if they have internet access. People without internet access have a zero probability of taking part. It is possible, therefore, that there could be a bias against those groups who do not have internet access. Statistics from Ofcom show that 84 per cent of people in the UK have access to the internet with the vast majority having broadband access. It is important to compare the characteristics of people who have the internet with those who do not so that any possible coverage bias can be identified. Research by Oxford University shows that 46 per cent of DE social grades are online compared with 88 per cent of AB social grades. In relation to age, 40 per cent of people aged 65-74 are online compared with 81 per cent of 18-24 year olds. For the 75 plus group only 20 per cent are online but this group is hard to reach regardless of research method. The pattern is similar with regard to employment status with 48 per cent of unemployed people being online compared with 81 per cent of employed people. The key issue from the above discussion is the need for a panel that has a sufficient coverage of members drawn from lower prevalence groups. The table below shows the number of panel members from the low prevalence groups on the YouGov panel. This panel has a high number of people from each of the low prevalence groups.

Scroll data area to see more

	% of the population falling into each group	Number needed for nationally representative survey	Number on YouGov panel
Social Grade DE	28%	560	34,000
Unemployed	5%	100	11,400
Aged 65-74	10%	200	17,700
Aged 75 plus	9%	180	4,400

Even if a panel has sufficient number of low incidence groups a secondary key question is: are people who join online panels different from those who do not even if their demographic group is the same? Our own research and that across a range of panels in different countries suggests that online panel members can have some differences from members of the general population. For example, relative to the general population, online panels can contain disproportionately more voters, more highly educated people, heavier Internet users, and be more involved in the community or political issues. People who are willing to participate in surveys may have higher cognitive capabilities. If respondents join a panel or participate in a survey based on their cognitive capabilities or needs then it can lead to differences in results compared with samples selected independent of cognitive capabilities or needs. For example, in a self-administered survey, people are required to read and understand the questions and responses. However, none of these factors seem to have affected the research conducted on the YouGov panel. This is due to the way in which we use purposive sampling to select an achieved sample that reflects the key demographics (age, gender, social class) of the population. We also control for newspaper readership which is closely correlated with educational achievement (higher educated people are more likely, on average, to read a broadsheet rather than a tabloid newspaper). The accuracy of our research and the non-existence of panel bias has been independently verified by researchers from the University of Essex. As part of the British Election Study 2005/6 the researchers compared a sample of 4,000 respondents drawn from our panel with a similar sized face to face sample that was drawn using random probability sampling. The study was related to voting patterns and was used to model the outcome. The accuracy of both surveys was then evaluated against the actual election result, the results of which can be found here. This study showed that the marginal distributions on key variables in models of voting behaviour differed only slightly between the two surveys. The authors concluded that YouGov’s internet sample appeared to be slightly less 'left-leaning' than the probability sample. The researchers identified that this was likely to be due to people being more honest in internet surveys because of the lack of the presence of an interviewer. More importantly, it was concluded that the relative explanatory power of predictive models derived from both the online survey and the face to face survey was exactly the same. In the authors’ words the online model when compared with the face to face model ‘yielded impressive similarities’. These findings are important because it is independent verification of the explanatory power of the YouGov approach to online research.`

Response rates

A key issue with any survey is the response rate as low response rates can lead to bias in the survey - this happens when the people who do not respond to a survey are materially different from those who do. The consequence of this is that the survey cannot be said to be representative of the population due to it being biased towards one section of the community. Response rates to online surveys have overtaken telephone interviewing especially among working adults (particularly ABC1s aged 25-55) who have less time to take part in research. YouGov surveys typically achieve 40 per cent response rates and often rates of over 60 per cent. This is much better than can be achieved by telephone using random digit dialling. Response rates for telephone polls, for example, have been declining in recent years - to typically around 20% - and often much lower in inner city areas. The ability to extrapolate from the 20% telephone pollsters can get hold of to the 80% they can't is clearly a challenge leading to concerns over the quality of achieved samples, whether telephone or face-to-face. Another issue to consider is that of incentivisation. Our panel members receive an incentive for taking part in the survey. The amount varies depending upon length, but is commonly 50p per survey. It is only a small incentive but it is important in showing our appreciation for the time people have taken to fill out the survey. This appreciation in turn increases the response rate.

Interviewer bias and social distance

Another key advantage of online for this survey is the neutrality of the interview mode. Independent research has found that respondents modify their answers in the presence of an interviewer, including when the interviewer is on the other end of the phone. This lack of ‘social distance’ can mean that respondents feel compelled to give a ‘safe’ answer. Online surveys increase social distance so respondents are more likely to disclose important and sensitive information. In addition it enables a respondent to give an answer free from embarrassment and, therefore, a truer reflection of their actual feelings. The influence of questionnaire design on measurement error has received attention in a number of publications. Chang and Krosnick (2010) conducted an experiment, randomly assigning respondents to complete a questionnaire either on a computer or to be interviewed orally by an interviewer. They found that respondents assigned to the computer condition manifested less non-differentiation and were less susceptible to response order effects. In other words the computer surveys were more likely to extract a truer response.

Accuracy

YouGov dominates Britain’s media polling and is one of the most quoted research agencies in Britain. Its well-documented and published track record demonstrates the accuracy of its survey methods and quality of its client service work. YouGov’s unique methodology enables us to create representative samples through the Internet. It is a methodology of demonstrable superiority in terms of accuracy, frankness and depth of response – as well as speed and cost-effectiveness. The only way to demonstrate the accuracy of attitudinal research is to compare predictions with actual outcomes. This is why YouGov have consistently published pre-election polls, even in difficult-to-call contests such as local government elections. Our record of accuracy in opinion polling is unsurpassed in the UK. For example, in the recent European elections, we were both the closest of the pollsters in terms of individual percentages and the only one to correctly predict the order of the top five parties. In addition to election polls, YouGov have also predict things such as the x-factor and pop idol correctly as shown in the figure above. YouGov’s accuracy extends outside of the UK as well to include US Presidential Election (2008), Election of the State Parliament of Hesse (2009) and Danish National Election (2011). In 2013, YouGov’s prediction of global quarterly sales for the Apple iPhone was accurate within 0.05% of the actual sales results. Even though the Finnish panel is relatively small, we believe and our customers believe it to produce very accurate, valid and reputable results. Below are a few recent examples from nationally representative surveys to show the reliability of the data:

The share of daily smokers: YouGov survey 20%; Statistics Finland 21%
Market share of insurance companies and banks: matches exactly the shares reported by the Federation of Finnish Financial Services
The share of households with children: YouGov survey 39%; Statistics Finland 40%

Pace of interview

Online research is more convenient for respondents; they can fill in the survey in their own time, at their own pace and can formulate more considered answers. The nature of the survey will be quite complex and require a great deal of time and thought on the respondents behalf, an online approach would be ideal for this study.

Academic Journals on Online Research

The following academic papers have looked at the validity of Online Research: Prof David Sanders, Prof Harold D. Clarke, Prof Marianne C. Stewart and Prof Paul Whiteley. 2007. 'Does Mode Matter for Modelling Political Choice?: Evidence from The 2005 British Election Study.' Political Analysis 15: 257-85. http://www.bes2009-10.org/papers/DoesModeMatter.pdf Lindhjem, Henrik, and Ståle Navrud. 2008. 'Internet CV Surveys.' MPRA Paper #11471 http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11471/1/MPRA_paper_11471.pdf Braunsberger, Karin, Hans Wybenga, and Roger Gates. 2007. 'A comparison of reliability between telephone and web-based surveys.' Journal of Business Research 60: 758-764. Joe Twyman. 2008. 'Getting it Right: YouGov and Online Survey Research‘ http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457280802305169#.UezuZ9LqkS4 Chang and Krosnick (2010). ‘Comparing Oral Interviewing with Self-Administered Computerized Questionnaires An Experiment’ http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/02/12/poq.nfp090.abstract Academic studies using YouGov panels We have provided a number of notable examples of online panel based research projects, many of which were ESRC funded. All of them use the YouGov panel with nationally representative samples as would be applied for this project. The British Election Study (BES) has been conducted at every General Election since 1964. For the 2001, 2005 and 2010 General Elections YouGov has conducted the internet components for the study. In 2010 the internet component was comprised of a pre-election survey covering a host of political and social issues with a nationally representative sample of 16,816 GB adults taking part. All respondents were then invited to a rolling campaign survey. 14,622 took part in one daily survey during the duration of the campaign. In nearly ten years of working on the various incarnations of the BES, YouGov has gained unrivalled experience into using the internet for conducting fast, cost-effective, accurate nationally representative surveys on a host of political and socio-political subjects. Once again in 2010 our standard methodology for achieving nationally representative results was employed to help ensure accuracy of data and continuity with comparable results was maintained. A project within the ESRC Public Services Programme: Exit and Voice as a Means of Enhancing Service Delivery. In partnership with Professor Keith Dowding at the London School of Economics, YouGov has established a longitudinal panel of 4,000 UK adults. Over a five year period, regular online surveys examine citizen’s satisfaction with the services they receive, the ‘exit’ options they consider – e.g. moving house, using private services, shifting public service providers - and the ‘voice’ options they adopt to try to improve the services they receive. British Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (B-CCAP) – Working with the University of Oxford (Department of Politics and International Relations) and others. A multi-wave panel study of approximately 5,000 – 10,000 respondents to understand how formal and informal campaigns reach citizens, how citizens consume and react to them and what role campaigns play in the presence of strong structural forces such as the economy and party identification. YouGov is conducting similar projects in the US (with Stanford) and Germany. The Structure, Causes, and Consequences of Foreign Policy Attitudes: A Cross-National Analysis of Representative Democracies. This research project seeks to better understand the nature and consequences of the foreign policy attitudes of individuals from six advanced democracies (United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, France, Germany and the US). The Welsh Referendum Study (WRS) was an independent, academic study of the March 2011 devolution referendum in Wales. The study was designed around a two-wave panel survey of a representative sample of the Welsh electorate. Both waves of the survey were conducted online. The Scottish Election Study (2011) - The 2011 Scottish Election Study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council is based in the Department of Government at the University of Strathclyde. The Scottish Election Study takes the form of a three-wave internet panel survey of around 2,000 participants, with data collection undertaken by YouGov.

Chapter One: Analysis by Country

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 09:50:30 +0000

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.

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.

Foreword to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2014

daviv.levy — Sat, 17 May 2014 09:20:05 +0000

This is our third annual report that looks to track and compare changes in online news consumption across countries. This year we find more compelling evidence about the pace of the multi-platform revolution and the increasing use of smartphones and tablets for news. The report also explores different ways in which people are paying for news, the growing importance of video content, and brings unique data about the role played by different social networks for news in our participating countries. But there are many other fascinating insights that have emerged from this year’s survey of almost 19,000 people in ten countries. We have included Finland this year – in addition to the US, UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Brazil, and Japan that provided the basis for last year’s survey. We’ve asked more questions and have increased sample sizes in most countries. Once again we combined these data with a series of essays, which add depth and context to the findings, and these have been strengthened by continuing academic partnerships with the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg, the School of Journalism at the Institute of Political Science in Paris, and Roskilde University in Denmark – and new for 2014 with the School of Communication at the University of Navarra in Spain. Many of our academic partners are also organising events or country reports looking in more detail at national themes – and adding wider value to this international project. We continue to make efforts to open up as much of the data as possible via our website at www.digitalnewsreport.org. This contains slidepacks, charts, and raw data tables, along with a licence that encourages reuse. Also this year, we have developed a number of interactive features including a country-comparison application. We hope that this will continue to build into an invaluable resource for academics, journalists and those developing media policy to explain the past as well as the future. A description of the methodology is available on the website along with the complete questionnaire. Making all this possible, we are hugely grateful to our sponsors this year, who include Google, BBC, Ofcom, France Télévisions, the Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland, Newsworks, Edelman UK, as well as our academic sponsors and partners at Roskilde University, the Hans Bredow Institute, and the University of Navarra. However sole responsibility for the analysis, interpretation, and conclusions drawn lies with the authors and editors of the Report. I am also grateful to YouGov, our polling company, who did everything possible to accommodate our complex requirements and helped our research team analyse and contextualise the data and to Christian Arvidsson of Edelman for design and layout of this year’s report.

Authorship and Research Acknowledgements for the 2014 Digital News Report

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 09:40:44 +0000

Dr David A. L. Levy is Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and an expert in media policy and regulation. He previously worked at the BBC both as a news and current affairs producer, reporter, and editor, and later as Controller Public Policy. He is the author of Europe's Digital Revolution: Broadcasting Regulation, the EU and the Nation State (Routledge 1999/2001), and joint editor with Tim Gardam of The Price of Plurality (RISJ/Ofcom 2008), with Rasmus Kleis Nielsen of The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy (RISJ, 2010) and with Robert G. Picard of Is there a Better Structure for News Providers? The Potential in Charitable and Trust Ownership (RISJ, 2011). He recently co-authored The Public Appetite for Foreign News on TV and Online (RISJ, 2013) and jointly edited, with Nigel Bowles and James T. Hamilton, Transparency in Politics and the Media: Accountability and Open Government (RISJ/IB Tauris, 2013). Nic Newman is a journalist and digital strategist who played a key role in shaping the BBC’s internet services over more than a decade. He was a founding member of the BBC News Website, leading international coverage as World Editor (1997–2001). As Head of Product Development he led digital teams, developing websites, mobile, and interactive TV applications for all BBC Journalism sites. Nic is currently a Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and a senior Research Fellow at City University London. He is also a consultant on digital media, working actively with news companies on product, audience, and business strategies for digital transition. Commentary and additional insight has been provided by academic partners and by our network of Reuters Journalist Fellows around the world,[1. Reuters Fellowships offer an opportunity to mid-career journalists to spend time researching an aspect of journalism for one or more terms at the Institute in Oxford.] particularly in providing national context on our country pages, where authorship is indicated by initials. We are particularly grateful to:

Alice Antheaume (AA), School of Journalism at the Institute of Political Science, Paris
Esa Reunanen (ER), University of Tampere, Finland
Kim Christian Schrøder (KCS), Professor, Department of Communication at Roskilde University (RUC) in Denmark
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (RKN), Reuters Institute and Assistant Professor of Communications at Roskilde University (RUC) in Denmark
Ramón Salaverría (RS), Ana Azurmendi (AAz), and Samuel Negredo (SN), Center for Internet Studies and Digital Life at the University of Navarra
Uwe Hasebrink (UH) and Sascha Hölig (SH), Professor and Senior Researcher at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Hamburg
Flávia Marreiro (FM), Reuters journalist fellow and Foreign Affairs reporter for Folha de S. Paulo in Brazil
Nicola Bruno (NB), former Reuters journalist fellow, co-founder and journalist at the news agency Effecinque.org in Italy
Ichiro Motozawa (IM), former Reuters journalist fellow and broadcast journalist who has been working with NHK, Japan

Additional expert analysis and interpretation of the survey data were provided by the team at YouGov, in particular, Shaun Austin, Charlotte Clifford, and Bernadeta Wilk.

United States

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:00:09 +0000

Statistics
Pop	314m
Internet	78%
Smartphone	50%
Tablet	34%
Interest in news	68% (7^th= out of 10)

The US media environment is highly commercial and highly competitive. A range of television broadcasters, cable channels, prestigious newspapers, and websites compete in covering news and current affairs for a national audience. State and local issues are covered by local television stations, struggling metropolitan newspapers, as well as a growing number of online-only news outlets. Public media based on a combination of government appropriations, donations from users, and corporate sponsorship offer additional content to niche audiences both locally and nationally.

Offline

Online

Digital developments

The US has high levels of internet, smartphone, and tablet use, but has been overtaken in terms of digital media use by some Western European and Asian countries. Pure players like Yahoo News, MSN, and the Huffington Post have considerable reach online, as have the cable news channels, and local television stations and local newspapers in their local markets. Despite their reputation, nationally distributed newspapers like USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times count only a modest part of the population amongst their online audience (the first operates a free model, the two others different kinds of paywall). The US media environment stands apart from most other countries in this report by virtue of the size of the market and the stand-out success of a limited number of pure players who have established themselves as significant parts of the news system.

Social networks and digital participation

Social media like Facebook and YouTube are very widely used in US, and a significant minority of online news users also report that they use social networking sites to access, find, and engage with news. Twitter has a larger user base than in much of Western Europe, and is used by almost a third of the online ‘news lovers’ as a way of accessing and engaging with news. Both Twitter and Reddit played an important role in the coverage of stories such as Hurricane Sandy and the Boston bombings. RKN

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

United Kingdom

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:05:30 +0000

Statistics
Pop	63m
Internet	84%
Smartphone	62%
Tablet	42%
Interest in news	64% (10^th= out of 10)

The media environment is characterised by a vigorous and highly competitive national press – including a strong tabloid sector accounting for the majority of newspapers sold daily – and the best-known public broadcaster in the world. BBC News reaches more than three-quarters of all consumers each week across radio, TV, and online.

Offline

Online

Digital developments

BBC News continues to dominate online news usage across all platforms, with more than half of its traffic now coming from smartphone or tablet. Mail Online is the largest newspaper website in the UK and along with the Guardian is pursuing a bold (global) strategy of free access supported by advertising. Both charge for tablet editions and are considering adding more premium services. The Sun and the Telegraph adopted paywalls in 2013 with The Times reporting more than 150,000 paying digital subscribers. The Telegraph’s metered model has not significantly affected reach but the Sun’s overall traffic is down considerably from last year. Both the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed run UK editions with a tone and style that appeals particularly to younger audiences.

Social networks and digital participation

Twitter is widely used by journalists, PR, and media in the UK and is heavily promoted by television and newspapers. It is particularly popular with young people. Facebook is more important for referrals to news sites overall and Reddit also provides significant traffic on particular stories. News organisations are beginning to experiment with new chat based networks such as WhatsApp. NN

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Germany

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:10:43 +0000

Statistics
Pop	81m
Internet	83%
Smartphone	60%
Tablet	30%
Interest in news	81% (2^nd out of 10)

The country’s federal structure has shaped its media environment, with a number of regional and national public broadcasters competing for audiences with powerful commercial operators. Each of the 16 regions regulates its own private and public broadcasting. Germany is home to some of the world's largest media conglomerates, including Bertelsmann and the publisher Axel Springer. There are several national newspapers, but the press market is strongest at a regional level, with more than 300 titles. Newspapers and magazines have also taken a lead online, with public service broadcasters facing restrictions on the extent of their digital activities.

Offline

Online

Digital developments

In response to declining sales of newspapers and magazines, a number of publishers in Germany have been experimenting with new models of paid online content. This may be on a pay-per-issue basis (Die Zeit), via subscription (BILDplus), or as voluntary payment for single articles (TAZ). Due to the variety of models there has been little chance for audiences to get used to any of the different models and become accustomed to the respective patterns of usage and payment. Over the past year, the number of people who have paid for online news has remained stable and there is only a slight increase in the likelihood that those who did not pay might do so in the future (2013: 9%, 2014: 15%).

Social networks and digital participation

Germans are less interested in news-related participation via social media than people in other countries. Facebook is the biggest network for news, and yet in public discussions as well as in the strategies of political parties and advertising agencies Twitter gets a lot of attention. Because these people are particularly communicative and their tweets get attention from other news media (online as well as offline), their resonance in the public arena is very high. UH and SH

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

France

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:15:11 +0000

Statistics
Pop	66m
Internet	80%
Smartphone	52%
Tablet	27%
Interest in news	64% (10^th= out of 10)

France has more than 80 daily newspapers. Most of them are in private hands and are not linked to political parties. The most successful papers are often regional rather than national. Online, many of the best known national titles such as Le Monde and Le Figaro face competition from born digital media such as Mediapart, Atlantico, Le Huffington Post, and also from digital and video platforms created by TV brands like Canalplus.fr or FranceTVinfo.fr or BFMTV.com. Television news remains popular, with viewership split between France Télévisions, privately owned TF1, and a range of cable and satellite providers. France's long-established commercial radio, particularly RTL and Europe 1, still commands large audiences, along with a range of publicly funded stations such as France Inter, France Info, and France Culture.

Offline

Online

Digital developments

Google is a major player in France with a big online reach also for Google News (see the diagram). The company makes an estimated €3.9 million of revenue per day, leading to cries of foul play from the French legacy media along with government disquiet about the level of its tax contributions. In response, Google set up in February 2013 a digital publishing innovation fund to ‘help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers’, with $60 million over three years. The newspaper sector is particularly weak and remains partly dependent on state subsidies amidst falling sales and advertising revenue. If that wasn’t enough, French print media struggles with a slow and inflexible distribution system dominated by the heavily unionised Presstalis. In this context, few news print dailies launch in France, although L’Opinion, a daily newspaper, was created in May 2013. National titles fear business failures, and in winter 2014, Libération almost filed for bankruptcy before its board found money to survive. Online, there is strong growth with a vibrant mix of players such as aggregators, free real-time news websites like 20minutes.fr, born digital media, alongside traditional news titles such as lefigaro.fr, lemonde.fr, and leparisien.fr. A new wave of US-led disruption has come from Buzzfeed which launched a French version in November 2013, and the Huffington Post which has been operating in France since January 2012. Among French pure players, Mediapart is the most successful, with 84,000 subscribers for its mix of online investigation and opinion. Lemonde.fr is aiming for 200,000 by 2015. To help digital news providers, the government has offered a discounted VAT rate for online news, bringing this in line with the VAT treatment of print. In this changing landscape, the power of TV news remains strong. French people spend an average of 130 minutes in front of the TV per day, compared to 79 minutes on the smartphone.[1. Ad Reaction 2014 by Millward Brown: http://www.millwardbrown.com/adreaction/2014/#/main-content.]

Social networks and digital participation

Twitter has been a key network for journalists and politics, but since the Valerie Trierweiler ‘tweetgate’ affair in 2012,[2. When the President’s partner used her Twitter account to tweet in support of a dissident socialist standing against the official Socialist Party candidate (his former partner, Ségolène Royale) in parliamentary elections.] the government has become more cautious with its interventions. Social media were popular, however, during the French municipal elections in March 2014, attracting more interest to news websites. But reading news via social media does not necessarily lead to sharing news. These data show that French people tend to be more passive around news than their European colleagues, but active around TV shows where they are more ready to comment and share. AA

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Denmark

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:20:17 +0000

Statistics
Pop	5.5m
Internet	90%
Smartphone	73%
Tablet	46%
Interest in news	71% (5^th= out of 10)

The Danish media environment is characterised by a combination of strong domestic broadcasters and newspapers. Two state-owned broadcasters, one a licence-fee funded public service broadcaster (DR), and the other a public service broadcaster funded mostly by advertising sales and subscription fees (TV2), dominate broadcast news and have a wide reach via digital platforms. (A number of commercial TV channels have a significant audience share for entertainment but offer no news.) A diverse national press has a strong position online while regional and local papers remain important in their respective markets but have more limited digital reach.

Offline

Online

Digital developments

Denmark has very high levels of internet, smartphone, and tablet use, and the media environment is rapidly digitizing. The two public service broadcasters compete head-to-head with newspapers for online news readers. Despite the recent introduction of various forms of pay models, the most successful newspaper websites—especially tabloid—still reach an online news audience as large as or larger than the websites of the free public service broadcasters, but the industry is concerned over the long-term implications of a free PSB versus pay newspaper digital environment.

Social networks and digital participation

Facebook and YouTube are very widely used in Denmark, but so far social media seem to play a limited role as a way of accessing, finding, and engaging with news. Twitter has been embraced by some journalists and politicians but is still a niche platform with a limited reach and base in the population at large. RKN and KCS

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Finland

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:25:33 +0000

Statistics
Pop	5m
Internet	89%
Smartphone	60%
Tablet	34%
Interest in news	68% (6^th= out of 10)

Offline

Online

Digital developments

The two afternoon tabloids Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti dominate online news usage. They offer their online content mainly free. The biggest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, erected a metered paywall at the end of 2012 (with five free items a week) but has retained a strong position online. Many other newspapers have also erected paywalls or are planning to do so in near future. The reasons for high digital reach of newspapers (82%) relate to the high volume of free content combined with soft paywalls, bundled subscriptions, and the strong Finnish reading tradition. The Finnish language and small market seem to shield national news brands somewhat against some international competition. For example, Google News has only 2% reach of weekly online news usage. Newspaper reading via smartphones and tablets is growing fast. New digital platforms for newspaper reading are being developed in Finland. For example, a prototype of the thin, flexible ‘LivePaper’ platform is now in a pilot phase. Online delivery is especially important in Finland because of its sparse population and the long distances involved in physical distribution.

Social networks and digital participation

Facebook is widely used for news in all age groups. News-aggregator Ampparit ranks second. It lists links to the newest and most popular news items of the Finnish news media. Suomi24 is the most popular general discussion forum in Finland. For journalists, the most important social media services are Facebook and Twitter. ER

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Spain

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:30:14 +0000

Statistics
Pop	47m
Internet	67%
Smartphone	73%
Tablet	38%
Interest in news	73% (3^rd= out of 10)

Spanish newspapers kept declining in 2013, both in terms of market share and advertising income. One consequence was the replacement of the editors at three big newspapers El País, El Mundo, and La Vanguardia. Nevertheless, the print market enjoyed the launch of lifestyle magazines such as Forbes and Icon, as well as some politically focused monthly periodicals. Mergers left the television market with two commercial operators. Closures affected media companies of all kinds, including a multimedia group (Intereconomía), a commercial radio network (ABC Punto Radio) and a regional public service broadcaster (Radiotelevisió Valenciana). Online-only news media continue to grow.

Offline

Online

* Google News was not included in our brand list for Spain in 2014 – unlike other countries. In 2013 it was one of the most used news brands in Spain.

Digital developments

Decisions to charge for online news content in Spain are adversely affected by memories of the audience decline caused by the hard paywall erected by El País in November 2002 – withdrawn three years later. Since 2010, most have adopted a strategy of open and free-to-read websites, alongside e-replicas of print editions sold through digital newsstands. But inspired by the example of foreign newspapers, El Mundo introduced a soft paywall in November 2013, along with an evening app edition and a daily gossip tablet app. Some regional sites like Lavanguardia.com now offer premium content via their websites while online-only sites such as Eldiario.es and Infolibre (published from Madrid) and Vilaweb (a Catalan online pioneer) have voluntary paid membership schemes, with previews and benefits for subscribers.

Social networks and digital participation

A decade ago, online audiences started to engage with news in political blogs and forums, later in comment threads on news sites, and that tradition has made its way to social networks. Although TV current affairs shows promote hashtags relentlessly, Twitter comes third to more personal networks. El País claimed to be the first site to enable direct WhatsApp sharing. SN, RS and AAz

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Italy

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:35:35 +0000

Statistics
Pop	61m
Internet	58%
Smartphone	59%
Tablet	30%
Interest in news	73% (4^th out of 10)

Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset empire operates Italy's top private TV stations, and the public broadcaster, Rai, has also been subject to political influence. Between them, Rai and Mediaset dominate Italy's TV market, which remains the main source of news for the bulk of the population. The Italian press is highly regionalised, reflecting the country's history and character. Most newspapers are privately owned, often linked to a political party, or run by a large media group. Print newspaper readership figures are low compared to many European countries.

Offline

Online

Digital developments

The growing adoption of smartphones and tablets is speeding up the digital transition, which has otherwise lagged some way behind much of the rest of Europe. This represents a big opportunity for both TV and print brands that continue to be the most popular online news destinations, but are struggling to find sustainable business models. Free news subsidised by advertising is the most common model for both online legacy media outlets and pure players, with some exceptions. Repubblica.it and Corriere.it charge a fee for access through mobile devices but remain free on the desktop version. During 2013 Il Sole 24 Ore business newspaper introduced a metered paywall, while La Stampa and Il Fatto Quotidiano newspapers are respectively experimenting with premium and paid membership models. At the beginning of 2014, Corriere.it introduced native advertising on its homepage in the search for new revenue streams.

Social networks and digital participation

Social media are widely used by Italians to discuss news and current affairs. This is true especially for younger generations and people who sympathise with new political parties (like Beppe Grillo’s Movimento 5 Stelle). More and more journalists and professionals are using Twitter, but wider adoption remains low. Google+ has a growing member base because of its strong integration with other Google services, but only a minority of Italians use it very often.[3. See data from Politecnico University: http://www.ipresslive.it/comunicates/1716/internet-media-quasi-2-miliardi-di-grazie-a-mobile-video-e-social-osservatori-ict-polimi.] WhatsApp has boomed in Italy in early 2014; but so far no news organisations have integrated this with their social media strategy. NB

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Urban Brazil

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:40:40 +0000

Statistics
Pop	193m
Internet	46%
Smartphone	58%
Tablet	40%
Interest in news	87% (1^st= out of 10)

South America's biggest media market is home to thousands of radio stations and hundreds of TV channels. Media ownership is highly concentrated. Domestic conglomerates such as Globo, Brazil's most-successful broadcaster, dominate the market and run TV and radio networks, newspapers, and successful online operations. Brazilians are among the world's top users of blogs and social networks and use of online is growing fast, attracting foreign outlets as BuzzFeed, the Spanish newspaper El País and the Huffington Post, which launched their Portuguese versions between 2012 and 2013.[1. Our survey only took in the urban areas of Brazil and results must be viewed in this light.]

Offline

Online

Digital developments

TV is by far the most popular medium in Brazil, despite declining viewing figures with the growth of cable TV and internet viewing. Leading provider Globo reached 70% of the audience in the 1980s, but now this figure is nearer 50%. Print circulation is slightly up over the last five years, reflecting the rise of new low-cost newspapers, some of them in ‘British tabloid style’, but as elsewhere digital disruption is beginning to bite. On the internet, there is fierce competition between Google and traditional providers of information. In 2011, most popular newspapers in Brazil decided to withdraw their content from Google News, after the giant internet company refused to pay for content. The three big national newspapers – Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo, and O Estado de S. Paulo – have invested in various strategies for paid content. The most successful case so far is Folha, which has operated a paywall since 2012 – 35% of its subscriptions are now digital. Both O Globo and the O Estado de S. Paulo recently created new products designed for tablets and mobiles (a digital ‘evening edition’).

Social networks and digital participation

After the early success (and rapid decline) of Google’s social network Orkut, Brazilians have transferred their allegiance to Facebook, which now has around 80 million users. YouTube also performs strongly. One hypothesis about Brazil’s love of social networks relates to the early adoption of online interaction tools – such as a chat system developed by internet provider UOL in the 1990s. FM

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

This is a test post

test-editor — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 15:25:56 +0000

This is a test post

Objectivity and Impartiality for Digital News

richard.sambrook — Sat, 17 May 2014 14:00:44 +0000

Are the traditional journalistic disciplines of objectivity and impartiality relevant or wanted in a digital news environment? Many practitioners and commentators argue that they are not – that editorial approaches suited to the middle of the last century, with a scarcity of bandwidth and in an age of media concentration, are now redundant in the digital age of plenty. Broadcasters in many countries have been regulated to deliver impartial news. Print journalism has never been regulated in the same way, but the professional codes, standards, and norms of journalism, which developed in the early 20th century, delivered similar standards in the news pages for many decades. However, in the 21st century, much has changed. As the American software entrepreneur, Marc Andreessen, recently argued:

The practice of gathering all sides of an issue, and keeping an editorial voice out of it is still relevant for some, but the broad journalism opportunity includes many variations of subjectivity. … the objective approach is only one way to tell stories and get at truth. Many stories don’t have ‘two sides.’ Indeed, presenting an event or an issue with a point of view can have even more impact, and reach an audience otherwise left out of the conversation.[1. Marc Andreessen, The Future of the News Business: http://a16z.com/2014/02/25/future-of-news-business.]

Andreessen is reflecting the popular growth in online opinion, advocacy, or activist news and ‘news with attitude’ in services like, Vice, Buzzfeed, and numerous YouTube channels. But advocacy, of course, is very different from objective newsgathering. What might have been left out to strengthen a case? What evidence is there to support a subjective view? Can we believe everything we read?

‘A biased source is just that, and cannot be relied upon to be accurate.’ Male Respondent 45-54 VERBATIM COMMENTS FROM UK ONLY

Who and what we trust in the digital world, awash with information and opinion, is an important issue. It’s not a new problem. The English poet John Milton, arguing against the licensing of pamphlets in the 17th century, believed market forces would drive out falsehoods: ‘Who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?’ he wrote (in Areopagitica). However, some believe in today’s environment the truth can be outnumbered in an unfair fight. Wall Street Journal columnist, Peggy Noonan, commenting on conspiracy theorists after President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, wrote: ‘Here is the fact of the age: People believe nothing. They think everything is spin and lies. The minute a government says A is true, half the people on Earth know A is a lie. And when people believe nothing, as we know, they will believe anything’ (Wall St Journal, 11 May 2011). As journalism reinvents itself in the digital age, the issue of trust – and brand – is crucial. Can a new trusted brand be built from the ground up (as Pierre Omidyar and Glenn Greenwald are trying to do with First Look Media)? Can old trusted brands like Reuters or the New York Times successfully reinvent themselves for a new generation and stay true to the values that they were built upon a hundred years ago? Or, as Clay Shirky, Emily Bell, and C. W. Anderson argued in their Tow Center paper, ‘Post Industrial Journalism’,[2. Tow Center, ‘Post Industrial Journalism’, Nov. 2012: http://towcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/TOWCenter-Post_Industrial_Journalism.pdf.] is the individual journalist rising above the organisation as the key driver of trust, engagement, and consumer loyalty? This year’s research offers some important insight into these questions. First, the consumer appears to be more keen on traditional approaches to trusted journalism than many commentators.

Preference for neutral or partial news – all countries

Q5c. Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer … ?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Among those surveyed there was strong support for the idea that a reporter should present a range of views and allow the consumer to decide what to think about them. This suggests that diversity of opinion, a key element in the old approach to impartial news, is still valued.

‘I want the full range of facts to work with, not just the select few that someone else decides I should know.’ Male respondent 25-34

There are some cultural differences: the UK and Germany seem particularly keen on this approach, Italy and urban Brazil the least keen with close to a third preferring a reporter to argue a particular point of view. It is clear also that education and economic prosperity play a role as well – with this survey confirming previous studies which show that those with higher education, and higher incomes, prefer to make up their own minds about issues rather than have a single point of view given to them. Ofcom research in the UK has shown nearly double the interest in news from those categorised as in the higher AB demographic group than C2s or DEs. Pew research in the US shows nearly twice the level of knowledge about news and current events among college graduates compared to other groups (Ofcom, New News, Future News (2007); Pew, What Americans Know 2007).

Impact of education – global

Q5c. Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer:

Base: All markets = 18858

The same holds true for brands, with most countries preferring sources of news that try to be neutral over those with clear bias.

Trust in sources that try to be neutral – all countries

Q5d. Thinking about the different sources of news available to you (such as a newspaper, broadcaster or online news source), which do you trust (or believe) most:

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Again urban Brazil is an exception with an even split – and they also have a clear view that brand is important to trusting the news. So even if they are not keen on the traditional editorial drivers of trust – objectivity and impartiality – their choice of brand determines what they trust.

‘I object strongly to newspaper proprietors trying to manipulate public opinion for their own political ends by requiring their staff to adopt given lines.’ Male respondent 55+

The figures also support those who argue for the rise in importance of the individual journalist over the brand. In the US more than half those surveyed said it was the individual reporter they trusted. In an age of social media and declining deference, it seems individuals may offer more credibility than institutions. There may be a number of factors at work here. First, homophily – or the echo-chamber effect. Do consumers simply prefer, and therefore trust, news brands which accord with their personal views? In the US, Fox News has regularly come top of the most trusted cable news networks – while this year simultaneously, in the same survey, being the least trusted (with about a third of those surveyed opting for one polarised position or the other).[3. http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2014/01/fox-news-once-again-most-and-least-trusted-name-in-news.html.] Fox News, of course, has a clear right-wing agenda which viewers seem to either love and trust – or hate and distrust. But if viewers trust those brands which simply accord with their own views and prejudices, are they necessarily well informed? Perhaps not. Again surveys in the US suggest Fox News viewers to be the least well-informed among cable viewers.[4. http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed.] This indicates that there might be real risks to public understanding from the growth of subjective or advocacy news without an underpinning of more objective information. Secondly, if there is a significant level of distrust (e.g. 50%) of some types of news sources it may be a straightforward barometer of opinion – or it may be that public expectations of quality and trust run ahead of performance and those news sources are effectively being ‘marked down’ due to public disappointment in them. We have been through a period in the UK where the media’s performance and standards have undergone intense criticism – with the Leveson Inquiry into the UK’s tabloid press and successive editorial crises in the BBC, the UK’s dominant public broadcaster.

‘I would trust a source that tries to be neutral or impartial because I believe you get a better more balanced view’ Female respondent 45-54

Finally, the solid support for objective news may reflect a public who do not yet recognise the arguments about the changing media ecology and offer answers simply reflecting what they have traditionally believed news organisations should represent. Plus there could be an attitude–behaviour gap between what people say they want from a news service, and what they choose to consume. Questions of who you trust, and why, are complex. Greater qualitative research into the attitudes underlying these figures is needed to fully understand the dynamics of trust in a digital news environment, but cultural, educational, and economic factors clearly influence consumer choices. If you are British or German you will have a stated preference for more traditional approaches to news. If you are Italian or Brazilian, you may prefer subjective news. If you have a university degree and a good income you will prefer to have evidence set out for you to make up your own mind. If you are less well-educated or less well-off you may prefer a journalist to interpret the news for you.

‘If you know what angle they're taking, you can interpret/understand their news accordingly. If they're trying to please everyone, they're appealing to no-one. Being middle of the road is never inspiring.’ Male respondent 35-44

Some commentators suggest that ‘Transparency is the new Objectivity’.[5. David Weinberger technologist and co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/07/19/transparency-is-the-new-objectivity.] In other words, if a news organisation or a journalist is open about their biases or personal views then the consumer can take them into account and trust the source as a consequence. This research suggests there is still an appetite for diversity of views and for evidence on which to base opinion – in other words, transparency alone is not enough. Although the news landscape is changing rapidly with exponential growth in the sources, styles, and types of news available, audiences appear more attached to the traditional norms of balanced and impartial news than some might suppose. The question going forward is how well that sits among the growing range of digital services seeking to establish themselves by adopting a point of view to maximise impact.

Chapter Two: News Access and Consumption

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 11:00:12 +0000

In this section we lay out the overall shape of news consumption, frequency of access and interest in the news and also explain in more detail the segmentation we have used to drive our insights. We explore interest in different types of news, including a detailed comparison of political news consumption in five countries.

Chapter Three: Paying for News

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 12:00:06 +0000

Japan

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:45:46 +0000

Statistics
Pop	127m
Internet	80%
Smartphone	37%
Tablet	18%
Interest in news	65% (8^th out of 10)

There are five national terrestrial TV networks, including publicly funded NHK, which also runs national radio networks. National newspapers sell in millions, circulations boosted by morning and evening editions. An increasing number charge for access to their websites. Japan was amongst the first to offer internet access via mobile (feature) phones, using walled-garden services like iMode – now being replaced by smartphones. A Japanese feature of digital terrestrial broadcasting, ‘1seg’ (One segment), has popularised watching of TV on the move via mobile phones and car navigation screens.

Offline

Online

Digital developments

Yahoo News benefits from being part of a portfolio of popular services such as search, email, and auctions – as well as sports, weather, and music. Its biggest shareholder is not Yahoo USA but dynamic Japanese telecommunications provider SoftBank. In contrast, mainstream newspapers were slow to develop, only launching fully fledged online versions and paid services from 2010. The Nikkei business daily is the most successful example with over 300,000 premium subscribers. Left-leaning Asahi Shimbun launched a paywall in 2011 and conservative Yomiuri Shimbun also sells premium services to paper-based readers. Public service broadcaster NHK has been restricted in developing internet news services but does put its radio and TV output online. Commercial TV companies are also restricted as they are regionally licensed under current laws.

Social networks and digital participation

Japanese commercial TV broadcasters have used YouTube to distribute individual news items to get round their licensing constraints. Twitter became popular after the 2011 earthquake and the Fukushima accident as a reaction to perceived government control of information via traditional media. Mixi pioneered the social networking market in Japan while Line, co-developed between Japan and Korea, is popular on smartphones with the young. IM

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Comparative Brand Data Analysis

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 10:50:30 +0000

In this section we draw on country data on brand performance along with questions asked elsewhere in the survey about the types of news sources accessed online and offline. This includes a typology of different online sources whether they are traditional newspaper providers such as the New York Times, or broadcaster websites from e.g. NHK or the BBC, pure players and aggregators like Yahoo and Huffington Post and Google News, or social media sources like YouTube and Facebook In the figure we have used these classifications to show the level of disruption suffered by traditional news organisations from pure players and social media. We can see that in some countries like Finland, Denmark, and the United Kingdom traditional brands still dominate online news; pure players and social media have made comparatively few inroads. By contrast, in the United States pure players have pretty much caught up with traditional news providers and the same is true of social media sources in urban Brazil. Japan is a special case. The market dominance of Yahoo means that in total pure players outstrip reported online usage by all traditional broadcast and media outlets.

Disruption to traditional media companies by country

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Newspapers around the world

Within the media sector and more generally there has been most concern and discussion about the future of newspapers and the wider democratic implications as business models have been turned upside down by the move to digital. This is because newspaper groups employ the majority of journalists and have tended to conduct more hard-hitting investigations into the rich and powerful than broadcasters or pure players. However, with the exception of France and USA, newspapers still reach three-quarters of all those interested in news – through a combination of their print and online versions. Finland has 93% combined reach, with very high levels of overlap (i.e. people are using both rather than substituting online for print) and Denmark is the same – partly driven by bundled print and online subscriptions. In the US we have seen falling print sales and much more substitution by online. Despite the economic pressures, in most countries we can see that the overall reach (and influence) of newspaper groups across online and print remains substantial.

Cross-platform, print-only and online newspaper reach by country

Q5. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK: 2082; Germany: 2063; Spain: 2017; Italy: 2010; France: 1946; Denmark: 2036; Finland: 1520; USA: 2197; Urban Brazil: 1015; Japan: 1973

In every country apart from Finland and Italy, print still provides more readers than online and each country has a very different make-up. We next show overlaps in Venn diagram form. These charts have been achieved by tagging offline and online sources in our country lists and measuring overlaps in reported weekly usage of newspaper brands. The two countries at the bottom of the diagram, Finland and Denmark, have successfully managed to transition most of their print readers to digital. In France and the US, not only is the size of the online bubble much smaller – illustrating greater disruption – but many traditional readers have not transitioned to the digital versions of the newspaper and may never do so.

Overlaps in newspaper usage between print and online

France
Combined	55%
Print	44%
Online	40%

Finland
Combined	93%
Print	79%
Online	82%

Denmark
Combined	83%
Print	67%
Online	67%

US
Combined	58%
Print	49%
Online	33%

Many more sources of news but consumers stick to a few trusted brands

The growth of digital media and the expansion of choice via cable and satellite television has provided access to more and more sources of news than ever before – most of them free. These include national sources but also international brands such as Al-Jazeera, the International New York Times, and specialist blogs and websites that provide information related to work and entertainment. Against this background, it is perhaps surprising that our data suggest most people continue to access a relatively small number of trusted sources.

Number of sources – traditional and online

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	Finland	USA	Urban Brazil	Japan
Traditional (TV, radio and print)	2.87	4.33	4.12	4.35	3.69	4.38	3.65	3.23	3.22	3.45
Online	2.13	2.74	2.99	3.06	2.70	2.96	3.72	2.81	2.92	2.30
Both	4.33	5.56	5.67	5.82	5.02	5.77	5.80	4.98	5.23	4.83

Q5. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK: 2082; Germany: 2063; Spain: 2017; Italy: 2010; France: 1946; Denmark: 2036; Finland: 1520; USA: 2197; Urban Brazil: 1015; Japan: 1973

On average news consumers access between four and five different news sources per week across television, radio, print, and online media. In practice the number of sources is likely to be fewer because this method double-counts news brands that are consumed offline and online. On the other hand our methodology is based on counting a list of around 40 sources in each country so will undercount the long tail of smaller news sources. In Germany, Italy, and Denmark the number of traditional sources accessed is higher but this may partly be because television and radio news audiences are split across different public service and commercial brands. In the UK and Brazil there is more concentration with the BBC and Globo operating across multiple platforms. In some ways the online figures are more intriguing. Although the number of sources available is almost infinite, the average user tends to access fewer than three sources each week, with the British and Japanese using just over two. In each of these markets there is one very large provider (BBC and Yahoo respectively), which in each case has a market share of 50% or more of online users in a given week. Elsewhere, as can be seen in the country page charts above, there is a wider split and a greater variety of brands is consumed.

Chapter Four: Online News in Detail

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 13:00:01 +0000

In this section we look in more detail at online consumption habits; which devices people use to access online news, what they access, and how they find and share the content they enjoy.

Frequency of Access and Interest in News

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 11:05:11 +0000

Our survey of online users suggests that most of us are accessing the news more frequently than ever before. In the five countries we have been tracking since 2012 (UK, US, France, Germany, and Denmark), the number accessing news several times a day has risen from an average of 53% to 62%, with the biggest uplift between 2012 and 2013. Across all our countries, 72% of men access several times a day, compared with just 59% of women. The Japanese access news most frequently, with 8 in 10 (81%) accessing news several times a day compared with only just over half of our American sample (54%).

% accessing news several times a day by country

Q1b. Typically, how often do you access news. Responses shown for ‘several times a day’

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

These changes seem to be related to the growth of new devices – such as mobiles and tablets – which are extending the range of access points. The more devices we have, it seems, the more frequently we consume.

% accessing news several times a day by device

Q1b. Typically, how often do you access news (in any way)?

Base: All markets 2014: 18837, 2013: 11004

Scroll data area to see more

Device	Several times a day
One digital device	62%
Two digital devices	74%
Three digital devices	81%
Four or more devices	87%

Interest in news

Frequency of access doesn’t necessarily map to interest. The Japanese are most assiduous in checking the news but their declared interest is on a par with the US, UK, and France. The Germans and Spanish are amongst the most interested but check in less frequently than the Finns and the Danes.

Interest in news by country

Q1c. How interested, if at all, would you say you are in news? Chart shows net: extremely/very interested and net somewhat/not very interested

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Universally men say they are more interested in news than women and interest rises with age

Interest in news increases with age (ALL countries)

Scroll data area to see more

	Male	Female	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
Interested in news	77%	65%	61%	65%	69%	72%	77%

Q1c: How interested, if at all, would you say you are in news?

Base: All markets 2014: 18837

Main platform for news

Across our countries, television news remains the main way of getting the news, a combination of access to network TV bulletins and 24-hour TV news channels. Online – which includes access by computer, mobile, and tablet via website app or digipaper – is the second most important way of accessing news.

Main platform for accessing news by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	Finland	USA	Urban Brazil	Japan
TV	50%	56%	47%	55%	61%	54%	36%	50%	56%	54%
Radio	8%	13%	4%	6%	11%	9%	5%	4%	1%	2%
Print	11%	11%	11%	12%	6%	8%	20%	6%	4%	21%
Online (Inc. Soc media	30%	19%	35%	26%	21%	28%	37%	35%	37%	22%

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news?

Base: All who have used sources in the past week (16112)

Overall, we see a low level of importance placed on online news in Germany and France while online sources are strongly valued in the US, Spain, and Brazil as well as Finland. Only in Finland is online considered to have equal importance to television news and interestingly print is also highly valued here. Radio news is most important in France and Germany. But overall we find that country differences are less significant than generational ones when it comes to platform preference. In every country (apart from Japan) young people prefer online news, while older groups feel more comfortable with the traditional platforms they have grown up with.

Platform preference: young prefer online

MAIN news platform by age

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news?

Base: All who have used sources in the past week (16007)

Looking at Finland and Japan, the two countries where there is strongest allegiance to print, we can see these habits concentrated in older groups with under 45s overwhelmingly using online as their main way of accessing news.

MAIN news platform; online and print by age - Finland

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news?

Base: All who have used sources in the past week (16112)

MAIN news platform; online and print by age - Japan

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news?

Base: All who have used sources in the past week (16112)

News Segmentation

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 11:10:17 +0000

As last year we have combined these metrics of frequency and interest to give us a non-overlapping categorisation of the online news universe that we can apply across all of our countries.

News Lovers: These are people who access the news several times a day and say they are extremely interested in the news.
Daily Briefers: These are people who also access the news several times a day but they say they are a bit less interested (very or somewhat) in the news.
Casual Users: These are people who consume less frequently – anything between once a day to once a month – and they also tend to be less interested in the news, with a majority only somewhat interested in news.

Types of news users drawn from interest and frequency

We’ll refer back to these groupings throughout this study, but as we shall see, some of these groups play more important roles than others in driving the new interactive news ecosystem. News Lovers consume more, share more, and are twice as likely to pay for online news. The majority of consumers across countries (55%) can be considered Daily Briefers. They tend to be reluctant to pay for online news but the size of this group makes them important for advertisers trying to reach a mass audience. The US has the highest proportion of Casual Users (32%), but also a high proportion of News Lovers (26%). Italy has the highest proportion of News Lovers (29%) while Japan and Finland (67% and 69%) have the highest proportion of Daily Briefers.

When and Where do we Access the News?

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 11:15:27 +0000

The classic news consumption curve is being transformed by the growth in new mobile devices, which are extending the access points through the day. As the figure shows, younger people tend to access throughout the day whereas for older groups news access coincides with scheduled TV and radio broadcasts in the morning, lunchtime, and early evening.

News access across the day by age (UK)

Q4b. When do you typically access the news? (Please select all that apply)

Base: UK=2082 – 18–24 (267), 25–34 (235), 35–44 (249), 45–54 (413), 55+ (918)

Interestingly we see a different pattern in Finland. Here the whole population is showing a flatter consumption curve, reflecting the wider take-up of internet and mobile technologies. In Finland, the main TV news shows are also spread throughout the evening, with bulletins at 6pm, 7pm, 8.30pm and 10pm, and the later bulletins capturing the main audiences.

News access across the day by age (Finland)

Q4b. When do you typically access the news? (Please select all that apply)

Base: Finland=1520 – 18–24 (111), 25–34 (320), 35–44 (253), 45–54 (311), 55+ (543)

Impact of device

Traditionally internet news sites get most of their traffic during the daytime from work-based computer use. The peak used to be around lunchtime but tails off rapidly in the early evening. But in the next figure, derived from logfiles from the Guardian online sites, we can see how smartphones and tablets are extending the work day, creating new internet peaks in the early morning, in the commute, and in the late evening – with the computer filling in gaps in between. We are grateful to the Guardian for allowing us to reproduce this chart showing usage patterns per device – and you can also see the results of their research around the time of day that the printed newspaper is consumed as well.

Access to the Guardian via newspaper and various digital devices

Source: Guardian audience research

These insights have led many news organisations (including the Financial Times) to rethink shift times – focusing more journalistic effort on the early morning (6–8am).

The impact of mobile phones and tablets on the daily commute

The proportion of those accessing news via mobile phone when travelling has grown in Denmark and the UK, the two countries where we looked at this in 2013 and 2014. On public transport the mobile phone has extended its lead over printed newspapers and over the tablet. Given the general growth in smartphones in both countries this is not surprising. In the UK we can see that smartphone users are younger than print readers although the wide availability and convenience of free newspapers means the age difference is not as dramatic as one would expect.

News access via public transport (train, bus, etc.)

Q4e: Please mention the key news media you used in these locations yesterday Base: Accessing news when travelling via public transport

UK=137, Denmark=88

Age profile Mobile and Print (UK only)

Scroll data area to see more

	Under 45s	Over 45s
Mobile	71%	29%
Print	68%	32%

On personal transport (cars, bicycles, etc.) the flexibility of radio remains paramount but there has been a significant growth of mobile and tablet use for news in Denmark. A fifth (18%) of Danes travelling by personal transport now use an internet device (mobile, tablet, or laptop computer) to access the news on a given day. Mobile phones are making inroads as a source of news, not least because they can access on-demand news content that can plug into headphones or a car sound system.[1. The Financial Times is one of many publishers experimenting with an audio version for the car.]

News access via public transport (train, bus etc.)

Q4e: Please mention the key news media you used in these locations yesterday

Base: While travelling via private transport UK=266, Denmark=290

New landscape of news access

More widely we see that, in both the UK and Denmark, the majority of news access remains in the home, which helps to explain the morning and evening peaks. Younger groups are generally out and about more and this contributes to their tendency to access more often through the day.

Where news is accessed (UK and Denmark)

Where were you when you looked at/listened to the news yesterday? (List all that are relevant)

Base: UK=2082, Denmark=2036

Scroll data area to see more

	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
Home	82%	74%	82%	88%	96%
Out & About	21%	22%	26%	27%	15%
Work/place of study	30%	35%	30%	26%	5%

When we look at the specific platforms used in the home to access news, we can see the wide range of choices accessed every day. In communal spaces such as the living room and kitchen, the TV remains by far the most accessed but online devices are an important part of the mix especially for the young. The personal computer and laptop remain most important in personal spaces such as bedroom and studies.

News access in the home by platform (UK)

Q4e. Please mention the key news media you used in these locations.

Base: UK – Those who access at home: communal (1574), at home: personal (700)

Mobile access at home is driven by under 45s

Scroll data area to see more

	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
Communal space	35%	22%	18%	8%	4%
Personal space	35%	39%	24%	14%	5%

These aggregate views hide the dramatic impact of generational differences in daily media choices at home in the UK. Even in communal spaces, internet-based access to news (PC, tablet, or mobile) is now neck and neck with TV for the under 45s. By contrast, over 45s are twice as likely to access news via the TV as to use an internet news source. In personal spaces, under 45s are almost three times more likely to access internet-based news than watch TV.

Access at home by age: TV vs internet (UK) - Communal rooms

Q4e. Please mention the key news media you used in these locations.

Base: UK – Those who access at home: communal (1574), at home: personal (700)

Access at home by age: TV vs internet (UK) - Personal space

Q4e. Please mention the key news media you used in these locations.

Base: UK – Those who access at home: communal (1574), at home: personal (700)

These data show that in these two countries at least traditional media platforms are far from being replaced by digital platforms but there is both extended access and some substitution going on. Young people are significantly less likely to watch TV and radio news than older groups, favouring access from a variety of internet devices. The computer is most important at work, while on the move the mobile phone is the most important form of access. Radio news is still valued by commuters using personal transport such as the car. This is truly a multi-platform news ecosystem where all platforms – including print – continue to play a significant role depending on the time and the context.

Interest in Different Types of News

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 11:20:31 +0000

Like last year we asked all our respondents to select their five most important types of news. Once again we see significant country-based variation. Regional news is most important in Germany, reflecting the way the media and politics have traditionally been structured. Local news matters more in a vast country like the United States where city newspapers and local TV stations have become a core part of the media diet. Americans show most interest in economic news along with the Japanese. The British, Finns, and Brazilians show least interest in political news. Italians and Spanish are interested in arts and culture news while our sample from urban Brazil is deeply interested in health and education, as well as science and technology.

Interest in types of news by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	Finland	USA	Urban Brazil	Japan
News about the country	71%	67%	63%	59%	64%	67%	76%	57%	66%	52%
International news	49%	64%	45%	49%	52%	63%	55%	39%	41%	43%
Local news about my town or city	46%	47%	42%	45%	37%	40%	48%	57%	47%	31%
News about my region	38%	51%	42%	38%	41%	26%	47%	31%	12%	33%
Business and financial news	21%	17%	13%	15%	15%	21%	12%	20%	29%	26%
News about the economy	39%	29%	38%	33%	27%	35%	31%	46%	34%	44%
Entertainment and celebrity news	17%	15%	14%	13%	13%	12%	16%	15%	22%	24%
Fun/weird news	15%	14%	18%	21%	22%	18%	14%	16%	15%	28%
Health and education news	28%	30%	37%	38%	31%	29%	27%	28%	57%	30%
Arts and culture news	12%	9%	19%	24%	15%	15%	14%	10%	27%	15%
Sports news	29%	28%	35%	29%	25%	27%	27%	20%	30%	28%
News about the country’s politics	37%	51%	40%	54%	45%	59%	30%	46%	37%	52%
Science and technology news	25%	27%	33%	35%	28%	31%	31%	28%	43%	26%

Q2: Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five.

Base: All markets 2014 – UK: 2082; Germany: 2063; Spain: 2017; Italy: 2010; France: 1946; Denmark: 2036; Finland: 1520; USA: 2197; Urban Brazil: 1015; Japan: 1973

Looking at an aggregated view of our entire sample of almost 19,000 people we can see that many news topics are heavily gender specific – and these are universal across countries. Men prefer sports news by a margin of almost three to one compared to women but for celebrity news it is the other way round. Men are more interested in business news; women access more education, health, and local news.

Gender differences across different types of news – all countries

Q2. Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five

Base All 2014 - 18858

Weird news

This year we introduced a new category of ‘fun or weird’ news. In many countries there has traditionally been an amusing item at the end of a news bulletin or included prominently within a print newspaper but in the digital age this type of news has blossomed, encouraged by sharing of fun pictures and videos through social media sites. Unlike entertainment and celebrity news, which is mainly driven by women under 35, fun/weird news is appreciated by both men and women. Around a quarter (24%) of 18–24 males and a third of 18–24 women (36%) said it was one of their five most important types of news.

Fun news compared by age and gender – all countries

Q2. Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five. Showing fun/weird news

Base All – 18858

Celebrity news compared by age and gender – all countries

Q2. Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five. Showing celebrity news

Base All – 18858

There is a strong correlation between these groups and socially driven sites like Buzzfeed and Upworthy where such material is often originated or shared. These new sites have pioneered new formats of fun news including lists, animated gifs (fun moving pictures), and games. By contrast, popular newspapers and their websites (in the UK) have mainly continued to satisfy interest for more straightforward entertainment and celebrity news, although they too have been experimenting with new formats.

Political News and Political Engagement

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 11:25:06 +0000

Political interest

This year we have been able to ask a number of questions about people’s interest in politics in five countries (UK, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and the US), and to cross-check this with their use of different offline and online media as sources for political news. We have also asked whether and how people use online opportunities to engage in politics. Our interest in exploring these issues stems from the fact that a healthy democracy depends on the citizens’ access to a diversity of news media and on the opportunities for participation in public debate and political processes enabled by these media.

Levels of interest in politics compared

Q2a. How interested would you say you are in politics? Showing net of extremely and very interested.

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Italy=2010, Denmark=2036, US=2197

Overall, interest in politics turns out to be significantly higher in Germany and the US, where respectively 60% and 55% say that they are either extremely interested or very interested in politics, compared to considerably lower levels of interest in Denmark (41%), Italy (41%), and especially the UK (33%). In all five countries a fairly large group in the middle say that they are ‘somewhat interested in politics’, while in the UK and Italy almost a quarter of the population have little or no interest in politics. Across the five countries interest in politics varies considerably by age and gender. In general, women and men are separated by approximately 20 percentage points with respect to self-reported interest in politics (with a somewhat smaller gap in Italy). With respect to age, it is especially the younger age groups (18–24 and 25–34) who are less interested in politics, while the other age groups are not very far from the national average.

Levels of interest by age and gender

Scroll data area to see more

	All	Male	Female	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
UK	33%	23%	44%	31%	26%	29%	28%	42%
Germany	60%	49%	72%	46%	46%	54%	61%	71%
Italy	41%	34%	49%	25%	41%	40%	39%	46%
Denmark	41%	31%	51%	38%	29%	37%	39%	52%
US	55%	46%	65%	36%	42%	49%	50%	69%

Q2a. How interested would you say you are in politics? Showing net of extremely and very interested

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Italy=2010, Denmark=2036, USA=2197

Generally speaking, older people in Germany, Denmark, and the US express more interest in politics than younger people. In Italy and the UK, interest is more even across all age groups.

Sources of political news

In most of the countries covered here, two-thirds or more of the population say that they keep up with political and government issues by means of broadcasters’ news. Though broadcast news – through its combined offline and online reach – is consistently the single most important and widely used source of news about politics, the second-most important source of news differs considerably among the five countries. In some countries, newspaper publishers remain in a strong second or third position as a result of the combined attractions of their print and online news platforms. This is the case in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Denmark. In all countries, print use is declining, but newspapers retain considerable reach and significance. In the US the picture is much more diverse. There too, local newspapers reach a significant audience, but national newspapers trail behind social media and email newsletters and alerts, and are as widely used as a source of information about politics and government issues as online specialist sites/political blogs.

Main sources of political news by country

Q2b. Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with political and government issues? (Please select all that apply)

Base: All interested in political news – Germany=1999, Italy=1885, Denmark=1977, US=2088, UK=1934

When we break down media use by interest in politics, it is clear that news from broadcasters and newspapers is especially important when it comes to people with limited interest in politics. This group (which varies in size from 24% in the UK to 23% in Italy to around 15% in the US and Denmark and just 11% in Germany) also tends to rely more than other groups on information from friends, relatives, and colleagues, while social media do not stand out as more significant than is the case for other groups.

Main sources of political news for those with low interest

Scroll data area to see more

	Broadcasters	National Newspapers	Local newspapers	Social media	Friends relatives
UK	46%	25%	15%	10%	19%
Germany	40%	13%	20%	11%	30%
Italy	51%	35%	21%	26%	30%
Denmark	65%	18%	19%	17%	29%
US	44%	7%	25%	25%	43%

Q2b. Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with political and government issues? (Please select all that apply)

Base: Those who are not very interested or not interested at all – UK=325, Germany=154, Italy=339, Denmark=295, US=204

In comparison, those who express a high interest in politics are generally heavy consumers of a wide range of media including the mainstream news providers as well as various niche and specialist news media like politically focused magazines (print and online) and online specialist sites. Across four of the five countries, broadcasters’ news is the most important source of political information for the youngest age groups (18–24). The US is the only exception to this. There, conversation with friends, relatives, and colleagues lead neck-to-neck with social media amongst the youngest citizens, with broadcasters in third place. Young people in the other four countries also frequently report interpersonal communication offline and online as an important source of information about politics.

Online political engagement

As is often highlighted, the internet offers not only sources of information, but also opportunities for a wide variety of forms of political engagement, ranging from very low-cost forms of engagement like signing a petition or expressing one’s views on a social media site to more demanding forms of engagement like joining a political campaign or organising a political event. Across the countries covered here, between half (UK, Germany, and Denmark) and two-thirds (Italy and the US) of online news users report that they have in the last year used the internet to get more involved in politics. Looking across the countries, there are some significant similarities and differences. The figure provides an overview of a selection of the most important kinds of activities we asked about (five out of nine kinds of activity).

Online involvement with politics by country

Q2c. In which, if any, of the following ways have you used the internet in the last year to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion? Nine options given, plus ‘don't know’ and ‘none of these’.

Base: All interested in political news – Germany=1999, Italy=1885, Denmark=1977, US=2088, UK=1934

In all the countries, low-cost forms of engagement like signing an online petition or expressing one’s views via ‘Web 2.0’ (a social media site) or ‘Web 1.0’ (email) tools are the most common phenomena. A more limited number of people report actively following politicians or political parties on social media sites, and even fewer have used the internet to organise political events or find political meetings to attend. As one would expect, people who report a high interest in politics are significantly more likely to use the internet to get involved. Across most of the forms of online political engagement in our survey, Italy and especially the United States have the highest number of people using the internet to get more involved in politics or to express their opinion. This is broadly in line with our data from last year where the US, with a longer tradition of internet politics and more substantial investments in online mobilisation from political parties and campaigns, stood out alongside the Mediterranean countries who are going through a period of political upheaval.

Newspaper Purchase across Countries

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 12:05:30 +0000

In addition to tracking newspaper consumption by brand and country our survey also benchmarks the number who say they have bought a newspaper in a given week. Newspaper purchase does not equate to readership, particularly with the growing popularity of free papers and the increased bundling of online and print. In addition it should be noted that the figures in our online survey will not match the accuracy of face-to-face surveys or audited circulation figures in this regard. Nevertheless the comparison between years and across countries is one more important indicator of changing habits. The headline figure around weekly newspaper purchase across all of our ten countries is pretty much unchanged at 49% (compared to 50% in 2013) reinforcing the view that print has perhaps a longer shelf life than was thought a few years ago – even for online readers. But we can also see from the next figure that the very different ways in which newspapers are bought may influence their ability to manage the digital transition. Japan, Finland, Denmark, and Germany have a long tradition of home delivery (and therefore subscription), whereas in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Brazil the majority of sales take place at a newsstand or shop. This makes newspapers in these counties more prone to dramatic headlines and sometimes more sensational news coverage – but also more vulnerable to economic disruption.

Newspaper purchase by type – (ad hoc vs ongoing commitment)

Q6. Have you bought (paid for) a printed newspaper in the last week? (Please tick all that apply)

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Scroll data area to see more

2013	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	USA	Urban Brazil	Japan
News stand/shop	42%	22%	48%	51%	25%	5%	12%	34%	9%
Home del	9%	33%	4%	5%	10%	24%	25%	13%	57%

Q6. Have you bought (paid for) a printed newspaper in the last week? (Please tick all that apply)

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Paying for Digital News

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 12:10:33 +0000

Over the last year there has been intense activity in the news industry in devising more ways to pay for news. Metered or hard paywalls have become standard in many countries including the United States where a recent survey showed over half of all newspapers operating them. In Germany, leading publisher Axel Springer recruited over 150,000 subscribers for its premium service Bild Plus in the six months since its launch in June 2013. Over one third have also signed up for a service of digital goals from the Bundesliga via Bild. In the UK, the popular Sun newspaper has followed a similar model and attracted over 100,000 new digital subscribers. But after a sharp upturn in 2012–13 – when a large number of paywalls were introduced – our data show very little change in the absolute number of people paying for digital news over the past year. In most countries the number paying for any news is hovering around 10% of online users and in some cases less than that.

Percentage paying for ANY online news in last year

Q7. Have you paid for ONLINE news content, or accessed a paid for ONLINE news service in the last year (this could be an ongoing subscription or one off payment for an article or app)?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Japan=1973.

NB These figures are not directly comparable with last year as we changed the question to a simpler yes/no – and took out the previous time-based options. We also changed ‘digital news’ to ‘online news’ for reasons of clarity.

Even so, our findings are consistent with the recent Pew research report in the United States which suggests that industry activity does not necessarily mean more individuals are paying for news but rather that ‘more revenue is being squeezed out of a smaller, or at least flat, number of paying consumers’.[1. Pew, State of the News Media Report (2014).] In support of this conclusion, our data have picked up significant changes in types of payment being made. The proportion of those paying for news who have an online news subscription has grown from to 43% to 59% – compared with a one-off payment like a day pass or app download. In the next figure we can see that digital subscriptions in the UK have risen from 29% to 47%, as a proportion of all of those who have paid – most likely because of the Sun and Daily Telegraph paywalls. In Spain, the number of one-off purchases has grown – individual copies of epapers are popular here – while in Denmark, Finland, and the United States we see the highest prevalence of bundled (print and digital) subscriptions.

Proportion of news payments: Subscription vs one off payment

Q7ai. You said you have accessed paid for ONLINE news content in the last year. Which, if any, of the following types of payment have you used in the last year? (Please tick all that apply)

Base: All who have paid to access online news in the past year – UK=139, Germany=173, US=238, Japan=153, Urban Brazil=233, Italy=267, Denmark=206, Spain=173, Finland=220

Of those who are paying for news, the majority are well educated and from higher income groups.

Of those subscribing for online news (all countries)

61% are male
35% are aged 55+
52% have a Masters/Doctoral OR Bachelors degree
89% say they are very or extremely interested in news
43% use a tablet for news

The majority of subscriptions are for the biggest news brands or for those delivering financial news. In the United States 30% of those subscribing to a digital news service paid for the New York Times, 32% for a local or city paper, and 16% for the Wall Street Journal. The Times in the United Kingdom, Bild in Germany, Le Monde in France, and El Mundo in Spain are leading the pack in paid news in their countries. In a number of countries we also explored the motivations for subscription (see chart in the executive summary) and in the United Kingdom also asked why people continued to pay. A key motivation for signing up is the desire to access the brand they enjoy whenever and wherever they want – a key advantage of new devices such as smartphones and tablets. Once signed up for an online service, the quality of the product is the key factor in whether they stay and renew their subscription. This may relate to the quality of specific writers, of a particular section or of the news coverage itself, but overall two-thirds (67%) signed up for quality of content, 80% stayed because of it.

Reasons for signing up and reasons for staying - UK

Q7b/c. You said you have a subscription with at least one news provider, what were the three most important factors in taking/keeping an online news subscription in the first place (choose up to three)?

Base: All who have paid to access online news in the past year - UK=139, all who subscribe=93

Of those subscribing in the UK

37% pay for The Times online
23% pay for the Telegraph online (either digital only or part of a bundle)
20% pay for the Sun which has introduced a hard paywall with premiership goals as part of its offer

The importance of tablets and smartphones as a way of enticing new subscribers is reinforced by data (see the figure), which show that tablet users in particular are roughly twice as likely to pay for news as the overall sample in both the UK and US. Personal income also pays a role in willingness to pay.

Factors influencing payment for news – US and UK - Paid online content by device

Q7. Have you paid for ONLINE news content, or accessed a paid for ONLINE news service in the last year (this could be an ongoing subscription or one off payment for an article or app)?

Base: UK all=2082, tablet news users=481, smartphone news users=635; USA all=2197, tablet news users=429, smartphone news users=673.

Base: UK 2014 – £0 to £25k (673), £25 to £50k (594), £50k to £100k (264)

Chart shows % yes

Factors influencing payment for news – US and UK - Paid for digital content by personal income (UK)

Q7. Have you paid for ONLINE news content, or accessed a paid for ONLINE news service in the last year (this could be an ongoing subscription or one off payment for an article or app)?

Base: UK all=2082, tablet news users=481, smartphone news users=635; USA all=2197, tablet news users=429, smartphone news users=673.

Base: UK 2014 – £0 to £25k (673), £25 to £50k (594), £50k to £100k (264)

Chart shows % yes

Because tablet and smartphone users tend to be wealthier, better educated, and more interested in news, we wanted to understand if the nature of the device itself (e.g. the ease of payment through the Google or Apple stores) could be encouraging payment. When running a statistical model controlling for variables such as interest in news, education, and income, we do find a significant positive correlation with device in the case of Apple tablets – in the UK and the US, as well as for non-Apple tablets in the UK. We do not, however, find a positive correlation for smartphones using any operating system, probably because news organisations have mainly been focusing their monetisation and marketing on the tablet editions.

Impact of device on payment after controlling for variables - US and UK

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	US
Apple tablet	60%	110%
Tablet (other manufacturer)	NSS^*	112%

Summary of the regression model in the UK and US when assessing the impact of device and controlling for interest in news, education and income (more detail at digitalnewsreport.org)

*NSS We did not find a statistically significant relation in this example. Elsewhere results are significant at the 95% confidence level. Percentages in the cells tell us by how much the likelihood of paying or sharing news online changes.

For those who aren’t currently paying for digital news, a significant percentage expects to pay at some point in the future. Consumers in Italy and Spain show more willingness than those in Northern European countries. In the United Kingdom, we see a slight increase in the number of UK consumers that would consider paying for digital content in the future – from 5% to 7%. Among them, younger age groups and those with a tablet or smartphone are more likely to pay.

Likelihood to pay for digital news in the future by country - 2013 (UK)

Q7aii. You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year. How likely or unlikely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like?

Base: All those who have not paid (various)

Likelihood to pay for digital news in the future by country - 2014 (UK)

Q7aii. You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year. How likely or unlikely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like?

Base: All those who have not paid (various)

Scroll data area to see more

	Likely to pay
Brazil	61%
Italy	23%
Spain	21%
Germany	15%
US	11%
Denmark	11%
Finland	11%
France	10%
Japan	8%

Scroll data area to see more

	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+	Smartphone owner	Tablet owner	Computer owner
% likely to pay	13%	12%	7%	5%	3%	9%	11%	5%

Q7aii. You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year. How likely or unlikely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like?

Base: All countries. All those who have not paid (various)

The Growth of Multi-Platform News

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 13:05:42 +0000

The rise and rise of tablets and smartphones

Growth in smartphone access for news – selected countries

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Net smartphone shown

Base: UK=2082, Germany=2063, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, US=2197, Japan=1973

One in three (34%) use a tablet, with 20% on average using it for news – another significant increase. The biggest national increases have been in Denmark (28–36%) and the UK (17–24%) where low-cost supermarket tablets have opened the market to a broader demographic.

Growth in tablet access for news – selected countries

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Net tablet shown

Base: UK=2082, Germany=2063, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, US=2197, Japan=1973

Across all those using digital devices to access news almost four in ten (39%) now use more than two digital devices to access the news, up from 33% in 2013. The number using more than three devices has grown from 9% to 12%. Over the last year, Germany, France, and Japan have caught up with other large nations – moving from a quarter to a third using more than two devices weekly.

% using more than two devices to access news by country

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who use digital devices 2014 UK=2019, US=2070, Germany=1853, France=1815, Denmark=1914, Spain=1988, Finland=1470, Italy=1958, Brazil=955, Japan=1836

Multi-platform users are more likely to be men and under 45

In most countries fewer than 50% use a single device to access news. Japanese (62%) are almost twice as likely as Danes (35%) to stick to a single device – but almost everywhere we see a significant move to multi-platform use. The overall number using a computer to access news each week has slipped from 73% to 67%. To illustrate the different pace of adoption, we can set out the device overlaps for Japan and Denmark, the countries at the two extremes. Of those using devices for news 24% ONLY use a computer in Denmark, compared with 58% in Japan who ONLY use a computer. In Denmark 42% use a smartphone and a computer in combination and in Japan that figure is only 21%.

Device overlaps Japan vs Denmark

Japan
Computer	91%
Smartphone	31%
Tablet	12%

Denmark
Computer	79%
Smartphone	61%
Tablet	39%

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?

Base: All who use any device for news Denmark=1747, Japan=1707

NB Missing percentage accounts for those who use other devices, including those who use the three shown but in a combination outside of the Venn diagram

In Denmark, which is a leader in multi-platform use, we see more overlaps and significant numbers relying on new devices. In the UK those who say the smartphone is now their MAIN device for accessing digital news has risen from 15% to 24% in a year. That rises to 43% of those aged 25–34.

Young prefer smartphone, tablets more evenly split

Across our global sample we can see the same trends with the younger half of the population more dependent on smartphones for news. In stark contrast, the tablet’s larger screen size and greater simplicity makes this device more appealing to older age groups. Globally, one-third of 18–34 year olds say the smartphone is their main way of accessing digital news.

MAIN device for accessing news by age and country - Smartphone and tablet by age

Q8.5b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? MAIN SOURCE

Base: All who said Smartphone was MAIN source of news 2014 – 15924

Base: UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

MAIN device for accessing news by age and country - Main device for news by country

Q8.5b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? MAIN SOURCE

Base: All who said Smartphone was MAIN source of news 2014 – 15924

Base: UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

As the overall ownership figures rise, both tablets and smartphones are reaching a broader cross-section of news users. In the UK, the proportion of News Lovers (heavy and frequent news users) has fallen since 2013 for both devices. Looking at smartphone news users, 55% now fall into the Daily Briefers category (51% in 2013). 22% of tablet news users are now from our Casual Users category (15% in 2013).

News apps and the mobile web

With more news websites using websites optimised for small screens, it is something of a surprise to see the continued preference for news apps in some (but not all) countries. In the UK the proportion using smartphone and tablet apps has grown significantly since last year. Apps in general are more widely used on smartphones where screen real estate is limited, offline access is important, and where speed is paramount.

Apps vs mobile web by device and year (UK) - mobile

Q9a. When you look for news on a MOBILE/TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you?

Base: Accessed via a smartphone in the last week = 650; all who have accessed news via a tablet in the last week = 481

Apps vs mobile web by device and year (UK) - tablet

Q9a. When you look for news on a MOBILE/TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you?

Base: Accessed via a smartphone in the last week = 650; all who have accessed news via a tablet in the last week = 481

We see a very different picture in Finland, however, the only other country where we tracked this question in 2014. Here, access to news sites is mainly via a web browser, which may be related to the popularity of ‘Finnish’ Nokia-phones that have a Windows operating system.

Apps vs mobile web via mobile (Finland)

Q9a. When you look for news on a MOBILE, which of the following statements most applies to you?

Base: 667 – all who have accessed news via a smartphone in the last week

Apple vs the rest

In an increasingly competitive market, the overall proportion of Apple smartphone and tablets is falling, but the picture differs by country and device. Denmark, the US, the UK, and Japan show the strongest allegiance to Apple devices – particularly for iPad tablets. Elsewhere, other handsets based on the Android, Blackberry, or Windows operating systems have collectively built up a commanding lead. This is important because Apple users are significantly more likely to use news apps. In the United States, 42% use a news app on an iPhone vs 32% for those with other smartphones. 25% use news apps on an iPad compared with 20% for those with other tablets. Apple users are also significantly richer than users of other phones and they are almost twice as likely to be paying for news.

Use of smartphones and tablets: Apple vs the rest - smartphone

Q8a/b. Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use for any purpose? Apple and non-Apple codes shown

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Use of smartphones and tablets: Apple vs the rest - tablet

Q8a/b. Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use for any purpose? Apple and non-Apple codes shown

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

The role of branded icons on smartphone and tablet

In the UK, most smartphone and tablet users start their news journeys via the logo of a news brand, rather than search engines or social networks. However apps that aggregate news – like Pulse, Flipboard, and Zite – are considerably more popular on smartphones at the expense of both brand and search. These apps are twice as likely to be used by women as by men (19% vs 10%). Social networks are also popular with women as a way of accessing news on the move (12% vs 4%) and with younger people generally. Men are much more likely to access via a branded link (50% vs 38% for women).

Gateways to news on computers, mobiles and tablets – UK

Q9c. Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE/TABLET/COMPUTER which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer

Base: All mobile news users=650, tablet=481, computer=1236

It really is the personal nature of the smartphone combined with the frequency of access and limited real estate that is creating different behaviours compared with both tablet and desktop.

Smartphone users consume fewer news sources

One further indication of this is that, when using a smartphone, fewer sources of news are used than when accessing via a tablet or computer. We asked our respondents to select the sources they used on each device from a given list of top news sources in each country. On a smartphone, across all our countries 37% said they only used one source of news, compared with 30% on a computer – and 12% accessed more than five sources compared with 17% on a computer.

Number of sources used per device – All countries

Q19a. You say you access news via a SMARTPHONE/TABLET/COMPUTER. When using that device what news sources have you accessed in the last week?

Base: All smartphone=7165, tablet=3774, computer=12618

In the United Kingdom, where there are a relatively small number of big online news brands, 55% of our sample said they accessed only one source of news when accessing via a smartphone compared with 45% on a computer.

Multi-platform usage extends options

The growth of smartphones and tablets has not generally come at the expense of other media, but is instead increasing the range of options. Tablet users are just as likely – or more likely – to consume TV news (86%) or read a printed newspaper (45%) in a given week when compared with the average user as are smartphone users (84% and 40% respectively) Heavy smartphone users are a little less likely to read a newspaper in some countries – possibly related to the substitution that we’ve seen on the daily commute (see section 2.4).

Use of a printed newspaper by smartphone and tablet users – selected countries

Scroll data area to see more

	All	Heavy tablet users	Heavy smartphone users
US	24%	22%	21%
UK	43%	47%	28%
Spain	47%	55%	41%
Denmark	32%	32%	29%

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Base: All users: users who say the tablet/smartphone is their MAIN way of accessing the news

Smart and connected TVs

Over the past few years the number of TVs that have direct or indirect access to the internet has grown rapidly. We define smart TVs as having the capability to connect directly to the internet; they often come preloaded with apps for video on demand but also some news apps. Connected TVs normally connect to internet services via a set-top box or other connector such an Apple TV. Increasingly, these services too offer video- or text-led news services including travel and weather. Spain, France, Denmark, and Germany lead the way for smart and connected TVs but in most countries news use remains relatively modest – compared with tablets and smartphones. Even so, broadcasters and news providers are developing new services and offerings for this platform.

Smart and Connected TV users - selected countries

Q8a/Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use for any purpose/news in the last week? Smart TV and connected TV codes shown

Base: All/all who use these devices for any purpose – UK=2082/2019, US=2197/2070, Germany=2063/1865, Spain=2017/1988, Finland=1520/1470, Brazil=1015/955, France=1946/1815, Denmark=2036/1914, Japan=1973/1836, Italy=2010/1958

As last year, we asked about the type of content currently accessed via smart TV in the UK and France – and about potential interactive features. In the UK, most respondents used text-based news services on their TV. The main broadcasters offer digital text news services with some video. In France, the reverse is true, with most consumers watching on-demand news video and text services a secondary attraction.

Video vs Text news services on TV – UK and France

Q14c. Do you prefer to read or watch news using your smart or connected TV? Which of the following statements most applies to you?

Base: All who used connected or smart TV for news in past week UK=110, France=190

Video vs Text news services on TV – UK and France

Q14d. A connected or smart TV makes it possible to deliver a breaking or other news alert on the screen as an overlay to an existing TV programme. It would be possible for you to control the frequency and type of alerts and to turn it on or off. How interested would you be in using such a service?

Base: All who used connected or smart TV for news in past week UK=110, France=190

In both countries, 57% of those who use their Smart TV for news would be interested in an on screen breaking news overlay.

Rises to 66% amongst men (UK).

In both the UK and France, the most popular news types accessed on a smart or connected TV were serious news, local news, and weather updates. In terms of future functionality, there was interest in being alerted to news whilst watching another programme. In both countries, 57% of those who use their smart TV for news said they would be interested in an onscreen breaking-news overlay. This rises to 66% amongst men (UK).

Types of News and the Role of Video

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 13:10:04 +0000

Over the past few years, news publishers have been increasing the range of formats they publish online. Live pages or live blogs have become popular on breaking news stories; picture slideshows and interactive graphics have become popular along with video and audio clips and long-form programmes. In terms of online content we can see that traditional articles and story lists (e.g. a news front page) remain the most accessed on a weekly basis. Even so, new formats are beginning to take hold. Picture stories and slideshows are popular everywhere except for Denmark (6%) while news graphics are especially well viewed in Japan and Finland. Some countries seem to have taken faster to video content, in particular the United States, and Brazil. Video is typically twice as popular as audio, with the exception of Denmark and Spain where it is the other way round.

Types of online news content accessed by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	France	Germany	Denmark	Italy	Spain	Japan	Urban Brazil	US	Finland
List of news headlines	59%	53%	47%	48%	49%	56%	75%	66%	59%	72%
Read longer stories	43%	44%	50%	25%	60%	40%	57%	36%	45%	53%
LIVE page	8%	8%	6%	7%	15%	12%	12%	18%	9%	7%
News related blog	7%	7%	8%	5%	20%	11%	9%	22%	18%	6%
Pictures	14%	16%	21%	6%	15%	19%	18%	30%	19%	14%
Graphics	4%	5%	7%	3%	7%	6%	14%	5%	10%	15%
Video	16%	15%	16%	10%	20%	17%	10%	27%	30%	18%
Audio	5%	8%	9%	16%	17%	22%	4%	11%	12%	8%

Q11 Looking at news online in the last week which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Spotlight on video usage

Video formats are a particular point of interest for publishers. Newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have invested in video skills and equipment. Pure players like NowThisNews, Buzzfeed, and the Huffington Post are also investing, not least because video tends to get virally shared in social media and is popular with advertisers. In this year’s report we have looked in detail at the types of video being consumed and the reasons for adoption and non-adoption. Overall usage remains low compared to text, but some countries like the US and Brazil appear to have a more visual approach to news. Others like Denmark and Japan prefer to stick to text. Overall video users are more likely to be male, better educated, and more interested in news (News Lovers). Age does not seem to be a factor in adoption of video news.It is not clear whether adoption is a function of supply. Consumption remains modest in the UK despite a healthy supply of online news video content.

Weekly video consumption vs text by country

Q11. Looking at news online in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

In five countries we asked extra questions about preferences towards video or textual news. In all cases the vast majority preferred to read news or mainly read news – with video as a supplementary format. However, a small minority – about 10% in the United States – actually prefer to access online news in video form.

Preferences around reading or watching news by country

Q11d. In thinking about your online news habits, which of the following statements applies best to you?

Base: All markets – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Finland=1520, US=2197

Barriers to usage of video

While many prefer the flexibility and convenience of text, there are also practical reasons why video is not more widely adopted. On average, one quarter (24%) said they would prefer to watch video on a bigger screen – and this is particularly the case for the over 45s. Almost one fifth (18%) were frustrated at the length of time it took to load up a video. This impatience was far more evident for younger age groups, who expect web applications to respond instantly.

Reasons for NOT using video

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Finland	USA
I don't find them interesting	12%	13%	11%	14%	13%
I don't have time	17%	16%	15%	15%	18%
I can't get them to play properly	7%	5%	5%	12%	7%
Take too long to load up/play	14%	18%	19%	19%	19%
I would rather watch on a bigger screen	26%	23%	29%	26%	24%
I prefer to read articles than watch videos	38%	46%	38%	52%	39%
Concern about cost of access (eg via mobile)	5%	8%	8%	3%	4%

Q11ai. You said that you don’t usually watch news videos online. Why not? (Please select all that apply)

Base: All who don’t watch news videos online – UK=1729, Germany=1721, Spain=1664, Finland=1242, USA=1862

Content topics consumed in video tend to be different from declared interest in news generally. For example, our respondents say they are very interested in regional and local news but consume very little local video – when averaged across our five countries. By contrast the amount of fun/weird news or sports news consumed in video format is far greater than declared general interest levels.

Types of video news

A range of video formats is accessed by consumers in our five countries. Short news clips deliver most value for most users, either in providing eyewitness testimony – particularly on a breaking story – or additional context. This might include a reporter’s analysis or an interview with an expert that supports the text content on a page. Live streams are popular on big breaking-news stories across all genders and ages, whereas scheduled streams such as Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK tend to be watched by men and members of our News Lover category (28% vs 5% for Casual Users). Tablets and smartphones seem to be encouraging more consumption in particular, with 47% of tablet video users and 45% of smartphone video users watching a live news stream in a given month compared with just 36% via a computer.

Type of video and audio content consumed in last month

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Finland	USA
Live stream coverage of a breaking news event	32%	38%	31%	40%	33%
Live stream coverage of other scheduled news event (eg political speech, tech launch, fashion event etc)	17%	29%	26%	24%	24%
News clip that adds drama to a text story (eg eyewitness testimony, raw footage of a news event)	51%	44%	57%	54%	45%
News clip that provided context or analysis on a text story eg journalist/politician talking to camera, or a short interview	54%	32%	54%	44%	49%
Longer news programme accessed on demand (eg a stream or download of politics, health, tech, film, food)	21%	37%	28%	18%	19%

Q11aii. Which TYPES of news video have you watched online in the last month? (Please select all that apply)

Base: All who have watched news videos online in past month – UK=353, Germany=342, Spain=353, Finland=278, US=687

In the UK, most video consumed online is from professional news organisations rather than user-generated content. Traditional news brands are strong in the UK so this is perhaps not surprising and only 6% of our sample say they get news from YouTube so we might expect a very different percentage in other countries. The question was only asked in the UK this year.

Origin of news videos – Professional vs user generated (UK only)

Q11c. When thinking about online video news, which of the following statements applies best to you?

Base: UK video users = 353

Pathways to News: How Audiences Discover News Online

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 13:15:11 +0000

Our work on brands shows that audiences consume the majority of their online news from familiar and trusted brands, but we can also see that they are using increasingly varied ways to find that content. In the process, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have become – to a greater or lesser extent – intermediaries for a large proportion of news journeys online. As a result, some publishers complain that they have been able to take a significant share of the available advertising revenue around news, thereby making the funding of trusted content more uncertain. Our data show that brand is the primary gateway in Denmark, Finland, the UK, while search is most important in France, Germany, Italy, the US, and urban Brazil.

Top ways of finding news by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	France	Germany	Denmark	Italy	Spain	Japan	Urban Brazil	USA	Finland
Directly via brand	45%	23%	27%	46%	39%	46%	20%	46%	33%	57%
Search engine	29%	40%	42%	15%	59%	35%	41%	59%	40%	26%
Social media	17%	14%	15%	16%	34%	38%	12%	46%	28%	24%
Email	9%	24%	12%	16%	12%	12%	18%	22%	27%	11%
News aggregator	4%	5%	9%	7%	6%	7%	13%	5%	8%	14%
Mobile phone alert	3%	6%	4%	7%	4%	5%	6%	10%	6%	5%

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories last week? (Please select all that apply)

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Within these averages there are significant differences between and within countries. In Finland and Denmark we see brand, followed by search and social, with younger groups preferring social and older groups preferring search. But in Germany and Italy we see a different pattern with search as the main gateway.

Top ways of finding news by country - Finland

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories last week? (Please select all that apply)

Base: Finland=1520, Denmark=2036, Germany=2063, Italy=2010

Top ways of finding news by country - Denmark

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories last week? (Please select all that apply)

Base: Finland=1520, Denmark=2036, Germany=2063, Italy=2010

Top ways of finding news by country - Germany

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories last week? (Please select all that apply)

Base: Finland=1520, Denmark=2036, Germany=2063, Italy=2010

Top ways of finding news by country - Italy

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories last week? (Please select all that apply)

Base: Finland=1520, Denmark=2036, Germany=2063, Italy=2010

But within the search category there are some important nuances. Our data allow us to break down different types of query and we find that on average more than half (56%) relate to navigation to a particular website. In countries with stronger brands such as Denmark and the UK the percentage tends to be even higher (62% and 60% respectively).

Search gateways in detail – all countries

Q10. Which were the ways in which you searched LAST WEEK? Showing codes 2 and 3 for different types of searches

Base: All = 18836

In terms of demographics, social media are far more important for younger groups with 18–24s more than twice as likely to find news that way (38% vs 17% for over 55s). Women are more likely to use social media sites like Facebook to discover news (22% vs 18% for men). By contrast, Twitter skews slightly male. Men are more likely to go straight to a news brand (as are News Lovers).

Top gateways to news by age, gender and news segment

Scroll data area to see more

	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+	Male	Female	News lovers	Casual users
Search	40%	38%	39%	38%	37%	39%	37%	44%	32%
Social	38%	31%	24%	20%	17%	21%	25%	27%	22%
Brand	35%	38%	39%	38%	37%	42%	33%	46%	24%

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories last week? (Please select all that apply)

Base: All = 18836

In comparing social media and email use between the UK and the United States, we can see that these gateways are almost twice as important in the US. In both countries, under 45s prefer social networks for sharing and discovering news while many over 45s are more comfortable with email. Twitter is particularly favoured by younger groups and is proportionally more important in the UK than in the US where Facebook, Google+, YouTube combined are three times more popular.

Gateways compared: Social media vs Email) - UK

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories last week? Showing social media and email options

Base: UK=2082, USA=2197

Gateways compared: Social media vs Email) - USA

Q10. Which were the ways in which you came across news stories last week? Showing social media and email options

Base: UK=2082, USA=2197

Social Networks and Participation with News

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 13:20:23 +0000

This year we have detailed data on the most popular social networks in each country – and the most popular for news. Previously we have only tracked these data for the UK while the Pew Research Center has published similar country data in the United States.[1. http://www.journalism.org/2014/03/26/8-key-takeaways-about-social-media-and-news.] Our unique data from ten countries reveal that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, and WhatsApp are by far the most important networks for news. Around half of Facebook (57%) and Twitter users (50%) say they find, share, or discuss a news story in a given week, but news is considerably less important in other networks. Only just over a quarter (29%) of YouTube users engage with news weekly, along with 19% of Instagram users. Reddit has a small but active community that is heavily engaged with news weekly (48%).

Top social networks and for news – all countries

Q12a. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for news in the last week?

Base: All markets = 18859

Internationally we can see significant variations in the extent different networks are used for news. Around 90% of Facebook users in Brazil and Italy use the network for news each week compared with less than half of those in the UK. Twitter is popular in Spain, the UK, and Japan, but Google+ is far more extensively used in Germany, France, and Denmark. YouTube is used for news by 23% in France and 26% in Italy, but only by 6% in Denmark and 8% in the UK where there is very little professional news content distributed via YouTube.

Top four social networks by country - Facebook

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for news in the last week?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Top four social networks by country - Twitter

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for news in the last week?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Top four social networks by country - YouTube

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for news in the last week?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Top four social networks by country - Google+

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for news in the last week?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Outside the big four, we find some important national and niche social networks. In Finland, Ampparit is a popular news aggregator similar to Digg or Reddit. Suomi24 is the most popular general discussion forum. Tuenti in Spain and Line in Japan are messaging networks operating in the same space as WhatsApp. Germany has a number of social networks including Xing, which competes across German-speaking countries with LinkedIn in business networking – also Stayfriends and Wer kennt wen. Orkut was once the biggest social network in Brazil but now attracts just 12% of our sample and Mixi has also been eclipsed by Facebook in Japan.

Country-specific networks

Scroll data area to see more

Network	Country	Use for all	For news
Suomi 24	Finland	25%	8%
Ampparit	Finland	14%	12%
Stayfriends	Germany	11%	2%
Xing	Germany	9%	3%
Tuenti	Spain	10%	2%
Mixi	Japan	13%	5%
Line	Japan	21%	5%
Orkut	Brazil	12%	3%

[caption]

Emergence of WhatsApp

One intriguing finding is the extent that messaging apps are now being used for discovering and sharing news. WhatsApp – now owned by Facebook – is used by over half of our sample in Spain (60%) and over a quarter (26%) say they use it for news. A third of our sample in Brazil, Germany, and Italy also use WhatsApp on a weekly basis (32%, 30%, and 29% respectively).

Usage of WhatsApp by country

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for news in the last week? WhatsApp code shown

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015

Usage of WhatsApp by country

Scroll data area to see more

Age (any purpose)
18-24	28%
25-34	25%
35-44	20%
45-54	14%
55+	9%

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for news in the last week? WhatsApp code shown

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, US=2197, Urban Brazil=1015

Over the past 12 months a number of news organisations have developed specific services for Instagram – also owned by Facebook – as a way of reaching younger audiences and given their popularity we can expect attention to switch to messaging services like WhatsApp and Line.

Types of activity and participation

In the UK, we were able to ask Facebook and Twitter users more detailed information about how they accessed and participated with the news. In general, we find that Twitter users are more active than Facebook users – across a range of functions from browsing news feeds to discussing stories or sharing links. Twitter users are significantly more likely to check what’s new (65% vs 48%) or click and read a news story (57% vs 44%). Facebook users are slightly more likely to comment on a news story (33 vs 30%) and watch a news video (24% vs 19%).

How Facebook and Twitter are used for news - UK

Q12c. You say you use Twitter for news. How have you used it in the last week?

Q12d. You say you use Facebook for news. How have you used it in the last week?

Base: all who used social media in past week (1565), all who used Twitter for news (237), Facebook for news (440)

How Facebook and Twitter are used for news - UK - Facebook

Q12c. You say you use Twitter for news. How have you used it in the last week?

Q12d. You say you use Facebook for news. How have you used it in the last week?

Base: all who used social media in past week (1565), all who used Twitter for news (237), Facebook for news (440)

How Facebook and Twitter are used for news - UK - Twitter

Q12c. You say you use Twitter for news. How have you used it in the last week?

Q12d. You say you use Facebook for news. How have you used it in the last week?

Base: all who used social media in past week (1565), all who used Twitter for news (237), Facebook for news (440)

News Lovers (heavy and frequent news users) are far more likely to use Twitter whereas a significant percentage of those accessing Facebook for news can be found in our Casual Users segment (low interest and frequency). This supports other research, which suggests Twitter users tend to go actively looking for news, whereas Facebook users tend to come across news as part of their browsing activity.

Twitter’s affinity with news lovers - UK

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for news in the last week?

Base: UK News Lovers=410, Daily Briefers=1077, Casual Users=595

These themes are developed further in two essays about the use of social media in breaking news and a study of Twitter consumption around two stories (the Oscars and a political speech).

Participation and Engagement Online

nic — Sat, 17 May 2014 13:25:14 +0000

Over the past three years we have been tracking a range of participation metrics around online news. The next two figures show the overall percentage of respondents who interacted with news in one of twelve different ways. Here, we see different participatory cultures at play. Latin and Mediterranean countries actively engage far more often and in a greater range of ways. Northern Europeans tend to be more reserved while Japanese respondents are even less likely to share or comment directly on news online.

Key news participation indicators by country

Q13. During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK=2082, Germany=2063, Spain=2017, Italy=2010, France=1946, Denmark=2036, Finland=1520, USA=2197, Urban Brazil=1015, Japan=1973

Participation = % doing at least one of 12 types of news activity

Splitting this down further we can see this national effect clearly for each of our twelve participation types.

Types of news participation by country

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	Germany	France	Denmark	Finland	Spain	Italy	Urban Brazil	Japan
Share via SN	22%	12%	13%	11%	17%	20%	30%	35%	42%	8%
Share via email	20%	6%	8%	13%	7%	6%	18%	16%	24%	3%
Rate or like story	15%	8%	17%	10%	17%	13%	25%	31%	22%	6%
Comment in SN	21%	13%	11%	11%	14%	16%	25%	23%	39%	6%
Comment on news website	14%	7%	8%	7%	5%	8%	7%	13%	19%	3%
Write news blog	3%	1%	2%	2%	1%	1%	3%	6%	6%	3%
Post picture to SN	10%	5%	6%	6%	6%	8%	11%	11%	17%	2%
Post picture to news sites	4%	2%	3%	3%	2%	1%	5%	6%	7%	2%
Online vote	25%	11%	16%	11%	17%	17%	16%	24%	22%	4%
Campaign online	5%	5%	4%	5%	3%	3%	6%	6%	8%	2%
Talk friends online	29%	16%	13%	15%	8%	17%	24%	19%	33%	7%
Talk about news face to face	44%	39%	41%	30%	51%	46%	48%	40%	44%	14%

Q13 During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage?

Base: All markets 2014 – UK: 2082; Germany: 2063; Spain: 2017; Italy: 2010; France: 1946; Denmark: 2036; Finland: 1520; USA: 2197; Urban Brazil: 1015; Japan: 1973

Although the UK and US have the same language and similar levels of internet access, Americans are twice as likely to participate online – to like, share, recommend, and to post pictures, videos, or comments. There is a similar willingness to talk about news to friends offline so this may be explained by different attitudes to privacy and transparency. British people seem more reluctant to expose their views and opinions openly and this hypothesis is backed up by a question we asked in the UK and Spain about posting to news websites. British commenters were more reluctant to use real names and more likely to post anonymously when compared with their Spanish counterparts.

Posting to a news website in the last year: UK vs. Spain

Q13c. During the last year, have you posted a comment, question, picture or other content to a news website? (Please select all that apply.)

Base: UK=2082, Spain=2017

Online commenting is driven by young men – 47% of 21-24 year old males in the UK and and 75% of 25-34 year old males in Spain have posted to a news website in the last year

For news providers, engagement and participation are becoming central to the news business. For some, like Buzzfeed, notions of virality define success, while for others participation helps drive better editorial content and brand loyalty. As competition intensifies, the focus will inevitably switch from simple measures of reach and frequency to a more nuanced picture where meaningful engagement becomes the key factor.

New Approaches to Paid Digital Content

robert.picard — Sat, 17 May 2014 14:05:59 +0000

There is a growing impetus toward paid digital content in print news providers. Many newspapers are now starting to follow early movers into paid services, with the Sun and Telegraph in UK following the path of the Financial Times and Times. In Germany, Bild became the first large-scale tabloid to require payment, and the majority of large dailies in Canada and Australia now require payments for digital access. News and public affairs magazines are taking a mixed approach, with some pursuing paid strategies and others trying more open ones. News organisations that employ collaborative, networked strategies relying on significant contributions from experts and the public are tending to pursue open or mixed-access approaches. These differing approaches are representative of distinctive shifts in thinking about digital strategies and a growing sophistication of strategy involving news content.

New strategies for paid content

Four major strategic approaches to the question whether or not consumers should pay have emerged: (1) open sites for which consumers do not pay for access (although many sites have been free for the past two decades, the movement towards paid content is changing this from a default strategy to a deliberate choice designed to serve specific strategic functions), (2) a mixed approach, with some content available without payment and some paid, (3) a soft paywall requiring paid access, but with ability to share stories and limited access for search engines and links, and (4) a hard paywall necessitating paid access but without the ability to share and denial of access for search engines and linkages. The questions of which approach to use are multifaceted and differential access pricing models are proliferating. Underlying this trend is increasing acceptance of view that the digital platforms provide different value and need to be conceived as different products. Differences in visual and presentational styles, storytelling, and experience are producing varying pay approaches as consumers show a greater willingness to pay for tablet and smartphone news content. BILDplus, for example, offers three different price packages providing access via web, smartphone, and tablet apps for €4.99 monthly, web, smartphone, tablet apps, and epaper editions for €9.99 monthly, and BILDplus Komplett for €14.99 monthly that includes web, smartphone, tablet apps, epaper editions, and the printed paper. Elsewhere, digital channels are also being used to offer special content apps and editions. In Spain, El Mundo has introduced an evening app edition and a daily gossip app. O Globo and O Estado de S. Paulo in Brazil have also created special new evening products for tablets and mobiles. A major emerging strategy is the acquisition of video rights to help drive acceptance of paid tablet and smartphone services. The general press are producing more distinctive video content using their own journalists as well as offering news clips, while tabloids have focused their attention on sports and soap opera highlights. The Sun in the UK reportedly paid £20 million for Premier League football highlights, and recently completed deals for Scottish Premier League highlights and Champions League and Europa League highlights beginning in 2015 for its Sun+ bundle. BILDplus in Germany offers a ‘BUNDESLIGA bei BILD’ subscription in addition to its basic digital bundles that attracted 150,000 subscribers in 2013. The emphasis on sports rights at the Sun+ has now skewed subscribers’ gender so that 60% of digital subscribers are male; it may be necessary to obtain video equally attractive to female users in the future. It is not unusual for publishers to offer some free digital content, basic paid news access to additional material by single access or subscription payment, and premium paid access to specialised news, tools, and personalised news and analysis services. In Italy, Repubblica.it and Corriere.it remain free on the desktop/laptop version, but charge a fee for access through mobile devices.La Stampa is experimenting with premium models and the Il Sole 24 Ore business newspaper has introduced a metered paywall.

Membership and community

A related alternative to subscription is the membership model, which is being pursued by news providers whose users have strong psychological links to the organisation. Readers of the Guardian in the UK, for example, are less interested in subscriptions for general web access, but more interested in memberships because of their connotations of community and association. Consequently it is exploring revenue streams based on membership and live experiences, and close engagement with readers on all platforms. Il Fatto Quotidiano in Italy is also experimenting with a membership model. An emerging phenomenon is bundling news access with other products, including digital news access with subscriptions to internet service providers and companies providing broadband phone, internet, and pay television services and as a benefit for acquiring premium credit cards.

Push for digital revenues

Perhaps the most significant strategic change involving payment has been rejection of the view that digital media are just more platforms on which to move print content. Today, they are being seen as separate business opportunities, requiring independent business strategies, and separate content strategies. Companies seeking to focus their strategies are increasingly turning to big data. They are no longer satisfied with basic data on paid users, unique visitors, and what stories are read or shared most, but are seeking better metrics and understanding of individual users’ engagement and use patterns across digital platforms. The strategic impetus for this is to improve content provided to users at different times on multiple platforms as well as to drive engagement and loyalty at a time of increased competition. Driving this interest is the recognition that a significant group of people are now regularly paying for news in all countries – as evidenced by the data in this report.

Paying for news and future willingness to pay – by country

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FRA	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
Payment 2014	11%	7%	8%	12%	10%	14%	8%	13%	22%	8%
Likely to pay in the future	11%	7%	15%	10%	11%	11%	21%	23%	61%	8%

Q7. Have you paid for ONLINE news content in the last year/ Q7aii. You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year. How likely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like?

Base: All/all who don’t pay – UK=2082/1925, Germany=2063/1855, Spain=2017/1814, Italy=2010/1697, France=1946/1872, Denmark=2036/1796, Finland=1520/1272, USA=2197/1904, Urban Brazil=1015/757, Japan=1973/1774

The subscription model is proving highly attractive to consumers because one-time payments make future access simpler. The majority now make ongoing payments in the form of digital subscriptions. There are two exceptions to this: Spain where more people are making one-off payments and Finland where there are more people paying for print and digital bundles. The Spain pattern may be due to the fact that digital newsstands have created the opportunity to download electronic versions of the paper at around 11pm the night before and some paid web-only news organisations have now started to make content available even earlier.

Methods of payment for online news – by country

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	GER	FRA	DEN	FIN	SP	IT	BRA	JAP
One off payment pdf day pass etc	19%	22%	27%	31%	14%	24%	41%	34%	23%	33%
One off payment app/newsstand	10%	15%	24%	28%	6%	16%	26%	30%	20%	29%
Digital subscription	40%	47%	33%	31%	42%	26%	27%	35%	31%	43%
Print and digital bundle	23%	16%	12%	12%	31%	29%	17%	13%	15%	18%

Q7ai. You said you have accessed paid for ONLINE news content in the last year. Which, if any, of the following types of payment have you used to pay for ONLINE news content in the last year? (Please tick all that apply)

Base: All who have paid to access online news in the past year – UK=139, Germany=173, US=238, Japan=153, Urban Brazil=233, Italy=267, Denmark=206, Spain=173, Finland=220

It is becoming clear that several factors provide important reasons for users to subscribe and remain subscribers. The most important for getting initial subscriptions seems to be a combination of being able to get access any time on any platform and the fear of not being able to access content that they like. Keeping subscribers is more about the actual experience of the content, the writers, and the range of content that they receive. All of this suggests that it is a core group of users who want to use and are willing to pay for a variety of news services on digital platforms. This is good news for news providers, but they will have to spend greater effort understanding and serving their individual needs than they ever had to in print. The growing range of business models in digital news provision suggests the industry will be much more segmented than in the past. It is likely there will be a mass-market tier of providers based on free and premium content, as well as a more niche group creating high value for smaller groups of well-paying subscribers. Other providers will position themselves between the two, offering multiple bundles of content at various price points to serve different user groups. This process, of course, is providing users with greater choice in the type and range of content they receive and inducing news providers to provide more focused products rather than the ‘something for everyone’ model that was required by print.

Gateways and Journeys to the News: UK Case Study

alison.preston — Sat, 17 May 2014 14:10:22 +0000

This essay examines in detail how online news users in the UK get breaking news, and further analysis on a fast-moving story. We asked a series of questions about which platforms they would go to for these types of news and about how they use social media, search engines, and news websites, in order to better understand the news ‘journeys’ that people make to get to the news content they are seeking. This analysis helps us understand how the online news environment is being negotiated by users. To what extent are they driven by brand or simply want the most convenient access to the news event or issue; to what extent are they seeking professional or ‘amateur’ voices (e.g. friends, eyewitnesses, other non-specialist commentators)? How do people find the relevant news information once on the social media or search engine site, and do they pay attention to the types of site they end up on? And, importantly, what are the demographic differences between age groups in particular, which can give us indications of the likely future direction of travel of such habits? These questions are of importance to policy-makers and practitioners. The landscape of news provision and consumption is changing rapidly. While traditional brands such as the BBC in particular endure in the UK, it is nonetheless the case that the rapid growth of social media as a means of news consumption has a range of possible ramifications. One is that, while choice proliferates, actual consumption may narrow: people may stay within a limited range of sources, selected via means that involve the tastes of their peers rather than a more societally connected, broader news agenda. Another is that people may pay less attention to the provenance of their news source, as long as it provides what appears to be the latest information on a topic. A third is that the ways of reading news may change, which may impact upon the extent of content encountered by serendipity or chance. While scrolling through a feed is currently the main way of getting content on a social media site, other means, such as finding a hashtag which pulls together the best information, may become increasingly popular.

TV continues to be the most popular platform for breaking news – but this masks considerable differences by age group

We asked our online news sample where they would go for the latest information about a breaking news story, and where they would go for analysis or further depth on such a story. We wanted to see the extent of difference in the use of news sources, and the relative importance of different platforms. For a breaking news story, participants are most likely to use TV (60%), then websites or apps (35%), then radio (16%), then search engines (14%), then social media (13%), with printed newspapers at 9% for obvious reasons. The picture is broadly similar for analysis or further depth – TV is most-used (51%), then websites or apps (35%). However, newspapers are far more likely to be used for this purpose, with one in five (20%) of online news users saying they use them.

Where people go for breaking news and in depth analysis

Q10a/b. Where do you tend to go for the VERY LATEST information/ANALYSIS or FURTHER DEPTH on a fast-moving news story? (e.g. an earthquake, major riot or political crisis) (Please select all that apply)

Base: UK 2082

Thus television remains considerably ahead of other platforms for both initial reporting of a news event, and then further information and explanation, when the overall UK sample is considered. However, this pattern belies considerable differences by age group.

News sources for breaking news, by age

Q10a. Where do you tend to go for the VERY LATEST information on a fast-moving news story? (e.g. an earthquake, major riot or political crisis) (Please select all that apply)

Base: UK 2082

Scroll data area to see more

Type of news source, %	All	18-24	25-34	55+
“Traditional”	67	39	52	84
“Online”	52	72	57	37

Q10a. Where do you tend to go for the VERY LATEST information on a fast-moving news story? (e.g. an earthquake, major riot or political crisis) (Please select all that apply)

Base: UK 2082

News sources for further depth, by age

Q10b. Where do you tend to go for ANALYSIS or FURTHER DEPTH on a fast moving news story? (e.g. an earthquake, major riot or political crisis) (Please select all that apply)

Base: UK 2082

Scroll data area to see more

Type of news source, %	All	18-24	25-34	55+
“Traditional”	64	43	44	79
“Online”	48	68	59	36

Q10b. Where do you tend to go for ANALYSIS or FURTHER DEPTH on a fast moving news story? (e.g. an earthquake, major riot or political crisis) (Please select all that apply)

Base: UK 2082

When traditional and online forms are aggregated, the distinction between age groups is stark and in mirror image – for both types of news, young people aged 18–24 are twice as likely to use online as traditional sources while for people aged 55+ it is the reverse.

The BBC is the most popular online brand for a fast-moving news story by a significant margin

We wanted to understand which online news brands were used for breaking news and for in-depth analysis, and in particular to find out what differences there are between the two types of news.

Which online news brands are used, and how they are used - online news sites used

Q10hI/2. You said that you use a particular NEWS WEBSITE OR APP to get the LATEST information/DEPTH AND ANALYSIS. Which of the following sites do you access?

Base: All who use a particular news website or app for latest news=761, all who use a particular news website or app for depth and analysis=769

Which online news brands are used, and how they are used - types of content accessed

Q10iI/2. You said that you use a particular NEWS WEBSITE OR APP to get the LATEST information information/DEPTH AND ANALYSIS. Which types of content do you access?

Base: All who use a particular news website or app for latest news=761, all who use a particular news website or app for depth and analysis=769

There is very little stated distinction between the two types of news. The BBC is most popular by a significant margin – 80% of those that use websites for these kinds of news say this is a source. The next most popular source overall is Sky News (21%), although for breaking news, those aged 18-24 are less likely to nominate it as a source (10%), and more likely to nominate the Mail Online (18%). This source is relatively popular both among younger age groups – 18–34 – and older age groups – 55+. The majority of participants say they use these branded sites for headlines (69%) and also for longer stories (51%) when accessing for breaking news. They are equally likely to use these two categories for depth analysis (60% and 57%). Live pages are likely to be used by four in ten for fast-moving news stories – a considerable difference to their use in a general news situation (8%), as seen in section 4.2. As seen elsewhere in this report, the preference for text-based information online remains, with little sign of younger people preferring video over text.

Three-quarters of search engine users choose sites they know and trust

As stated earlier, 14% of online news users nominate search engines as a news source both for breaking and in-depth news. This rises to 19% of 18–24s. The majority of this group say they use search engines to access information about the news event itself, rather than as a means to get to a particular news site. For breaking news, 57% of search engine users say they enter one or two keywords related to the story, and 49% say they use a search engine like Google news that pulls together news from different sources. In contrast, only one quarter (26%) said they entered the name of a news site. The figures are almost identical for depth analysis of news. Once people have a list of news sources on their results page, which do they click on? To what extent do they pay heed to the brand that has provided the news? Three-quarters of this sample say they click onto sites that they trust (74% for both breaking news and depth analysis), while one in four say they don’t notice the brand, but just use the source that looks the most relevant (21% for breaking news and 25% for depth analysis). Those in ABC1 socio-economic groups are more likely to make an explicit choice to go to sites they trust for breaking news (79% of ABC1s vs 66% of C2DEs).

Social media news consumption involves using professional and ‘amateur’ sources in broadly equal measure

As noted above, while social media are used by a relatively small number of online news users for breaking news (13%), this rises to 30% of 18–24s saying they use them for this purpose. We examined these social media users in more detail, to understand which sources they used and how they used them.

Which social media sites are used in a fast moving news scenario

Q10c/i. You said that you use social media to get the VERY LATEST/ ANALYSIS AND FURTHER DEPTH, which, if any, of the following social media sites would you use?

Base: All who use social media for latest news=254, all who use social media for depth and analysis=122

Of those that use social media for breaking news, six in ten (58%) use the relatively passive technique of scrolling through their feed for the relevant information they are seeking. Four in ten (39%) say they search via keywords, and a similar proportion say they find and follow a relevant hashtag (39%). One in four (27%) says they follow someone who is an expert on the story. Habits relating to further analysis show very similar results. Social media comprise very different levels and types of news content, from traditional news brands to personal friends’ discussion. We asked which types of voice on social media they tend to pay most attention to – to what extent are professional or amateur voices sought?

Which social media posts are given most attention?

Q10e/i. You said that you use social media to get the VERY LATEST/ANALYSIS AND FURTHER DEPTH, which sources do you pay most attention to? (Choose up to THREE).

Base: All who use social media for latest news=254; all who use social media for depth and analysis=222

For breaking news, nearly half of respondents (46%) say that they pay attention to posts by news brands/companies, and a similar proportion (45%) that they use posts by journalists – indicating that the individual journalist is as popular as the news brand in this area. Four in ten (39%) use posts by eyewitnesses. One in five (21%) says they use posts by personal friends. At a net level, some three-quarters (77%) use professional sources and 65% ‘amateur sources’ such as posts by eyewitnesses, friends, and other people. In terms of more in-depth analysis, people are less likely to turn to posts by eyewitnesses, which is understandable given the need for a different kind of information, but perhaps surprisingly are also less likely to turn to posts by journalists (31% vs 45% for breaking news).

Summary

This short essay has set out the ways that people say they are accessing different forms of news, and which types of content and sources they pay attention to. While TV news remains a dominant source of news at an overall level, this is not the case for younger age groups, where online sources are most used. However, the BBC brand for online news is very popular, across all age groups. One quarter of search engine users say they don’t really notice which news brands they are clicking on. It will be interesting to see whether this response grows over time. Among users of social media for news, browsing is the main means for finding out information, and there is a broadly equal distribution between professional and amateur voices for both types of news. This balance between official and unofficial voices is important to track, to see whether the inherently social or user-generated dimension of this platform becomes less important, and its ability to operate as a convenient aggregator of branded and professional content develops.

Explore the 2014 Report

simonl — Sun, 18 May 2014 07:18:27 +0000

Download the 2014 report

Partners for the 2014 Digital News Report

simonl — Sun, 18 May 2014 07:21:09 +0000

Media Coverage for the 2014 Digital News Report

nic — Wed, 28 May 2014 09:27:04 +0000

Also: BBC News: Mainstream media 'still dominate online news'

How News and Stories are Followed on Twitter

shaun.austin — Sat, 17 May 2014 14:15:32 +0000

In recent years, Twitter has started to play an increasing role in news – from being a source for journalists to providing the public with a way to comment on and interact with unfolding events. This essay looks at the often complex relationship between Twitter, news brands, and journalists in the context of breaking news and developing stories. Using YouGov’s social media analysis tool (SoMA), we first looked at the types of news accounts followed by the UK Twitter population. We then analysed two recent stories – the Oscars and a speech by Labour leader Ed Miliband outlining his party’s position on an EU referendum – to see the different ways they played out on the platform. Overall, we found that the majority of people on Twitter follow some form of news account – be it a news brand, breaking news account, or journalist. A large number of them follow all three. Of these three types of account, journalists are the most popular, suggesting people appreciate the opportunity to get closer to those to who make and comment on the news. We also see how some news stories develop on Twitter over a long time period, but how the interventions of key news accounts and professional journalists can help a particular story achieve critical mass.

Which accounts people follow for news

Data from the Digital News Report 2014 confirm the importance of Twitter as a network for finding, spreading, and discussing the news. Just under a quarter (24%) of our UK sample use Twitter each week and 12% have it as a news source, making the UK one of the biggest news markets on Twitter behind only Spain (21%). These data also show that UK Twitter users are significantly more likely to check what’s new (or click and read a news story than users of other social networks like Facebook (see Social Networks and Participation with News). YouGov’s additional analysis tracking actual usage across a representative sample of Twitter users suggests that 64% of people on Twitter in the UK (c.5.4 million) get news through one or more type of ‘news account’. 2.6 million follow a journalist, 2.2 million follow at least one breaking news account, and 1.9 million follow at least one general newsbrand. Among those who follow news on Twitter we found that:

48% follow a journalist
Two in five (40%) follow a breaking news account
Just over one in three (35%) follow a general newsbrand

Source: YouGov social media analysis tool (SoMA) following a representative sample of 7000 UK Twitter users

Usage monitored 26th February – March 11th 2014

However, it is a complex picture with lots of bleeding between the three groups. The Venn diagram shows how the followers of different type of ‘news’ accounts overlap. Interestingly, the highest number on the chart is at its centre, with almost three in ten (29%) of those who follow at least one of these types of accounts actually following all three. It is worth remembering that while all of these different types of accounts ostensibly perform different functions (breaking news feeds for events as they happen, journalists for analysis, and general news brands for promoting deeper reporting and driving engagement), the lines are often blurred. BBC Business Correspondent Robert Peston, for example, frequently uses his account to break stories as well as to promote wider coverage and engage with his followers.

Most popular "news" accounts among UK Twitter users

Journalists

Caitlin Moran
Jon Snow
Victoria Coren
Robert Peston
Nick Robinson

Breaking News

BBC Breaking
Sky Newsdesk
Guardian news
Channel 4 News
Breaking News

General Newsbrands

Guardian
BBC News
The Economist
Sky News
BBC News (World)

Given the position of journalists as both breakers and analysts of news, it is not surprising that so many people follow them. Twitter has provided a unique way for users to get closer to journalists and 45% of those following at least one type of news account (about 29% of all Twitter users) follow a journalist and one in five (22%) have a journalist as their only type of news content on the site. It is clear from our analysis that while a lot of people follow both journalists and at least one type of news feed (either general or breaking), the demographic profile of these groups is slightly different. Twitter users overall are evenly split by gender but are skewed towards younger people than the overall UK population. While all of the groups we analysed are older than typical Twitter users, it is particularly noticeable among those who follow journalists. Additionally, journalist followers are more male while following general news brands and breaking news accounts has a much broader appeal.

Demographic breakdown of news followers in Twitter

Scroll data area to see more

		Twitter users who follow journalists	Twitter users who follow breaking news	Twitter users who follow general newsbrands
Gender	Male	66%	56%	57%
	Female	34%	44%	43%
Age	18-24	7%	10%	11%
	25-34	26%	30%	31%
	35-44	27%	24%	24%
	45-54	20%	18%	17%
	55+	20%	17%	18%

Source: YouGov social media analysis tool (SoMA) following a representative sample of 7000 UK Twitter users

Usage monitored 26th February – March 11th 2014

Behind the averages there are significant differences when we analyse specific accounts. Most (60%) of Times columnist Caitlin Moran’s following is female and the vast majority (70%) are aged 25–44 years old. By comparison, Jon Snow from Channel 4 News has a more male-skewed audience (58%) with a slightly older audience profile. There are also important differences in the make-up of journalist and news organisations’ Twitter accounts. On average, people who follow journalists follow seven journalists. Those who follow news organisations follow just three current affairs outlets and those who follow breaking news accounts follow two on average. However, there are more accounts run by journalists than by news organisations. As a result, in total we see larger followings for news accounts than journalists; for instance BBC Breaking has 9.45 million followers, the Guardian has 2.11 million followers, compared to just 491,000 for the most-followed journalist (Caitlin Moran) in our list. (All figures here are worldwide, not just in the UK.) Our research also shows that, through searches and retweets from others, Twitter users are exposed to accounts and tweets in their timeline that they wouldn’t normally see. Over two-thirds (68%) of people in our data have interacted with a journalist or media organisation that they don’t follow, through either a reply, favourite, or retweet. As a result, the influence of journalists and news organisations is more significant than the numbers around followers suggest.

How people follow news stories

While Twitter has changed the way we access and disseminate news, almost as important is the distinct way different types of news stories play out through the medium. Our research looked at a celebrity story (2014 Oscars) and a political announcement (Labour’s stance on an EU referendum) to see the way these different types of news have been followed on Twitter. We started by looking at a representative panel of Twitter users of c.7,000 UK respondents and then also look at the timelines they follow – meaning that we analysed around 2 million tweets each day. We define reach as the proportion of Twitter that has been exposed to a Tweet or had the opportunity to see a Tweet. In this case study we defined searches based on hashtags and combinations of keywords to determine what proportion of Twitter users had been exposed to each story and when. We are unable to know whether they have actually seen it or not but we know for certain it has appeared in their feed.

The Oscars

Oscar’s host Ellen DeGeneres broke a Twitter record for the most retweets of a single picture and message (3.4m). But in terms of driving reach in the UK, this ‘selfie’ came relatively late in the day.

The chart below shows the cumulative reach on Twitter for those being exposed to the Oscars in the lead-up to the awards ceremony – and the accounts that drove the most additional reach to the story.

Cumulative reach on Twitter for those being exposed to the Oscars in the lead-up to the awards ceremony.

With the exception of Amazon UK (which notably promoted the films on their service), it is mainly media accounts that deal with celebrity and fashion – such as ITV’s Daybreak, People Magazine, and Cosmopolitan UK – which stand out the most in the lead-up to the event. The sharpest increase in cumulative reach for the Oscars story occurs at around midnight in the UK. DeGeneres’s account does not appear at this stage because she had already talked about the awards in the lead-up to the ceremony and further tweets by her didn’t increase unique any further. However, when Kevin Spacey tweeted about the picture shortly afterwards there was some further incremental reach. When the actual ceremony started, a news organisation account – BBC Breaking News – posted a tweet encouraging users to follow the news of the Oscars live. Given that up to this point the majority of tweets came from entertainment journalists and celebrities, the increase in cumulative reach was relatively large due to the differing profile of people following this mainstream news organisation. By the time the event itself began at 12:30, 74% of the Twitter population of the UK had been exposed to it – with most first exposures coming from celebrity sites.

Labour and the EU

A couple of weeks after the Oscars we tracked another type of news story – Ed Miliband’s speech about the European referendum – as it emerged through Twitter. As we will see, the way the story spread was different to the Academy Awards in a number of ways.

This story built up slowly through largely specialist sources including political parties. The spark came from a report by the Reuters news agency that the Labour party was preparing to change its policy on the European Union by pledging to hold a referendum if elected in 2015.[1. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/02/26/uk-britain-politics-labour-eu-idUKBREA1P0KM20140226.] Interestingly the story originated in The Times newspaper (quoting an unnamed political source) but the news brand’s influence in Twitter is limited by the use of a hard paywall. Further discussion was generated after commentary by Labour News feed and the New Statesman, but for about a week the story remained niche – being talked about by a select number of political and news accounts and reaching only about a fifth of the Twitter population. Just a few days before the speech, however, we see the impact of mainstream news brands, first from the Guardian and then the BBC (via the influential @BBCBreaking account). The BBC tweet increased cumulative reach by 15%.

Cumulative reach on Twitter for Labour EU referendum story.

The BBC were also the quickest to ‘break’ the story to new Twitter users – faster than even Ed Miliband’s and David Cameron’s own accounts. As a result, by the time the politicians tweeted about it they were reaching very few people for the first time, suggesting they were part of the reaction and not the news. Major news organisations’ feeds were, relatively speaking, earlier to the party than the Oscars. While BBC Breaking News was the 3,411th account to tweet about the Academy Awards it was the 381st for the Miliband story. Its exposure impact was greater as it was easier for it to cut through the clutter. Total reach for the Miliband story was markedly lower than the Oscars. While over 80% of the UK Twitter population was exposed to the Academy Awards, Ed Miliband’s EU speech reached under 60%. Both stories were focused around specific events and yet the Oscars reached its highest cumulative reach figure in quicker time and reached more people. Looking at the Twitter figures for both stories it becomes clear why. There were 11,559 accounts tweeting about the Oscars, markedly more than the 1,500 tweeting about the Miliband story.

Conclusions

Online is opening up many more sources of news for consumers and some are making the most of this through sites like Twitter. However, in the cases we analysed it is clear that its reputation as a news source depends on the active participation of news brands, journalists, and breaking news accounts. Twitter’s strength, however, lies also in its ability to combine this with first-hand accounts including celebrities and politicians. This allows a rapid flow of information at all stages of a story, allowing audiences that are interested to get a fuller picture of an event as it develops. We also find that journalists have a particular affinity with Twitter where they can show personality, share more details about their work, and interact with followers. News organisations are less interactive and tend to operate more in broadcast mode – often linking through to further information and analysis. Social media is not all about interactivity, the importance of trusted information sources remains paramount even in Twitter. While the two stories we looked at are different in many ways, in one important respect the way they have played out in Twitter is similar. There was so much build-up that, by the time the actual event happened, most people had already been exposed to the story. It is over 400 years since the first newspaper was published. While in these terms Twitter is young, its importance as a news source has grown at incredible speed. Audiences like the mix of fact and opinion, authenticity and interaction, that it allows and it seems set to remain a pivotal part of the news ecosystem for the foreseeable future. Hayley Millard and Arthur Blair contributed additional research to this essay.

Resources and Charts for the 2014 Digital News Report

nic — Tue, 27 May 2014 04:31:03 +0000

A slide presentation is available below to view or download. Individual charts on the website are also downloadable via the left side menus. We encourage you to use, share and remix the data, charts and essays in this report. All we ask in return is that you credit the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism or the Reuters Institute Digital News Report as set out in our terms and conditions. We will also be happy to provide the underlying data tables or more information about them on request. If you would like to access these tables for your research project, please contact the Reuters Institute. The questions and base sizes are included underneath the relevant chart or table and this website also contains more detail about the methodology and survey questions used. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2014 has been translated into Finish and, Spanish, for this we give thanks to our academic partners at the University of Tampere and University of Navarra. · View the Finish translation of the Digital News Report 2014: Reuters Institute Digital News Report – Key Findings in Finland (via University of Tampere, School of Communication, Media and Theatre) · View the Spanish translation of the Digital News Report 2014: Digital News Report 2014: España (via Universidad de Navarra, Center for Internet Studies and Digital Life, School of Communication) Roskilde University has also published a Danish-language report on digital media and news use, based on data from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report: Danskernes brug af digitale medier og nyheder I 2014 by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Kim Schrøder (via Roskilde Universitet)

Survey Questions - Digital News Report 2014

nic — Tue, 27 May 2014 07:53:00 +0000

CORE QUESTIONS

GENERAL: News consumption patterns

Q1a: How often do you access the Internet for any purpose (i.e. for work/leisure etc.)? This should include access from any device (Desktop, Laptop, Tablet or Mobile) and from any location (Home, work, internet café or any other location).

Several times a day
Once a day
4-6 days a week
2-3 days a week
Once a week
Less often than once a week
Don’t know

Q1b: Typically, how often do you access news. By news we mean national international, regional/local news and other topical events accessed via radio, TV, newspaper or online.

Several times a day
Once a day
Several times a week
Once a week
2-3 times a month
Once a month
Less often than once a month
Don’t know
Never

Q1c: How interested, if at all, would you say you are in news

Extremely interested
Very interested
Somewhat interested
Not very interested
Not at all interested
DK

Q1d What is your highest level of education?

Masters or Doctoral degree;
Bachelors degree or similar;
Professional qualification;
High school or baccalaureate or A-levels;
I did not complete secondary/high school

Q2: Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please chose up to five

News about the UK
International news
Local news about my town or city
News about my region
Business and financial news
News about the economy
Entertainment and celebrity news
Fun/Weird news
Health and education news
Arts and culture news
Sports news
News about UK politics
Science and technology news
Other (please specify)
None of these
Don’t know

Q3: Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?

Television news programmes or bulletins such as News at Ten, Breakfast News etc
24 hour news television channels such as Sky News or BBC News 24
Radio news programmes or bulletins such as 5 Live Breakfast, Good Morning Scotland
Printed Newspapers such as The Guardian or Daily Mail
Printed Magazines such as the Economist or The Week
Websites/apps of Newspapers such as The Guardian or Daily Mail
Websites/apps of news magazines such as The Economist or The Week
Websites/apps of TV and Radio companies such as BBC News, ITV News, Sky News
Websites/apps of other news outlets such as MSN, Yahoo, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed or Google News
Social media such as Facebook or Twitter
Blogs
Other (please specify)
None of these

Q4: You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is MOST IMPORTANT or which would you say is your MAIN source of news? AND SECOND MOST IMPORTANT OPT4a: Thinking about your news behaviour YESTERDAY, how much time do you spend accessing news on EACH of the following?

TV
Radio
Printed newspaper
Computer (eg Desktop or laptop)
Mobile phone (eg smartphone)
Tablet (egiPad, tab)
E-reader (eg Kindle, Sony reader)
Smart TV (eg via a browser or app on an internet connected TV)
Less than 10 minutes
10-20 mins
21-30 mins
31-45 mins
46-60 mins
More than an hour
Don’t know

OPT4b When do you typically access the news? Please select as many as apply to you

First thing in the morning
Later in the morning
Lunchtime
Afternoon
Early evening
Late evening
Last thing at night
Don’t know

OPT 4c Where were you when you looked at/listened to the news yesterday? (List all that are relevant)

At home: communal space (living-room, kitchen, etc.)
At home: personal space (own room, bedroom, etc.)
At work (office, shop, factory, etc)
At a place of study
Whilst travelling, commuting on public transport
Whilst commuting in car or other personal transport (please add “in car, by bicycle or other personal transport” in Denmark survey)
While out and about generally (e.g., mobile, internet café)
Other people’s homes
Another place (please describe) __________________________________
I didn’t consume news yesterday (exclusive option)

OPT 4e (Filter from answers at OPT4C) Please mention the key news media you used in these locations

Television
Radio
Printed newspaper
Printed news magazine
Internet via computer/laptop
Internet via mobile phone
Internet via tablet

Location 1: Location 2: Location 3: Location 4: Location 5 Q5A/B: Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week?

Via traditional (Radio/TV/Print)
- BBC News
- ITV News
- Sky News
- C4 News
- C5 News
- Commercial radio news
- Daily Mail + on Sunday
- The Sun + Sunday
- Daily Mirror + Sunday Mirror + Sunday People
- The Times/Sunday Times
- The Daily Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph
- The Express + Sunday
- Daily Star + Sunday)
- The Guardian/Observer
- The Independent +on Sunday
- ‘i’
- London Evening Standard
- The Financial Times
- A local newspaper
- A free City paper such as Metro
- A national newspaper in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland
- Newspapers or broadcast news channels from outside COUNTRY NAME
- Other (Specify up to three)
- Don’t know
- None of these
Via online (web, mobile, tablet, e-reader)
- BBC News
- ITV News
- Sky News
- C4 News
- C5 News
- Commercial radio news
- Mail Online, Daily Mail & Mail on Sunday
- The Sun + Sunday
- Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People
- The Times/Sunday Times
- The Daily Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph
- The Express + Sunday
- Daily Star + Sunday)
- The Guardian/Observer
- The Independent +on Sunday
- ‘i’
- London Evening Standard
- The Financial Times
- A local newspaper
- A free City paper such as Metro
- A national newspaper in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland
- Yahoo
- MSN
- Google News
- Huffington Post
- New York Times
- Buzzfeed
- Vice
- Other online sites from outside COUNTRY NAME
- Other (Specify up to three)
- Don’t know

TRUST, POINT OF VIEW AND PARTIAL NEWS

We are now going to ask a few questions about trust in different news sources as well as any possible/potential bias that you see in particular news sources or reporters. Q5c) Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, what do you prefer:

News where the reporter tries to reflect a range of views and leaves it to the reader/viewer to decide?
News where the reporter argues a point of view offering evidence to support that view

[OPEN] WHY do you prefer this? Q5d) Thinking about the different sources of news available to you (such as a newspaper, broadcaster or online news source), which do you trust (or believe) most:

News from sources that try to be neutral (or impartial)?
News from sources that are open about their own views and biases?

[OPEN] WHY do you trust (or believe) this the most? Q5 e) To what extent are the following important to you in terms of whether you trust a source of news:

The news brand/the name of the news outlet
Individual journalists

5-point scale of very important/quite/neither-nor/not very/not at all important

PAYING FOR NEWS

Have you bought (paid for) a printed newspaper in the last week (please tick all that apply)

Yes via newsstand or shop
Yes I have home delivery (for one or more days a week)
Yes, from another source
No, I have not
Don’t know

Q7. Have you paid for ONLINE news content, or accessed a paid for ONLINE news service in the last year (this could be an ongoing subscription or one off payment for an article or app) ?

Yes
No,
Don’t know

Q7ai (those answered yes to Q7). You said you have accessed paid for ONLINE news content in the last year… Which, if any, of the following types of payment have you used to pay for ONLINE news content in the last year? (Please tick all that apply)

I made a single one off payment to access an article, or website (eg day-pass)
I made a single one off payment to access a news app or download an edition via an app, digital newsstand or pdf
I made an ongoing payment (subscription) for a digital news service
I made an ongoing payment to a digital news service as part of a wider print subscription
I made an ongoing payment for a digital news service as part of a wider cable, broadcast, mobile or other relationship
I make an ongoing payment to a service that gives me access to multiple digital news services
Someone else paid for me to subscribe or access a digital news service
Other

Q7aii (those answered NO to Q7). You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year… How likely or unlikely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like?

Very likely
Somewhat likely
Somewhat unlikely
Very unlikely
Don’t knowOPT Q7b You said you have a subscription with at least one news provider, what were the most important factors in taking an online news subscription in the first place (chose up to three)
- A brand I prefer for news
- Access to special offers/subscribers’ club
- Broad range of news coverage
- Quality of specific area (eg sport, arts, technology, business)
- Quality of specific columnists, writers and journalists
- Enables access wherever and whenever I want
- No other way to access valued content
OPT Q7c You said you have a subscription with at least one news provider, what are the most important factors in keeping you subscribed to an online news product (chose up to three)
- A brand I prefer for news
- Access to special offers/subscribers’ club
- Broad range of news coverage
- Quality of specific area (eg sport, arts, technology, business)
- Quality of specific columnists, writers and journalists
- Enables access wherever and whenever I want
- No other way to access valued content
OPT Q7di Which of the following brands did you make a subscription payment to over the past year? (tick all that apply) OPT Q7d ii Which of the following brands did you make a one off payment to over the past year? OPT Q7e) You said you made one or more single or one-off payments for an online news service (article, app or day pass). How often did you do this in the last year? (chose ONE)
- Once or twice
- At least once a month
- Many times each month
OPT Q7f) You said you made one or more one-off payments for an online news service (article, app or day pass). Which methods do you mainly use (choose ONE)
- Entered credit or debit card manually
- Used stored payment details from news provider
- Used other stored payment details from billing provider (eg apple, mobile company, paypal etc)
POLITICAL NEWS SECTION
OPT2A How interested would you say you are in politics?
1. Very interested
2. Somewhat interested
3. Not very interested
4. Not at all interested
5. Don't know
OPT2B: Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with political and government issues? Please select all that apply(multiple answers allowed, randomize)
1. Friends, relatives or colleagues
2. National printed newspapers and/or their online sites/apps
3. Local printed newspapers and/or their online sites/apps
4. Radio, TV broadcasters and/or online sites/apps
5. Politically focussed magazines and/or online sites/apps
6. Political parties and/or their newsletters or online sites
7. Online specialist sites or political blogs
8. Email newsletters/alerts
9. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter
10. Don’t know
11. None of these
OPT2C: In which, if any, of the following ways have you used the Internet in the last year to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion? Please select all that apply
1. Sent an email about a political candidate or issue
2. Signed an online petition
3. Posted your views on a news site
4. Posted your views on a social media site
5. Joined a campaign via a social media site
6. Used the internet to organise or find a meeting/ event to attend
7. Contributed money to a political party or political cause
8. Used the internet to volunteer for a political activity
9. Followed a politician or political party or Twitter or subscribed to Facebook page
10. Don’t know
11. None of these
ONLINE NEWS

DEVICE USAGE
Q8a: Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use (for any purpose)? Tick all that apply
1. Smartphone made by Apple (iPhone 3, 4, 5)
2. Smartphone by another manufacturer (e.g, Samsung , HTC, Sony, Nokia Lumia, Blackberry Z10 etc)
3. Other internet connected phone (eg older Blackberry, Nokia feature phone)
4. Laptop or desktop computer (at work or home)
5. Tablet Computer made by Apple (e.g. iPad, iPad Air or iPad mini)
6. Other tablet computer (e.g. Samsung Galaxy, Kindle Fire HD, Google Nexus)
7. Ebook reader eg Other Kindle device, Kobo etc
8. Connected TV (a TV that connects to internet via set top box, games console, other box such as Apple TV etc)
9. Smart TV (TV that connects to the internet directly without the need for any other box)
10. Smart watch, wristband or smart glasses that connect to the internet
11. Other mobile device that connects to internet eg iPod Touch, PSP or Gameboy DSi
12. None of these
13. DON’T KNOW [BUTTON]
Q8b Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week?
1. Smartphone made by Apple (iPhone 3, 4, 5)
2. Smartphone by another manufacturer (e.g, Samsung , HTC, Sony, Nokia Lumia, Blackberry Z10 etc)
3. Other internet connected phone (eg older Blackberry, Nokia feature phone)
4. Laptop or desktop computer (at work or home)
5. Tablet Computer made by Apple (e.g. iPad, iPad Air or iPad mini)
6. Other tablet computer (e.g. Samsung Galaxy, Kindle Fire HD, Google Nexus)
7. Ebook reader eg Other Kindle device, Kobo etc
8. Connected TV (a TV that connects to internet via set top box, games console, other box such as Apple TV etc)
9. Smart TV (TV that connects to the internet directly without the need for any other box)
10. Smart watch, wristband or smart glasses that connect to the internet
11. Other mobile device that connects to internet eg iPod Touch, PSP or Gameboy DSi
12. None of these
13. DON’T KNOW [BUTTON]
ROUTE FROM Q8B answers 1&2&3 You say you access news via a SMARTPHONE. When using that device what news sources have you accessed in the last week? USE LIST AT Q5B ROUTE FROM Q8B answer 4 You say you access news via a PC/LAPTOP. When using that device which of the following news sources did you use to access in the last week? USE LIST AT Q5B ROUTE FROM Q8B answer 5&6 You say you access news via a TABLET. When using that device which of the following news sources did you use to access in the last week? USE LIST AT Q5B
OPTIONAL MOBILE//TABLETS/
OPT9a Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE, which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer (only show to those who say yes at Q8b in the main survey)
1. I mainly use news apps I downloaded from an app store
2. I mainly use news websites via the standard web browser on my device
3. I use apps and mobile websites about the same
4. Not sure
OPT9b Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer
1. I mainly use news apps I downloaded from an app store
2. I mainly use news websites via the standard web browser on my device
3. I use apps and mobile websites about the same
4. Not sure
OPT9c Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE, which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer
1. I mainly access news directly via a branded link (logo) of a news provider
2. I mainly access news via a search engine
3. I mainly access news by a social network
4. I mainly access news by a brand that aggregates different news sources
5. Not sure
OPT9d Thinking specifically, about when you look for news on a TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer
1. I mainly access news directly via a branded link (logo) of a news provider
2. I mainly access news via a search engine
3. I mainly access news by a social network
4. I mainly access news by a brand that aggregates different news sources
5. Not sure
OPT9e Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a LAPTOP OR DESKTOP computer, which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer.
1. I mainly access news directly via a branded link (logo) of a news provider
2. I mainly access news via a search engine
3. I mainly access news by a social network
4. I mainly access news by a brand that aggregates different news sources
5. Not sure
DISCOVERY OF NEWSONLINE – GATEWAYS
Q10 Thinking about you got news online (via computer, mobile or any device) in the LAST WEEK, which were the ways in which you came across news stories (choose as many as appropriate).
1. Directly accessed one or more news websites/apps eg BBC News, Daily Mail, Huffington Post
2. Used a search engine (e.g. Google, Bing) and typed in a keyword for the name of a particular website
3. Used a search engine (e.g. Google, Bing) and typed in a keyword about a particular news story
4. Used a newsreader ‘app’ that aggregates news links e.g. Flipboard/Zite/Pulse
5. Used Twitter and came across news that way
6. Via Facebook, G+, LinkedIn or other social network
7. Got news via an email newsletter or alert
8. Received a news alert via SMS or through an app on my mobile phone
9. Other please specify
10. Don’t know
Q10a Where do you tend to go for the VERY LATEST information on a fast moving news story (e.g. an earthquake, major riot or political crisis) – MULTICODE
- Television news
- Radio news
- Printed newspapers
- Websites/apps of newspapers, TV, broadcasters etc
- Social media
- Blogs
- Search engine
- Other (please specify)
- None of these
Q10b Where do you tend to go for the ANALYSIS OR FURTHER DEPTH on this fast moving news story (e.g. an earthquake, major riot or political crisis) (MULTICODE)?
- Television news
- Radio news
- Printed newspapers
- Websites/apps of newspapers, TV, broadcasters etc
- Social media
- Blogs
- Search engine
- Other (please specify)
- None of these
Q10c You said that you use social media to get the VERY LATEST information about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis), which social media sites would you use? MULTICODE
- Twitter
- Facebook
- YouTube
- Storify
- Reditt
- Instagram
- Other
- DK
Q10d) You said that you use social media to get the VERY LATEST about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis) – how do you tend to look for information (tick all that apply)
- Scroll through my feed looking for relevant information
- Use the search mechanism to search for a keyword or location
- Find and follow a hashtag which pulls together best content
- Follow a person or brand who is an expert on the story
Q10e) You said that you use social media to get the VERY LATEST information about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis) which sources do you pay most attention to? (Choose up to THREE)
- Posts by news brands or organisations
- Posts by journalists
- Posts by eyewitnesses
- Posts by other people you follow
- Posts by personal friends
- Posts by organisations
Q10c You said that you use social media to get to get ANALYSIS AND FURTHER DEPTH about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis), which social media sites would you use?
- Twitter
- Facebook
- You Tube
- Storify
- Reditt
- Instagram
- Other
- DK
Q10d) You said that you use social media to get ANALYSIS AND FURTHER DEPTH about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis) – how do you tend to look for information (tick all that apply)
- Scroll through my feed looking for relevant information
- Use the search mechanism to search for a keyword or location
- Find and follow a hashtag which pulls together best content
- Follow a person or brand who is an expert on the story
Q10e) You said that you use social media to get ANALYSIS AND FURTHER DEPTH about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis) which sources do you pay most attention to? (Choose up to THREE)
- Posts by news organisations
- Posts by journalists
- Posts by eyewitnesses
- Posts by other people you follow
- Posts by personal friends
- Posts by organisations
Q10fi You said that you use a search engine to get the LATEST information about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis), how do you tend to search? (tick all that apply)
- Enter the name of a news site
- Enter one or more keywords related to the story
- Use a news search engine like Google news that puts news from different sources together
Q10gi) You said that you enter a keyword into a search engine to get the LATEST information about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake or major riot), which results do you tend to click on?
1. “I would tend to click a link to sites I know and trust”
2. “I don’t really notice which sites I am using, I would just click the link that had the most relevant headline”
Q10fII You said that you use a search engine to get DEPTH AND ANALYSIS about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis), how do you tend to search? (tick all that apply)
- Enter the name of a news site
- Enter one or more keywords related to the story
- Use a news search engine like Google news that puts news from different sources together
Q10gII) You said that you use a search engine to get DEPTH AND ANALYSIS about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis), which results do you tend to click on?
1. “I would tend to click a link to sites I know and trust”
2. “I don’t really notice which sites I am using, I would just click the link that had the most relevant headline”
Q10hI You said that you use a particular news site to get the LATEST information about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis. Which of the following sites do you access? List from Q5 (online) Q10iI You said that you use a particular news site to get the LATEST information about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis). Which types of content do you access? (tick ANY that are relevant)
- The headlines
- Longer stories
- Live video
- Recorded video clips
- Live audio
- Recorded audio
- Live page (live text updates in chronological order often including the best from social media)
- Comments posted by members of the public
Q10hi You said that you use a particular news site to get DEPTH AND ANALYSIS about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis.) Which of the following sites do you access? List from Q5 (online) Q10ii You said that you use a particular news site to get DEPTH AND ANALYSIS about a fast moving story (e.g. earthquake, major riot or political crisis.) Which types of content do you tend to access? (tick ANY that are relevant)
- The headlines
- Longer stories
- Live video
- Recorded video clips
- Live audio
- Recorded audio
- Live page (live text updates in chronological order often including the best from social media)
- Comments posted by members of the public
Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online (via computer, mobile, tablet or other device) in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use (Choose ALL those that apply)
1. Looked at a list of news headlines (for example on the front page of a news website)
2. Read longer news stories or articles
3. Followed a LIVE news page within a website - short updates on a major news story listed in chronological order often including the best from social media)
4. Read a news blog
5. Look at a sequence or gallery of pictures about news
6. Viewed a news graphic (infographic)
7. Watched news video (live, clip or programme)
8. Listened to news audio (live, clip or programme)
9. Used an “app” on my smartphone to access the news
10. Used an “app” on my tablet to access the news
11. Other (Please specify)
12. None of these
13. Don’t know
Opt Q11ai Route from 11 (if didn’t chose option 7) You said that you don’t usually watch news videos online. Why not? MULTICODE
1. I don’t find them interesting
2. I don’t have time
3. I can’t get them to play properly
4. Take too long to load up/play
5. I would rather watch on a bigger screen
6. I prefer to read articles than watch videos
7. Concern about cost of access (eg via mobile)
8. Other, please specify
9. Don’t know
We’re now going to ask you a few more questions about the use of online news video. This might include video on a news website, video accessed via a social media site, short clips from members of the public, or TV news programmes on a broadcaster’s website OPT Q11aii Route from 11 (if did chose option 7) Which TYPES of news video have you watched online in the last month – tick all that apply
- Live stream coverage of a breaking news event
- Live stream coverage of other scheduled news event (eg political speech, tech launch, fashion event etc)
- News clip that adds drama to a text story (eg eyewitness testimony, raw footage of a news event)
- News clip that provided context or analysis on a text story eg journalist/politician talking to camera, or a short interview
- Longer news programme accessed on demand (eg a stream or download of politics, health, tech, film, food)
- Don’t know
- None of these
OPT Q11B Which subjects of video provided by news providers do you watch most frequently online (show list from Q2) OPT Q11C When thinking about the type of video news you consume online, which of the following statements applies best to you?
- I mainly watch news related videos posted by members of the public
- I mainly watch news related video posted by news organisations
- Both about the same
OPT Q11D In thinking about your online news habits, which of the following statements applies best to you?
- I mostly read news in text
- I mostly read news in text but occasionally watch video news that looks interesting
- I read text stories and watch video news about the same
- I mostly watch video news and read text occasionally
- I mostly watch video news
- Don’t know
SOCIAL MEDIA AND SHARING OF NEWS ONLINE
Q12A Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose in the last week? Please select all that apply
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- MySpace
- Twitter
- YouTube
- Google Plus
- Instagram
- Tumblr
- Reddit
- Vine
- Digg
- Stumbleupon
- Pinterest
- Flickr
- WhatsApp
- Line
- Viber
- Don’t know
- None of these
- + country additions lists (ignore for UK)
Q12B Which, if any, of the following have you used for reading, watching, sharing or discussing news in the last week?
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- MySpace
- Twitter
- YouTube
- Google+
- Instagram
- Tumblr
- Reddit
- Vine
- Digg
- Stumbleupon
- Pinterest
- Flickr
- WhatsApp
- Line
- Viber
- Don’t know
- None of these
- + country additions lists (ignore for UK)
OPT Q12C Filter from 8B You say you use Twitter for news. How have you used in the last week (select all that apply)
- Browsing my feed to see what’s new
- Clicking on a news link to read it
- Retweeting or favouriting news story
- Commenting on a news story
- Viewing a professional news video or picture
- Viewing a non-professional (user generated) news video or picture
- Don’t know
- None of these
OPT Q12D Filter from 8B You say you use Facebook for news. How have you used in the last week (select all that apply)
- Browsing my feed to see what’s new
- Clicking on a news link to read it
- Liking or recommending a news story
- Commenting on a news story
- Viewing a news picture
- Viewing a news video
- Viewing UGC from social media
- Don’t know
- None of these
SHARING OF NEWS ONLINE
Q13: During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? (Please select all that apply)
- Share a news story via Social Network (like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit)
- Share a news story via email
- Rate (or Like) or recommend a news story
- Comment on a news story in a Social Network (like Facebook or Twitter)
- Comment on a news story on a news website
- Write a blog on a news or political issue
- Post or send a news-related picture or video to a Social Network site
- Post or send a picture or video to a news website/news organisation
- Vote in an online poll via a news site or social network
- Take part in a campaign or group based around a news subject
- Talk with friends and colleagues about a news story (e.g. by email, social media, instant messenger)
- Talk with friends and colleagues about a news story (face to face)
- None of these
OPT Q13B How frequently do you do this?
- Several times a day
- Once a day
- Several times a week
- Once a week
- 1 -3 times a month
- Less than once a month
- Never
- Don’t know
OPT Q13C: During the last year, have you posted a comment, question, picture or other content to a news website? Please select all that apply.
- Yes, directly with my real name and surname.
- Yes, with a username or a social profile that can be traced to my offline identity.
- Yes, with a username or a profile that cannot be traced to my offline identity.
- Yes, anonymously.
- No, I have never posted comments, questions, pictures or any other content by me to a news website.
ASK if CODE 8 or 9 at q8b OPT Q14 A You say you used a connected TV or Smart TV FOR NEWS in the last week, which of the following brands did you use? Filter from brand list in Q5 OPT Q14 B What type of news content do you consume via connected or smart TV (tick all that apply)
- Serious news
- Political news
- Local news
- Fun/light news
- Celebrity news
- Sports news/scores
- Weather
- Travel
- Several times a day
- Once a day
- Several times a week
- Once a week
- 1 -3 times a month
- Less than once a month
- Never
- Don’t know
OPT Q14 C Do you prefer to read or watch news using your smart or connected TV? Which of the following statements most applies to you?
- I mostly read news (text)
- I mostly watch news (video)
- I do both about the same
OPT Q14 D A connected or smart TV makes it possible to deliver a breaking or other news alert on the screen as an overlay to an existing TV programme. It would be possible for you to control the frequency and type of alerts and to turn it on or off. How interested would you be in using such a service?
1. Very interested
2. Somewhat interested
3. Not very interested
4. Not at all interested
5. Don't know

Supporters for the 2014 Digital News Report

nic — Wed, 28 May 2014 12:19:31 +0000

Supporters

Executive Summary and Key Findings of the 2015 Report

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 08:15:57 +0000

This year’s data see a quickening of the pace towards social and mobile news, a decline in desktop internet, and significant growth in video news consumption online. At the same time, we see the continued centrality of traditional platforms – particularly television – and ever more stark country-based and generational divides over the way news is found, consumed, and distributed.

We see the smartphone more clearly as the defining device for digital news with a disruptive impact on consumption, formats, and business models. Our data suggest it provides an environment dominated by a few successful brands, with others struggling to reach a wider audience, both via apps and browsers.
The move to online video, new visual formats, and social media coincides in many countries with a fall in audiences for traditional TV bulletins. The trend is most pronounced amongst the under 35s.
We see a strengthening in the role played by Facebook in finding, discussing and sharing news. Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp are playing a big role amongst younger groups.
The increasing importance of search and social as gateways to news has raised concerns over online ‘filter bubbles’, but our respondents say these services help them find more diverse news and lead them to click on brands they do not normally use.
We see an intensifying battle for global audiences online involving new players like the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, expanding global newspapers like the Guardian and New York Times and old stalwarts including the BBC and CNN.
Finally we find significant consumer dissatisfaction with online advertising, expressed through the rapid take up of ad blockers and disquiet over the blurring lines between editorial and advertising.

Mobile growth

News accessed from smartphones has jumped significantly over the last 12 months, particularly in the UK, US, and Japan. Average weekly usage has grown from 37 to 46% across all our countries. Two-thirds of smartphone users (66%) are now using the devices for news every week.

Smartphone news use 2012–2015

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country 2012–15

Scroll data area to see more

Also from 2015
Australia	59%
Ireland	52%
Finland	50%
Spain	48%
Italy	44%

Surprisingly given the amount of time spent in apps generally, people in most countries say they are likely to access news via a mobile browser. This suggests that news may not always be a primary destination but will often be found through links from social media or email. Only the UK bucks the trend, with the mobile app preferred (46%) over the browser (40%) and 10% saying they use them about the same On average people use a small number of trusted news sources on the mobile phone. The average across all countries is 1.52 per person, significantly fewer than on a tablet or computer. We also find that, even though 70% of smartphone users have a news app installed on their phone, only a third of respondents actually use them in a given week, reinforcing the difficulty many news brands have in cutting through on this crowded and very personal device. In the UK, over half of smartphone news users (51%) regularly use the BBC News app, the only country where we see this level of reach.

Top news apps – selected countries

Q19a. You say you access news via a SMARTPHONE. When using that device what news sources have you accessed in the last week? Base: All who accessed news on a smartphone in the last week UK=807, US=910, Germany=617, Australia=1067

In many countries these trends mean that for many publishers the majority of traffic comes from new mobile devices. In launching its new responsive design site in early 2015, the BBC revealed[1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31966686] that 65% of traffic is now generated by smartphones and tablets. Across all our countries a quarter of our sample (25%) now say the smartphone is their MAIN device for accessing digital news – up from 20% last year. That figure rises to two-fifths (41%) of those aged under 35.

Tablets’ growth slowing, computers’ importance on the slide

In contrast we find tablet growth for news weakening in most countries (with the exception of the UK). Bigger smartphone screens, along with growing penetration, look to be reducing the need for a separate, less portable touch screen device in the home.

Tablet news use 2012–2015

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country 2012–15

Scroll data area to see more

Also from 2015
Australia	35%
Ireland	22%
Finland	26%
Spain	24%
Italy	19%
Brazil	19%

The role of the laptop and desktop computer is also changing. Only just over half (57%) now consider it their most important device for accessing online news – down eight percentage points from last year. The computer remains the most important device in the office, but at home in communal and personal spaces it is being squeezed by the adoption of tablets and smartphones. But the key trend is not around replacement of one device with another; rather it is that far more people are using two or three devices to access the news. In the US, 41% (+6) use two or more devices to access news on a weekly basis. In the UK, the figure is 44% (+9), 59% in Denmark, and 58% in Australia. Smartphones and tablets are extending our access points making us more connected to the news at home and on the move.

The enduring strength of TV, decline of print, and the rapid rise of social media

We now have four years of data looking at the sources people use for news. In most countries we see a consistent pattern, with television news and online news the most frequently accessed, while printed newspapers have declined significantly and social media are growing rapidly.

Sources of news 2012–15: TV, online, print, and social media - USA

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Base: All 2012–2015 – UK: 2076/2078/2082/2149; USA: 845/2028/2197/2295. NB: 2014 data have been estimated because of an issue with randomisation of news sources in the questionnaire.

Sources of news 2012–15: TV, online, print, and social media - UK

This online survey is likely to underestimate the true levels of access to television news but even so we can detect in the US and UK some fall-off in topline figures – specifically in the number of people watching scheduled TV bulletins and programmes. This is particularly the case with the young where in the United States less than a third (31%) of under 45s now watch a scheduled TV bulletin compared with 42% two years ago. It is a similar story in the UK – 46% down from 56% in 2013.

Weekly news access to TV programmes and bulletins – US

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Base: Total sample 2013/2015 – UK: 2078/2149; USA: 2028/2295

Weekly news access to TV programmes and bulletins – UK

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Base: Total sample 2013/2015 – UK: 2078/2149; USA: 2028/2295

But the picture is not the same in all countries. TV viewing in Germany has hardly been affected; indeed it remains strong even with the young – 58% of under-35s still watch a scheduled programme or bulletin – while social media growth is less pronounced. In Denmark we don’t see online’s strength significantly affecting TV, though print is down, online is up, and social media have become a major part of the equation.

Sources of news 2012–15: TV, online, print, and social media - Germany

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Base: Total sample 2012–2015 – Germany: 970/1062/2063/1969; Denmark 1002/1007/2036/2019. NB: 2014 data have been estimated because of an issue with randomisation of news sources in the questionnaire.

Sources of news 2012–15: TV, online, print, and social media - Denmark

Weekly access is only one part of the picture. We also track the value of different news sources and again we see that TV news comes out even more strongly as the most important source of news in the majority of countries – with the exception of the US and Finland where online is ahead. Social media are now considered more important than print in the US, Ireland, Brazil, Italy, France, Spain, and Australia

Main source of news – by country

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news? Base: All who used a source of news in the last week in each country.

France, Germany, and Japan have the strongest allegiance to traditional media and they have been slower to adopt new digital trends such as smartphones and social media. But these averages hide even more stark splits between generations. Young Germans or Japanese are likely to have more in common with young Americans or Finns – in preferring online news and social media to TV news, radio, or print.

Main source of news – by age

Q4.You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news? Base: All who have used a source of news in the last week All = 23155.

We have also broken down – for the first time this year– the concept of value into a number of dimensions, including speed, serendipity, and accuracy. Once again TV comes out strongest for accuracy, even if you take into account the fact that it is the most widely used news medium in most countries.

Best source for accuracy – selected countries

Q3aiv. For accuracy and reliability, which one of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Base: All who used a source of news in the last week in each country UK = 2105, US = 2198, France = 1947, Germany = 1943, Spain = 1904, Ireland = 1486.

Even social media users value TV most for accuracy and reliability – and by some margin. Only 12% of these say social media is best for accuracy, compared with 37% for TV. Social media are not seen as a destination for accurate and reliable journalism but more as a way of getting access to it.

Trust in the news

The link between strong TV news consumption and trust is also to be found in a general question we ask about how much you trust the sources of news available. We compare this with trust in the specific sources you use. Overall we find significant differences in general trust, with over two-thirds (68%) agreeing that they trusted the media in Finland, compared with only one-third in the United States (32%), Spain (34%), and Italy (35%). Many of the countries with the highest levels of trust also have well-funded public service broadcasters.

Trust in the news – all countries

Scroll data area to see more

	FIN	BRA	GER	DEN	UK	JAP	IRE	AUS	FRA	ITA	SPA	USA
Trust in general	68%	62%	60%	57%	51%	46%	46%	39%	38%	35%	34%	32%
Trust in my sources	73%	70%	68%	65%	64%	50%	57%	53%	49%	48%	46%	56%

Q6a.Thinking about news in general, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? ‘I think you can trust most news most of the time’/ Q6b. ‘I think I can trust most of the news that I use most of the time’. Base: Total sample in each country.

There is a strong link between overall trust and last year’s data about the value placed on sources that tried to be impartial (neutral) in how the news was covered.

The role of social networks

Over the past year there has been a new focus on the role of Facebook in distribution of online news. Publishers have reported greater traffic from Facebook following changes to its algorithms and the introduction of autoplay for short videos. Our data show that Facebook is becoming increasingly dominant, with 41% (+6) using the network to find, read, watch, share, or comment on the news each week – more than twice the usage of its nearest rival. The strong growth of both WhatsApp and Instagram – which are both popular with the young – has strengthened Facebook’s hold on social discovery in the last year.

Top social networks for news (and for any purpose)

Q12a. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose in the last week? Q12b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for finding, reading, watching, sharing or discussing news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: All = 23557.

These averages mask significant differences between genders, ages, and countries in terms of the networks used. 18–24s continue to use Facebook and Twitter but have also adopted other networks and messaging apps for more private conversations, sharing pictures, and a different tone. Snapchat[2. http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/02/new-data-shows-mobile-data-consumption-skyrocketing-following-snapchat-discovers-launch] and Instagram are actively courting publishers and offering opportunities to push and monetise content notably with the launch of Snapchat Discover. News publishers are also setting up branded accounts on these new networks as a way of reaching younger audiences.

Outside the United States

Elsewhere we see a different mix of secondary networks. Line is popular in Japan; Viber has significant reach in Ireland and Australia; Finland has a popular chat network Suomi24, while France is the home of Daily Motion a popular video network that was widely used during the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

WhatsApp is proving time-consuming for publishers to set up lists and deliver bulk messages

WhatsApp is hardly used in the United States but is a growing force elsewhere. It played a major part in last year’s Brazilian elections and is also used for traffic updates. Many brands now offer WhatsApp sharing buttons on their websites but it remains a commercial-free zone and the network makes it notoriously difficult to push messages to multiple users.[3. http://digiday.com/publishers/publishers-whatsapp-alerts-easier-said-done]

Top countries for WhatsApp

Scroll data area to see more

	Use for all	Use for news
Spain	67%	27% (+1)
Brazil	61%	34% (+19)
Italy	49%	18% (+5)
Germany	41%	9% (+3)
Finland	32%	4%
Australia	25%	7%

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for news in the last week? WhatsApp code shown. Figures in brackets represent change in last year Base: Total sample Germany = 1969, Finland = 1509, Italy = 2006, Spain = 2026, Brazil = 2033, Australia = 2042.

Other home-grown networks like Tuenti in Spain and Mixi in Japan have been losing ground over the last few years in the face of growing competition. Google closed its Orkut service in Brazil last year, effectively conceding the battle to Facebook in one of the world’s most active markets. Only in Japan is Facebook NOT the largest network for news. The next chart shows strong growth in Facebook over the past year in a number of countries including France, UK, and Denmark. Germany and Japan have bucked the trend partly because of a reluctance in those countries to use real names while posting in social networks.

Facebook use for news 2014-15 – selected countries

	UK	US	France	Denmark	Germany	Japan
2014	22%	37%	27%	31%	26%	12%
2015	29%	40%	35%	44%	23%	11%
Change	+7	+3	+8	+13	-3	-1

Q12b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for finding, reading, watching, sharing or discussing news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample UK = 2149, US = 2295, France = 1991, Germany = 1969, Denmark = 2019, Japan = 2017.

As Facebook – and YouTube and Twitter – talk to publishers about hosting more content on their platforms, there is renewed concern about the power of these networks, about the lack of transparency around the algorithms that surface content and about the extent to which publishers will get a fair return for the quality content that drives so much social media usage. These issues are tackled in an important essay from Emily Bell Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Colombia University.

We seek news on Twitter but bump into it on Facebook

Facebook and Twitter remain the most important networks for news in terms of referrals and engagement. But our survey throws up important differences between the two. In Facebook – which has a very general audience and wide remit – the pursuit of news is secondary, with the main aim being communicating with friends. Twitter, on the other hand, is seen much more as an active destination for news by an audience that is deeply interested in latest developments.

Relative importance of news: Twitter and Facebook compared

Q12cii/dii. You say you use Twitter/Facebook for news. Which of the following statements applies best to you? Base: All those in UK, US, Italy, Australia, who used Twitter/Facebook for news in the last week. All = 861/3560.

Our report this year also casts further light on the role of social media in political news and discourse.

Around a fifth of social media users follow a politician or political party in Australia (17%), Italy (20%) and the UK (23%) with more than a quarter (28%) doing so in the United States.

Growth in online news video

There has been a significant increase in the consumption of online news video, notably in Spain (+10), Denmark (+8), UK (+5), Italy (+5), and Japan (+5). This reflects the new strategies from social networks to display and play more video and a greater supply of video from publishers. News organisations have set up or expanded teams over the last year to create – or repackage video – partly because advertising premiums are far higher than for text news and partly to take advantage of new distribution opportunities. More of us are using video but others remain to be convinced. In seven countries[4. UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, and Ireland.] we asked those who said they didn’t use video about the reasons. Four in ten (40%) say they find reading text more convenient, almost a third (29%) are put off by preroll ads, and a fifth (21%) say they’d rather watch on a bigger screen. Of those who are using news video the most popular format is short-recorded clips that add drama to a news event (49%) or add context or analysis to a text story (46%). The growth of video is part of a wider adoption of new visual online formats, many of which are also well suited to mobile and social media. Examples include infographics, pictures with text, as well as a range of short-form video formats. Publishers are creating more of this content and more is being consumed.

Gateways to news

Although audiences still consume the majority of their online news from familiar and trusted brands, the way they access that content is changing. The starting point to a news journey is less likely to be a brand homepage and increasingly likely to be via a search engine, a social network, email, or the lockscreen of a smartphone. We see significantly fewer people accessing the front page of a news website where a list of stories is displayed. More people are going directly to stories via a side door such as search or social media.

Types of news content accessed weekly

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online (via any device) in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use? Please select ALL that apply. Base: All.

Our data show very different patterns of access across countries. In countries like the UK, Denmark, and Finland, branded websites are often the starting point for any news journey. By contrast, in Italy, Spain, Germany, or France, a search engine is often the key gateway while social media are important in Australia and Urban Brazil. Email and mobile notifications are also an important part of the picture.

Starting points for news – all countries

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	US	France	Germany	Ireland	Denmark	Finland	Italy	Spain	Japan	Urban Brazil	Australia
Direct to news brand	52%	36%	27%	26%	44%	54%	63%	20%	36%	15%	46%	33%
Search	32%	40%	40%	45%	46%	29%	26%	66%	54%	54%	52%	49%
Social Media	28%	35%	21%	20%	36%	38%	28%	33%	35%	14%	48%	41%
Email	10%	25%	21%	15%	9%	24%	9%	17%	14%	15%	23%	20%
Mobile notifications and alerts	10%	13%	14%	9%	9%	9%	7%	7%	8%	7%	11%	9%

The strength of search in countries like Spain, Brazil, and Germany in part explains why there has been so much heat there over the relationship with Google – and so little fuss in the UK or Denmark. In Spain, Google News was closed in November 2014 after a law was passed that would have forced payment for the use of news snippets – though some news results are still available. A similar law in Germany led to links being dropped by Google for a time until a number of publishers decided to opt back in. Meanwhile social media traffic has grown significantly in the past year and for some publishers has become more important than search.

Search and social media drive greater diversity

The growth of search and social media as gateways to news has also raised concerns over the potential for online ‘filter bubbles’, but our research suggests that they may help audiences find more diverse forms of news. Three-quarters of social media users (76%) and search users (73%) said they sometimes or frequently accessed different sources – leading them to brands they would not otherwise use. We also find that the strength of a particular brand in social media is often a critical factor in the choice of which link to choose. A trusted brand (37%) is a key factor likely to influence the choice in a social network, whereas the relevance of the headline is by far the most important factor in search results. The other key point about social news discovery is that it reaches different demographics – including women and younger groups in general. Those who visit news sites regularly, sign up for email, or receive mobile notifications are heavily male skewed. Search is more even but social is the only discovery mechanism that appeals more to female users.

How social media helps attract female users

	Social	Search	Brand	Email	Notifications
Male	27%	46%	41%	19%	11%
Female	36%	44%	33%	16%	8%

Q10. Thinking about how you got news online (via computer, mobile, or any device) in the LAST WEEK, which were the ways in which you came across news stories? Please select all that apply. Base: Male/Female All = 11339/12218.

Mobile notifications

In the past year we’ve seen a significant jump in the usage of mobile alerts and notifications in a number of countries led by France, the US, and UK (see chart). These mechanisms are becoming a key way of reminding consumers of the relevance of a news brand in an increasingly competitive news market.

Growth of mobile notifications – selected markets

Q10. Thinking about you got news online (via computer, mobile, or any device) in the LAST WEEK, which were the ways in which you came across news stories? Showing code for mobile alerts. Base: Total sample 2014/15 UK = 2082/2149, US = 2197/2295, Denmark = 2036/2019, France = 1946/1991.

With the launch of the Apple Watch, the importance of notifications is likely to grow further as the battle for our attention reaches our wrists. Social media, email, and mobile notifications are now becoming key retention and distribution strategies for media companies. As such they feed advertising business models driven by page views but also bring new users in for subscription businesses. The key challenge is to coordinate those strategies better so that individual consumers are not bombarded with irrelevant messages and that publishers use data more effectively to deliver more relevant content at the right time and on the right platform. For all these reasons news organisations are increasingly setting up audience engagement teams to seed content, optimise headlines, pictures, and links across a growing number of platforms.

The battle for global audiences

The internet has removed the barriers around distribution of news and this has led over the years to several attempts to create a news formula that can repeated profitably across the world. Yahoo and MSN built successful businesses around email and web news portals, but now these are losing ground to a new wave of digital-born companies based on social and mobile news approaches. Yahoo News, for example, has lost almost a third of its US reach in the last two years. By contrast, the Huffington Post is one of the most accessed sites in the United States and now also operates in 14 countries around the world. Buzzfeed has doubled its reach in the US and UK over the last year and has established a strong foothold in a number of countries amongst the young. Vice is also making its mark with online video content that speaks to a younger generation. If we weight the data by population we find that across our countries Yahoo is in the lead, but this is mainly due to its strong position in Japan – where in reality the American company only has a relatively small stake.

Top global brands – digital born

Scroll data area to see more

	Huff Post	Buzzfeed	Vice	MSN	Yahoo
US	22%	10%	3%	11%	23%
UK	12%	5%	1%	5%	8%
France	8%*	1%	1%	7%	8%
Germany	6%*	1%	1%	4%	5%
Spain	8%*	1%	1%	9%	8%
Italy	7%*	1%	1%	8%	11%
Ireland	8%	6%	1%	5%	9%
Brazil	2%*	2%	1%	20%	18%
Australia	12%	7%	1%	25%*	21%*
Japan	2%*	1%	-	10%	52%*
Weighted**	10%	4%	1%	8%	18%

Q5b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Via online platforms (web, mobile, tablet, e-reader) Base: Total sample in each country. * Represent joint ventures and some cases (e.g. Australia’s NineMSN) where MSN retains the name but has sold the business. ** Note: Weighted percentage calculated using population data from Internet World Stats and the World Bank: weighted = (country population * percentage adults * percentage accessed)/total population of all countries surveyed. Brazil is not included due to the absence of reliable data about its urban population.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the New York Times, the BBC, and CNN are engaged in a battle for English-speaking audiences in the US, UK, Australia, and elsewhere. The BBC and CNN remain strong globally – not least when you take into account their enormous reach via TV and radio.

Top global brands – traditional

Scroll data area to see more

	D Mail	Guardian	NY Times	BBC	CNN
US	3%	4%	12%	10%	14%
UK	14%	12%	1%	48%	1%
France	-	-	1%	3%	2%
Germany	-	-	1%	3%	3%
Spain	-	-	3%	5%	4%
Italy	-	-	2%	3%	4%
Ireland	7%	4%	4%	17%	5%
Brazil	-	-	6%	8%	9%
Australia	3%	7%	4%	14%	7%
Japan	-	-	2%	3%	5%
Weighted*	2%	2%	5%	8%	6%

* Note: See note to preceding chart about weighting criteria.

In domestic online markets we see a continuation of the trend that sees new ‘digital born’ brands disrupting the dominance of traditional news organisations – especially in Japan, Australia, Brazil, and the US (see the next chart). In other countries like Denmark, Finland, and the UK, strong newspaper brands and strong public service broadcasters have captured most of the online market, leaving little room for new players.

Disruption by digital born players – all countries

Q5b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Via online platforms (web, mobile, tablet, e-reader) Base: Total sample in each country.

Australia’s position is mainly because of popularity of the Yahoo7 and NineMSN, while Japan’s disruption relates chiefly to Yahoo Japan, which has 52% weekly reach with our sample. Brazil has a range of home-grown portals and aggregators as well as strong traditional media companies, while the disruption in the United States is the most diverse from mature start-ups like Huffington Post (now owned by AOL) to vibrant new start-ups like NowThis and Vox.

The business of journalism

Sales of printed newspapers have continued to fall in most countries but those with strong home delivery like Japan have been able to weather the storm a little better (see next chart).

Sales of printed newspapers – selected markets

Q7. Have you bought (paid for) a printed newspaper in the last week? (This could be an ongoing subscription or one-off payment for a physical copy.) Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample 2013–15 UK = 2078/2082/2149, US = 2170/2197/2295, Germany = 1099/2063/1969, Denmark = 1024/2036/2019, Japan = 1004/1973/2017.

Sales of printed newspapers – how purchased

Meanwhile in our survey we see no discernible trend towards an increase in paid online content – or in willingness to pay. A small number of loyal readers have been persuaded to pay for brands they like but it is proving hard to convert casual readers when there is so much free news available from both commercial media companies and public service media.

Payment for online news by country

	UK	Ireland	Germany	France	Japan	USA	Spain	Australia	Italy	Denmark	Finland
Paying for news	6%	7%	7%	10%	10%	11%	11%	11%	12%	13%	14%

These headline numbers do, however, conceal some significant shifts – and a rise in overall revenue. In the UK, four years ago the majority of payment was small-scale and one-off. Today, almost three-quarters of the total (71%) is for an ongoing subscription (digital only, digital/print, or other combination) meaning that average yearly spend has risen to around £10 a month. This is twice the spend on online news in Spain (€5) where there is a higher level of one-off payment.

Average spending on online news – selected countries

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	US	Australia	Spain
Average monthly spend	£10	$10	$10	€5
Ongoing payment	71%	67%	70%	49%

OPTQ7ciii. How much have you paid for online news content, or for access to a paid-for online news service in the last year? Q7ai. Which if any, of the following ways have you used to pay for ONLINE news content in the last year? Base: All who paid to access online news in the past year, and all who specified what types of payment they made (excluding those who did not know) UK = 87, US = 199, Australia = 177, Spain = 181.

A key focus for the industry over the past year has been to try to get more people – especially younger people – subscribing to content but there has been limited success. The New York Times launched a number of spin-off paid apps, including NYT Now and Opinion in April 2014, but the Opinion app was shelved and the NYT Now one did not attract the numbers or demographics initially hoped for and will become a free service.[5. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/nyt-makes-now-app-free-scrapping-monthly-fee-to-attract-readers] Specific questions we asked in four markets shows that very few of those not already paying would be prepared to pay anything for online news. The rest would pay only a small amount.

Future likelihood to pay – selected countries

Q7civ. What is the maximum price you would pay for a subscription to a digital-only news service – including full access to its website, apps, and any digital replicas of the newspaper? Base: All who had not paid for news in the last year UK = 1992, US = 1942, Spain = 1773, Australia = 1805.

Ad-blocking, native advertising, and sponsored content

If the move to paid content remains difficult, online advertising – banner advertising in particular – is going through something of an existential crisis. Revenue from display ads has continued to fall, accidental clicks are up with the move to mobile (fat fingers), and there is industry concern about fraud and a lack of transparency.

Our research shows that consumers are voting with their feet as they get bombarded with more and more intrusive advertising online. 47% of our US sample and 39% in the UK don’t see always see ads because they use ad-blocking software to screen them out. More generally, a third or more (39% in the UK and 30% in the US) say they ignore ads. Around three in ten (31/29%) say they actively avoid sites where ads interfere with the content. Against this background, it is not surprising that many publishers are abandoning the old models in favour of new ‘native’ advertising or sponsored content. Buzzfeed, Vox, and Vice are leading the charge, with the New York Times, Washington Post, and Guardian amongst traditional news organisations setting up creative teams to work on editorial content with brands. It is a complex area with many different variants of native advertising emerging. There are few standards on labelling or common agreement on best practice. The area is particularly controversial in the industry because it tends to blur the line between editorial and advertising. This year we have conducted qualitative and quantitative research into consumer attitudes towards sponsored content and native advertising in both the UK and US. The main headlines are:

A third or more say they have felt disappointed or deceived after reading an article they later found had been sponsored.
Half say they don’t like sponsored content but accept this is part of how they get free news.
Over a quarter feel less positively about the news brand as a result of sponsored content or native advertising.

Conclusions

This year’s survey underlines both the pace of change but also the increasing complexity of our media ecosystem. New global brands are emerging, there are new platforms for distributing and monetising the news, new devices for accessing it, and new formats to tell stories. All of this is part of fundamental shift away from the broadcast models of the past to ones where it is possible to deliver more relevant, more personal, more interactive news at any time and in any place. And yet while our data suggest that this is becoming a reality for some, there are still many who continue to value traditional approaches. Most people still get their news from a combination of TV, radio, print, and online. Traditional news brands continue to dominate online in almost all the countries we studied, even if intermediaries are becoming far more important as a way of getting to those brands. It is also worth noting that even amongst our online sample about two in ten do not use internet news regularly (relying instead on broadcast and print). About one in three smartphone users do not use their phone for news, and around one in three Facebook users do not see social media as a source of news. The reality is that most people over 45 are using digital news as an additional layer of choice and convenience without abandoning their core habits around television, radio, and print. Younger audiences who’ve grown up with digital are exhibiting very different behaviours and increasingly expect the news to come to them through online channels and in new formats. The challenge for traditional media brands is how to manage this growing divergence in behaviour, along with the intense business pressures being thrown up by the second wave of disruption from mobile and social. Print revenues are declining fast while only a minority is prepared to pay for news online. Mobile advertising is generating less than via desktop, video advertising is promising but nascent, while sponsorship and native options are throwing up new questions around trust and journalistic integrity. Meanwhile Facebook and Google continue to build some of the world’s most profitable companies based on targeted advertising wrapped around relevant and interesting content. Against this backdrop, news companies face another year of intense pressure and will have to be more inventive than ever with editorial and business strategies if they are to survive.

Foreword to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015

daviv.levy — Fri, 15 May 2015 08:00:18 +0000

This is our fourth annual report that looks to map the changing ecology of news across countries. The report is based on a survey of more than 20,000 people in 12 countries, which makes it the largest ongoing comparative study of news consumption in the world. We have added Australia and Ireland this year to a core set that includes France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain, Brazil,[1. The survey only covered urban Brazil. See the following section on methodology.] and Japan – along with the UK and US. This year we find more compelling evidence about the central role being played by smartphones and a sharp increase in the use of social media for finding, sharing, and discussing the news. We see significant growth in the use of online video and new visual formats and track the global rise of Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, companies that have become masters at creating and distributing content in a social and mobile world Once again we have combined the key data points with a series of essays, which add depth and context to the findings. The BBC’s Director of News James Harding reflects on the pace of change and the implications of growing information inequality. Emily Bell, Director of the Tow Center for Digital Innovation, looks at the implications of the increasing role played by Facebook and Google in the news value chain. Robert Picard picks his way through the changing business models from paid content to native advertising. YouGov’s Director of Media Research Shaun Austin explores consumer attitudes to branded and sponsored content – based on both survey and focus group work specially commissioned for this report. And also in our essays section, Alison Preston explores the generational divide in news consumption, along with the implications for industry and policy-makers. Our academic partnerships continue to deepen. We are joined this year by the Tow Center at Colombia University, the News and Media Research Centre at Canberra University in Australia, and Dublin City University, Ireland. This active research community also includes our longstanding partners the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg, Roskilde University in Denmark, and the School of Communication at the University of Navarra in Spain. Many of our partners are also organising events or country reports looking in more details at national themes – and adding wider value to this international project. We continue to make efforts to open up as much of the data as possible. This website contains slidepacks, charts, and raw data tables, along with a licence that encourages reuse, subject to attribution to the Reuters Institute. Also this year, we have extended our interactive feature, which allows anyone to explore and visualise the data by themselves. We’ve made available more data points and created the possibility of examining trends over time. We hope that all of this will continue to build into an invaluable resource for academics, media owners, journalists, and those developing policy. A description of the methodology is available on this website along with the complete questionnaire. Making all this possible, we are hugely grateful to our sponsors this year, who include Google, BBC, Ofcom, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BIA), France Télévisions, L’Espresso group in Italy, the Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland, Edelman UK, as well as our academic sponsors and partners at Roskilde University, the Hans Bredow Institute, the University of Navarra, the Tow Center at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and the University of Canberra. I am also grateful to YouGov, our polling company, who did everything possible to accommodate our complex requirements and helped our research team analyse and contextualise the data.

Survey Methodology for the 2015 Digital News Report

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 08:05:25 +0000

The data were weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data, such as age, gender, region, newspaper readership, and social grade, to represent the total population of each country. The sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet.
As this survey deals with news consumption, we filtered out anyone who said that they had not consumed any news in the past month, in order to ensure that irrelevant responses didn’t adversely affect data quality. This category averaged around 5% but was as high as 11% in the US.
A comprehensive online questionnaire was designed to capture all aspects of news consumption.
Core questions were asked in France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Ireland the US, as well as the UK, where there was a slightly longer questionnaire.
Online focus groups were also held in the UK and US to complement survey data on sponsored and branded content.

Scroll data area to see more

Country	Starting sample	Non News Users	Final Sample Size	Total population	Internet penetration
UK	2313	7%	2149	63,742,977	90%
Germany	2035	3%	1969	80,996,685	89%
Spain	2127	5%	2026	47,737,941	75%
Italy	2059	3%	2006	61,680,122	59%
France	2131	7%	1991	66,259,012	83%
Ireland	1575	5%	1501	4,832,765	79%
Denmark	2097	4%	2019	5,569,077	97%
Finland	1527	1%	1509	5,268,799	97%
USA	2588	11%	2295	318,892,103	87%
Urban Brazil	2091	3%	2033	202,656,788	54%
Japan	2141	6%	2017	127,103,388	86%
Australia	2164	6%	2042	22,507,617	94%

Please note that Brazil is representative of an urban population rather than a national population. As such the internet penetration is likely to be higher than stated above, which must be taken into consideration when interpreting results. Source: Internet World Stats http://www.internetworldstats.com internet population estimate 2014

This is an online survey – and as such the results will under-represent the consumption habits of people who are not online (typically older, less affluent, and with limited formal education). Where relevant, we have tried to make this clear within the text. The main purpose, however, is to track the activities and changes over time within the digital space – as well as gaining understanding about how offline media and online media are used together. Along with country-based figures, throughout the report we also use aggregate figures based on responses from all respondents across all the countries covered. These figures are meant only to indicate overall tendencies and should be treated with caution.

YouGov's online panel based research methods

How online panels, such as the YouGov one operate and how they compare to more traditional surveys
Response rates
Interviewer bias
Social distance
Accuracy
Pace of interview

Scroll data area to see more

Country	Panel	Panel sizes
UK	YouGov	442,100
Germany	YouGov	140,500
Spain	Partner	208,565
Italy	Partner	83,300
France	YouGov	83,300
Denmark	YouGov	41,815
Finland	YouGov	10,495
USA	YouGov	1,704,900
Urban Brazil	Partner	364,965
Japan	Partner	364,965

Scroll data area to see more

	% of the population falling into each group	Number needed for nationally representative survey	Number on YouGov panel
Social Grade DE	28%	560	34,000
Unemployed	5%	100	11,400
Aged 65-74	10%	200	17,700
Aged 75 plus	9%	180	4,400

Response rates

Interviewer bias and social distance

Accuracy

The share of daily smokers: YouGov survey 20%; Statistics Finland 21%
Market share of insurance companies and banks: matches exactly the shares reported by the Federation of Finnish Financial Services
The share of households with children: YouGov survey 39%; Statistics Finland 40%

Pace of interview

Academic Journals on Online Research

Authorship and Research Acknowledgements for the 2015 Digital News Report

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 08:10:07 +0000

Dr David A. L. Levy is Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and an expert in media policy and regulation. He previously worked at the BBC both as a news and current affairs producer, reporter, and editor, and later as Controller Public Policy. He is the author of Europe's Digital Revolution: Broadcasting Regulation, the EU and the Nation State (Routledge, 1999/2001), and joint editor with Rasmus Kleis Nielsen of The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy (RISJ, 2010). He co-authored The Public Appetite for Foreign News on TV and Online (RISJ, 2013) and jointly edited, with Nigel Bowles and James T. Hamilton, Transparency in Politics and the Media: Accountability and Open Government (RISJ/I. B. Tauris, 2013). Nic Newman is a journalist and digital strategist who played a key role in shaping the BBC’s internet services over more than a decade. He was a founding member of the BBC News Website, leading international coverage as World Editor (1997–2001). As Head of Product Development he led digital teams, developing websites, mobile, and interactive TV applications for all BBC Journalism sites. Nic is currently a Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. He is also a consultant on digital media, working actively with news companies on product, audience, and business strategies for digital transition. Dr Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Director of Research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Press/Politics. His work focuses on changes in the news media, political communication, and the role of digital technologies in both. He has done extensive research on journalism, American politics, and various forms of activism, and a significant amount of comparative work in Western Europe and beyond. Recent books include The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy (2010, edited with David Levy), Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns (2012), and Political Journalism in Transition: Western Europe in a Comparative Perspective (2014, edited with Raymond Kuhn). Commentary and additional insight has been provided by academic partners and by our network of Reuters Journalist Fellows around the world,[1. Reuters Fellowships offer an opportunity to mid-career journalists to spend time researching an aspect of journalism for one or more terms at the Institute in Oxford.] particularly in providing national context on our country pages, where authorship is indicated by initials. We are particularly grateful to:

Fergus Pitt (FP), Senior Research Fellow, Tow Center at the Columbia School of Journalism
Alexandre Lechenet (AL), Reuters Journalist Fellow and writer and data-journalist at Libération
Esa Reunanen (ER), University of Tampere, Finland
Kim Christian Schrøder (KCS), Professor, Department of Communication at Roskilde University (RUC) in Denmark
Samuel Negredo (SN), Alfonso Vara (AV) and Avelino Amoedo (AA), Center for Internet Studies and Digital Life at the University of Navarra
Uwe Hasebrink (UH) and Sascha Hölig (SH), Professor and Senior Researcher at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Hamburg
Flávia Marreiro (FM), former Reuters Journalist Fellow and São Paulo-based sub-editor at the Spanish newspaper El País
Nicola Bruno (NB), former Reuters Journalist Fellow, co-founder and journalist at the news agency Effecinque.org in Italy
Yasuomi Sawa (YS), former Reuters Journalist Fellow and journalist who has been working with Kyodo News, Japan
Jerry Watkins (JW), Associate Professor and Director, News and Media Research Centre at University of Canberra
Michelle Dunne Breen (MDW), Research Associate, News and Media Research Centre at University of Canberra
Jane Suiter (JS), Director of the Institute for Future Journalism and Media at Dublin City University
Niamh Kirk (NK) Researcher and PhD Candidate (Journalism and Digital Media) in the School of Communications, Dublin City University

Additional expert analysis and interpretation of the survey data were provided by Richard Fletcher at the Reuters Institute and also by the team at YouGov, in particular, Shaun Austin, Charlotte Clifford, David Eastbury, and Alice Kerry.

Chapter One: Analysis by Country

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:00:48 +0000

In this section we publish the detailed data tables from our 2015 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.

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 2015 Digital News Report survey using the methodology outlined, with the exception of population and internet levels which are drawn from Internet World Statistics (2014). 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 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. 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.

United States

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:05:44 +0000

Statistics
Population	319m
Internet	87%
Trust in news	32% (12^th out of 12)
Interest in news	67% (=7^th out of 12)

The US media environment is highly commercial, highly competitive, and increasingly fragmented. Analysts could describe three rough generations of news organisations: those with prestigious newspaper, television, or radio legacies (along with a struggling cohort of metropolitan newspapers and local network TV affiliates); the first generation of digital media companies (including Yahoo, MSN, and Huffington Post); and the latest wave, born in the social media era (Vox, BuzzFeed, and Upworthy).

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	35%
Broadcasters	53%
Pure players	52%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	56%
Broadcasters	88%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	45%
Broadcasters	82%

Top digital subscriptions

Local/City Newspaper
New York Times
Wall Street Journal

But a generational framing doesn’t quite capture the market’s dynamism or complexity. Social platforms play a crucial role; Facebook is an important gatekeeper with publishing ambitions, reddit hosts significant conversations, and Twitter can drive large volumes of traffic, even as messaging applications like Snapchat become strategically important. The market keeps evolving, changed by youthful and agile companies like Vice, new joint ventures like ABC and Univision’s Fusion, and new product launches like New York Times’ Now mobile app. High-profile journalists switch companies, destabilising once-predictable hierarchies, and promising news start-ups of two years ago have bankrupted or imploded today. Public media, based on a combination of government appropriations, donations from users, and corporate sponsorship, offer additional content to niche audiences both locally and nationally. This year’s data continue to show a difficult period for legacy media, a changing of the guard in the native digital news companies, and the big national broadcasters holding their ground after previous falls. Among the big individual losers was Yahoo News (now at 23%), losing almost a third of its reach in two years and MSN losing about a fifth. In contrast, the Huffington Post is up almost a third to 22% and Buzzfeed almost doubled to 10%, reflecting aggressive hiring in hard news and investigations, and a sophisticated use of data and test-driven optimisation. There aren’t many people paying for news in the US, almost no overall growth, and very little easy money left on the table. Despite major newspaper companies touting more subscriptions in their annual reports (the New York Times has over 800,000 digital subs) this survey shows virtually no increase in total news payers since 2013. The remaining non-payers overwhelmingly believe they’d never pay, or pay only a small amount – a mean yearly figure of $8. In this environment the newspaper companies advertise aggressively and widely offer discounts. That’s the context for the boom in native advertising examined in detail later in this report.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

United Kingdom

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:10:20 +0000

Statistics
Population	64m
Internet	90%
Trust in news	51% (5^th out of 12)
Interest in news	70% (6^th out of 12)

The media environment is characterised by a vigorous and highly competitive national press – including a strong tabloid sector. BBC News reaches more than three-quarters of all consumers each week across radio, TV, and online. The Mail and the Guardian have invested heavily in digital and have had success taking UK journalism to international audiences.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	39%
Broadcasters	54%
Pure players	27%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	73%
Broadcasters	88%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	63%
Broadcasters	83%

Top digital subscriptions

Times
Economist
Telegraph
Sun

The BBC continues to dominate online news usage in the UK on all devices. Half of smartphone news users (51%) regularly use the BBC News app and partly as a result apps are more heavily used in the UK than elsewhere. BBC apps were relaunched in early 2015 as part of a major new initiative around personalisation. The Guardian has revamped its website and mobile offerings, introduced a membership scheme, developed a branded content studio, and expanded paid events. It continues to win awards for digital innovation – but faces a year of transition with a new editor and chief executive. Both Telegraph and Mail have moved further into sponsored and branded content (so-called native advertising) amid a row (and one resignation) at the Telegraph over the blurring of the line between editorial and advertising. Meanwhile Buzzfeed UK and the Huffington Post have been hiring investigative reporters and developing long-form journalism. News UK operates hard paywalls for both the Sun and The Times. As a result both have sacrificed online reach for profitability and engagement. The Times and Sunday Times have reported over 170,000 digital subscribers (+12%) and an unexpected rise in print sales. The Financial Times has surprisingly abandoned its much-lauded metered approach in favour of a hard(er) paywall with low-cost trials. Local newspaper groups like Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror continue to struggle but digital advertising revenues are up.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Facebook is most important for referrals to news sites overall but Twitter is widely used by journalists and politicians and is where news is found first. Social media played a significant role in the Scottish Referendum in September 2014, with those supporting independence much more likely to participate online. WhatsApp and Snapchat are fast growing networks for the young but are still only marginally used for news. NN

Germany

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:15:43 +0000

Statistics
Population	81m
Internet	89%
Trust in news	60% (3^rd out of 12)
Interest in news	74% (3^rd out of 12)

The country’s federal structure has shaped its media environment, with a number of regional and national public broadcasters competing for audiences with powerful commercial operators. The press market is strongest at a regional level with over 300 titles. Each of the 16 regions also regulates its own private and public broadcasting.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	45%
Broadcasters	35%
Pure players	31%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	74%
Broadcasters	87%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	64%
Broadcasters	87%

Evening television news shows in Germany such as ARD’s Tagesschau and ZDF’s Heute continue to pull in the biggest audiences in Europe. But these PSBs continue to face restrictions to their online news services under pressure from newspaper groups. With sales of daily newspapers and magazines continuing to fall, publishers are pursuing different strategies for the transition to online business models. Axel Springer, which publishes best-selling tabloid Bild and national daily Die Welt, is partly betting on the success of paid content to reduce the company’s dependence on advertising. The company announced more than 250,000 paying subscribers for its premium Bild+ services in January 2015 (up from 153,000 in December 2013). Burda Media, on the other hand, which publishes influential weekly magazine Focus, continues to focus on paid e-papers and tablet editions but has doubts about the viability of paywalls. Springer has also been diversifying with recent investments in the European expansion of Business Insider and Politico and also in Blendle, a Dutch start-up where readers pay by the article. German publishers have been at the heart of European demands that Google start paying for content. But when a new law led to news snippets being left out of search results, news publishers were forced to request readmission, after traffic from Google and Google News fell by 40% and 80%.[1. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-sprngr-idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105]

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Germans are less interested in news-related participation via social media than people in other countries. Facebook is still the biggest network for news while Twitter attracts media coverage but has struggled to appeal to the wider public. WhatsApp has been growing fast in Germany over the last few years and some local newspapers have been experimenting with it for distributing their stories. UH, SH

France

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:20:09 +0000

Statistics
Population	66m
Internet	83%
Trust in news	38% (9^th out of 12)
Interest in news	59% (12^th out of 12)

Television news remains popular, with viewership split between France Télévisions, privately owned TF1, and a range of cable and satellite providers. France's long-established commercial radio, particularly RTL and Europe 1, still command large audiences, along with a range of publicly funded stations such as France Inter, France Info, and France Culture.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	37%
Broadcasters	32%
Pure players	35%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	68%
Broadcasters	89%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	59%
Broadcasters	85%

Top digital subscriptions[1. Le Monde and Le Figaro each sell around 300,000 print copies per day but digitally only 47,000 and 21,000 respectively http://presseettablette.com/2015/04/03/le-monde-et-les-echos-les-journaux-qui-vendent-le-plus-deditions-numeriques]

Le Monde
Les Echos (business daily)
Le Figaro

The newspaper sector is particularly weak and remains partly dependent on state subsidies amidst falling sales and advertising revenue. Even so France still has more than 80 daily newspapers, mostly in private hands and not linked to political parties. The most successful papers are often regional rather than national. Online, many of the best known national titles such as Le Monde and Le Figaro face competition from digital-born media and also from broadcasters. Among French pure players, Mediapart is the most successful, with 112,000 subscribers for its mix of online investigation and opinion. Mediapart reported profits in March 2015 of €1.5m on turnover of €8.8m. Another start-up Lesjours.fr will launch a paid edition later in 2015 staffed by former editors and writers from Libération. It hopes to attract 25,000 subscribers within three years. Le Huffington Post, a joint venture with Le Monde, has been gaining ground steadily (up 3 to 8%) and is funded by advertising and sponsored content – while Buzzfeed, which launched a French edition in 2013, has made strong gains with under 25s. Google remains a major player in France, with Google News a significant destination (11%). French publishers settled a row with the search giant in 2013, accepting an offer of a $60 million innovation fund. Early results are now emerging, including new apps and initiatives around paying for news. €250,000 was earmarked to support the Charlie Hebdo magazine following January’s shootings.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Social media helped galvanise reaction to the January Charlie Hebdo shootings with #jesuischarlie trending not only in France but also around the world. Videos of the killings and aftermath were widely circulated on YouTube and another popular (French-born) social platform Dailymotion. As a result we have seen significant increase in news participation online over the past year. AL, NN

Spain

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:25:35 +0000

Statistics
Population	46.5m
Internet	75%
Trust in news	34% (11^th out of 12)
Interest in news	85% (1^st out of 12)

Circulation of Spanish newspapers continues to shrink, leaving many dependent on government advertising and a few major businesses. Last year, El País lost 11% of sales in print, and El Mundo 13%. Freesheet 20 minutos is available in print in the biggest cities, and it acts as a purely online brand elsewhere. Regional and local newspapers remained moderately healthy, but many still have to catch up online. Television channel La Sexta, with a broad range of news and current affairs programmes, shows the biggest increase among traditional media, while Cadena SER is the leading radio network online and offline.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	60%
Broadcasters	48%
Pure players	46%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	79%
Broadcasters	94%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	68%
Broadcasters	93%

Online, pure-players gained ground in the last year at the expense of traditional newspapers. El Confidencial – now profitable – is the most read online-only newspaper in Spain, followed by Público.es, which carries the brand of a print daily that ceased publication in 2012. News start-up Eldiario.es reached break-even early and keeps growing with an extensive network of collaborators and partnerships. But El País and El Mundo continue to be the papers of record in Spain, both offline and online, where they attract audiences three times the size of even the most successful digital-born companies. Apart from digital newsstands, most publishers continued to keep their online content ad-supported and free for all, with El Mundo operating a generous metered paywall. Digital-born media have experimented with crowdfunding and reader-shareholder schemes and some have promoted memberships and donations in order to reduce dependence on advertisers. The Spanish Google News portal was removed in December 2014 in response to a state law that intended to tax the service, driven by the newspaper publishing lobby. Google Search still displays ‘In the news’ results and a ‘News’ tab for specific queries, with a limited selection of stories, which is why it is still showing at 15%.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

The increase in sharing news can be attributed first to the growth in mobile and social consumption, and secondly to intense public interest in the turbulent political issues in Spain. Television, though, remains a key driver of debate, with Podemos and Ciudadanos as new political actors. Current affairs programmes in particular are widely discussed on social media. SN, AV, AA

Italy

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:30:08 +0000

Statistics
Population	61.5m
Internet	59%
Trust in news	35% (10^th out of 12)
Interest in news	74% (=3^rd out of 12)

Television remains the main source of news for the bulk of the Italian population. Public broadcaster RAI’s news bulletins (TG) are still popular, while all-news TV channels (SKY Tg24, TgCom, RaiNews24) are building a reputation for trusted news.[1. According to data by Demos 2014 (http://www.demos.it/a01071.php).] The Italian press is highly regionalised, reflecting the country’s history and character. With almost half of the population (47%) never reading a newspaper,[2. According to data by Censis 2014 (http://www.censis.it/7?shadow_comunicato_stampa=120995).] print readership figures continue to be very low compared to other European countries.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	73%
Broadcasters	25%
Pure players	51%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	82%
Broadcasters	93%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	58%
Broadcasters	93%

The online offer is more diverse, with legacy media outlets such as La Repubblica (29%) performing strongly and digital-born players still fighting to find an adequate audience and sustainable business models. With mobile internet booming in Italy, media habits are changing fast. Many news websites are slightly decreasing in popularity, while more people use social media and mobile apps to access and share news. Newspaper readership is continuing to decline and for the most part digital subscriptions are not balancing out the loss of print copies. Several national papers have shut down (including the eminent L’Unità, launched in 1924 by Antonio Gramsci) and newsrooms have continued to shrink: in the last 10 years, daily papers have lost around 30% of their journalistic workforce.[3. According to data by Alessandro Nova, Bocconi University, http://www.fleg.it/upload/studi_allegati/Presentazione_filiera_carta_2015_A.%20Nova_ridotto] Despite these problems, paywalls are still not common in Italian online media outlets which continue to rely on free news subsidised by advertising. Native advertising formats have been introduced on most sites, but often with no clear policies to distinguish them from editorial content.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

The popularity of WhatsApp is growing year by year in Italy, but media outlets are still reluctant to use this channel as a distribution platform – with the exception of La Repubblica’s newly launched breaking news service (January 2015). According to recent data, the amount of news shared online continues to grow.[4. According to a recent report by Human Highway report, the number of shared news items has boomed in the last years (in 2011, 100.000 news items per day were shared; in 2014, more than 400.000), http://www.slideshare.net/SitoH2/201406-social-new-media-in-italia] In the vast majority of cases this happens through Facebook, while Twitter and Google+ continue to play a marginal role. NB

result185

test-editor — Mon, 04 May 2015 07:08:51 +0000

The Growth of Screens and New Platforms

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 12:05:33 +0000

The centrality of smartphones

Overall we find that more people are accessing news through a greater number of devices than ever before. The computer remains the most important device for online news, but for many this is now supplemented by heavy usage of smartphones and tablets. Across all our countries 69% of our sample use a smartphone for any purpose (up from 58% last year) and two-thirds of these (66%) say they used the device for news at least once in the past week. Australia has the highest weekly news usage of smartphones at 59% of our online sample, along with Denmark (57%) and Ireland (52%). The US (+13), the UK (+9), and Japan (+7) have seen the biggest increases in the last twelve months. Tablet growth has slowed in some countries like the US (+2) but the UK has bucked the trend with a significant increase (+8).

Digital devices for accessing the news – all countries

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

Greater penetration of smartphones and tablets has significantly increased the amount of cross-device consumption. Across our entire sample almost half (45%) now use more than two digital devices to access the news, up from a third (33%) in 2013. The number using more than three devices has grown from 9% to 15% in the same time period. But the move to multiplatform is happening at different rates. To illustrate the different pace of adoption, we set out the device overlaps for Japan and Australia, two countries at different ends of the spectrum. Almost half of our Japanese sample (49%) still ONLY use the computer to access news each week compared with just a quarter of Australians (24%). We see significant overlaps between device use in Australia with almost a fifth (18%) using the computer, smartphone, and tablet in the last week – three times the percentage in Japan (5%).

Device overlaps – Japan vs Australia

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample Japan = 2033, Australia = 2042.

Importance of smartphones grows

In many countries these trends mean that publishers now report that the majority of traffic comes from new mobile devices. In the UK, of those who use a device to access digital news, those who say the smartphone is now their MAIN device has risen from 15% to 27% since 2013. That rises to almost half (47%) of those aged 25–34. In Australia and Ireland almost a third (32%) say the smartphone is most important device they use to access the news. The tablet is most valued in the UK (18%) and Denmark (20%) and least valued in Japan (5%).

Scroll data area to see more

Main device for news by country

	UK	US	FRA	GER	SPA	ITA	IRE	DEN	FIN	JPN	BRA	AUS
Smartphone	27%	26%	25%	22%	24%	24%	32%	28%	24%	19%	23%	32%
Tablet	18%	10%	8%	9%	10%	9%	7%	20%	11%	5%	6%	15%

UK8b6_5. You’ve said you use the following devices to access news in the last week, which is your MAIN way of accessing online news? Base: All who used a device to access news in the last week UK = 1795, US = 1912, France = 1635, Germany = 1554, Denmark = 1802, Finland = 1376, Italy = 1707, Spain = 1819, Japan = 1839, Brazil = 1900, Australia = 1808, Ireland = 1357.

Demographic changes over time

Across our global sample we can see the same trends, with the younger half of the population more dependent on smartphones for news. In stark contrast, the tablet’s greater cost and the larger screen size makes this device more popular with older age groups. Under 35s have seen no growth in tablet use for news over the past year (see chart) and in some countries (Denmark) tablet news usage amongst the young is falling.

Age profile for smartphones – all countries

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: 2013/2014/2015 All = 11413/18859/23557.

Age profile for tablets – all countries

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: 2013/2014/2015 All = 11413/18859/23557.

As the overall ownership figures rise, both tablets and smartphones are reaching a broader cross-section of news users; parts of the population that the computer has never reached. Almost half of Daily Briefers (46%) now use a smartphone for news and 39% of Casual Users.

Smartphone users consume fewer news sources

The move to smartphone may be making us less adventurous with our choices. We find that people use fewer sources of news each week when using a smartphone than when accessing news via a tablet or a computer. We asked our respondents to select the sources they used on each device from a given list of top news sources in each country. On a smartphone, across all our countries 47% said they only used one source of news, compared with 39% on a computer – only 9% accessed five or more sources compared with 14% on a computer.

Breakdown of number of sources used per device – all countries

Q19a/b/c. You say  you access news via a SMARTPHONE/TABLET/ COMPUTER. When using that device what news sources have you accessed in the last week? Base: All who used a smartphone/tablet/computer in the last week = 10059/14214/5257

It may be that on a smartphone, where people are often short of time and more task focused, they are happier to stick to one or two brands they trust. On a tablet or computer there may be more time to browse, more time for serendipity.

News via apps or mobile browser?

In the last few years most news publishers have created specific apps for mobile platforms – designed to create a slicker, faster experience that links to additional features of mobile operating systems. At the same time they have also spent time and engineering resource in optimising their mobile browsing experience for the small screen. Against that background, it is interesting to note that in most countries the mobile browser remains the main access point to news. Only in the UK – and only on smartphones – do more people say they use apps than a mobile browser.

Use of apps vs mobile browser by country - smartphone

Q9a/b. Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE/TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you? Base: All who used a smartphone/tablet for news in the last week UK = 899/675, US = 1005/521, Germany = 700/331, Finland = 775/391, Italy = 927/384, Australia = 1154/730

Use of apps vs mobile browser by country - tablet

In four countries (UK, US, Germany, and Australia) we asked specifically about the number of news apps they currently have downloaded to their device. The average number is just 1.52 for a smartphone and 1.59 for a tablet.

Number of apps on smartphone and tablet (UK, US, Germany, and Australia)

Q9c/d. You said you use a smartphone/tablet for news, how many NEWS apps do you have on your smartphone? Base: All who used a smartphone/tablet for news in the last week = 3758/2257.

So in these four countries three-quarters (70% for smartphone and 66% for tablet) have at least one news app on their device but only a third of those who access news on a device (34% for smartphone users and 36% for tablet) use them each week. This is an illustration of how difficult it can be to keep your brand front of mind on a mobile device. There is higher than average use of news apps in Finland, Denmark, and the UK – countries where strong brands have made an early and decisive move into mobile.

Scroll data area to see more

Percentage of smartphone and tablet owners using any news apps in a given week

	ALL	UK	US	France	Germany	Ireland	Denmark	Finland	Italy	Spain	Japan	Brazil	Australia
SMARTPHONE	34%	43%	37%	36%	34%	37%	40%	42%	23%	33%	28%	33%	27%
TABLET	36%	41%	36%	33%	34%	39%	38%	45%	27%	33%	40%	40%	31%

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online (via any device) in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use? Please select ALL that apply. Base: All who used a smartphone/tablet in the last week UK = 1436/1102, US = 1439/899, France = 1142/655, Germany = 1285/716, Denmark = 1590/1134, Finland = 1057/620, Italy = 1405/827, Spain = 1658/906, Japan = 899/423, Brazil = 1445/690, Australia = 1735/1186, Ireland = 1122/620.

Uniquely in the countries we looked at, the BBC News app has been downloaded by over half of those who use apps in the UK. Elsewhere the picture is more fragmented.

Scroll data area to see more

Top news apps compared – selected countries

Q9c/d. You said you use a smartphone/tablet for news, how many NEWS apps do you have on your smartphone/tablet? Q9ei/ii. You said you use one or more news apps on a SMARTPHONE/TABLET, which of the following brands do you use via an app? Please select all that apply. Base: All who used a smartphone/tablet for news in the last week UK = 899/675, US = 1005/521, Germany = 700/331, Australia = 1154/730.

News Lovers are much more likely to use apps than Casual Users. They have also downloaded twice as many news apps to their device (2 smartphone apps compared with 1.06 for casual users). It is not surprising that people who are more interested in news are prepared to invest in a better experience with a brand they like. Casual Users are not as prepared to put the effort in; they tend to come across the news in other ways. Apple users also tend to download more apps. They have an average of 1.7 apps on their iPhones compared with 1.4 for users of other phones.

Percentage of Apple users vs others accessing apps/mobile browser – selected countries - smartphone

Q8a. Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use (for any purpose)? Q9a. Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a MOBILE/TABLET, which of the following statements most applies to you? Base: All who used a smartphone/tablet for news in the last week UK = 899/675, US = 1005/521, Germany = 700/331, Finland = 775/391, Italy = 927/384, Australia = 1154/730.

Percentage of Apple users vs others accessing apps/mobile browser – selected countries - tablet

Operating systems

In terms of mobile devices, we find that there are radically different patterns of usage by country. In general, richer Northern Europeans tend to favour Apple devices. The Spanish and Brazilians use predominantly other systems such as Android and Blackberry. Tablets sees a more even split with Apple users driving almost half of all news usage.

Mobile operating systems used for news by country - smartphone

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

Mobile operating systems used for news by country - tablet

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

Multi-platform usage extends options

The growth of smartphones and tablets has not generally come at the expense of other media, but is instead increasing the range of options. Heavy tablet users are just as likely – or more likely – to consume TV news (77%), listen to radio (42%), or read a printed newspaper (36%) in a given week when compared with the average user. Heavy smartphone users are a little less likely to read a newspaper or watch TV news in some countries – but this is likely to as much to do with the younger age profile of smartphone users as the device itself.

Percentage of heavy tablet and smartphone users accessing traditional media - all countries

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Please select all that apply. UK8b6_5. You’ve said you use the following devices to access news in the last week, which is your MAIN way of accessing online news? Base: All/US = 20577/1985. Main device as tablet/smartphone 5001/506.

Percentage of heavy tablet and smartphone users accessing traditional media - USA

Smart and connected TVs

Over the past few years the number of TVs that have direct or indirect access to the internet has grown rapidly. We define smart TVs as having the capability to connect directly to the internet; they often come preloaded with apps for video on demand but also some news apps. Connected TVs normally connect to internet services via a set-top box or other connector such as an Apple TV. Increasingly, these services too offer video- or text-led news services including travel and weather. Spain, France, and Germany lead the way for smart and connected TVs but in most countries use for news remains relatively modest – compared with tablets and smartphones. Even so, broadcasters and news providers are increasingly developing new services such as apps for this platform and there has been significant growth in a number of countries.

Percentage accessing news via connected or smart TVs by country

Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

Comparative Brand Data Analysis

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:50:33 +0000

In this section we draw on country data on brand performance along with questions asked elsewhere in the survey about the types of news sources accessed online and offline. This includes a typology of different online sources: whether they are traditional newspaper providers such as the New York Times, broadcaster websites like NHK, Globo, and the BBC, or digital-born players like Yahoo, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Google News. In the figure we have used these classifications to show the level of disruption suffered by traditional news organisations from pure players. We can see that in some countries like Finland and Denmark, traditional newspaper brands still dominate online news. In the UK and Brazil broadcast brands take the largest share, with newspapers playing a lesser role. By contrast, in Japan, Brazil, Australia, and the US there has been far more impact from digital-born players.

Online reach of newspapers, broadcasters, and digital born players – by country

Q5B. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Via online platforms (web, mobile, tablet, e-reader) Base: Total sample in each country.

How newspaper brands are managing the transition to digital

Aggregators and new digital native news companies may be gaining ground but they still produce a very small proportion of original journalism. The majority of journalists are still employed by companies that built their reputation from newspapers, which is why there is so much concern about their long-term sustainability in a digital age. Overall we find that three-quarters of our sample (74%) across all countries access a newspaper brand each week but in most countries the audience share coming from the online part of the operation grows every year.

Newspaper brand reach by country – print/online split

Q5a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Via traditional platforms/online. Base: Total sample in each country.

Some countries like Finland have seen newspapers transferring a traditional strength in print to online usage. Two-thirds of our sample (64%) use these brands in both print and online, with a total reach of 93%. This is partly because Finland, as a small country, has been less disrupted by outside forces – protected by language and culture. But the position of newspapers in Australia, the United States, and Japan is very different.

Broadcasters online – a mixed picture

Across our sample we see that the vast majority (89%) are using a broadcaster brand via TV, radio, website, or app to access the news. But for these public service or commercial channels the main focus – and the main audience – remains with television and radio. Audience levels and business models around broadcast news have not been disrupted to the same extent as print. Indeed for most, online news has been an opportunity to extend services and overall reach by competing head to head with newspapers around text news.

Broadcaster reach by country – TV and radio vs online

Q5a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Via traditional platforms/online. Base: Total sample in each country.

The success of TV brands online has partly depended on the extent to which they have been able to compete directly with newspapers. In Brazil, commercial Globo has invested heavily in its online services and is the largest and most successful brand at 25% share online. Public broadcasters in Finland, Denmark, and the UK have faced little restriction on their ability to leverage their considerable investments in journalism online. By contrast NHK in Japan, RAI in Italy, and public broadcasters in Germany and France have faced financial, political, or organisational constraints. In all cases, the impact of greater competition online means that even the most successful broadcasters end up looking much smaller online. Here are a few examples.

Selected public service broadcasters – TV and radio vs online

Q5a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Via traditional platforms/online. Base: Total sample in each country. RAI offline estimated as TG1,2,3 combined with RAI News with an assumption of 66% TG1,2,3,4,5 code. France Television a combination of FTV and FTV.info.

Low levels of online usage for public service news are a particular problem because most PSBs have a mandate to provide services for all age groups and demographics.

Public service broadcasters usage by age – across TV, radio, and online

Q5a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Via traditional platforms/online. Base: Total sample in selected countries.

Of the selected broadcasters, the BBC has the highest overall reach, with almost 80% accessing a news broadcast, news website, or app in the last week. It also has the flattest age profile; its strong online presence means that over two-thirds (68%) of 18–24s also use its services. By contrast YLE, the Finnish broadcaster, reaches only four in ten young people (40%) but nine in ten (91%) of over 55s. ZDF and NHK have a healthy overall weekly reach but mainly because of high usage amongst the over 55s. As young people watch less television the low levels of online reach will increasingly affect the legitimacy of public broadcasters and the way they are funded.

Digital-born news sector

Digital-born is a wide category that includes (a) portals like MSN and Google News that aggregate news from other sources and (b) second-wave start-ups like Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Vice News that create original content as well as repackaging news from elsewhere. In general the old-style portals like Yahoo and MSN have been declining in popularity along with the move to mobile. Much of their success came from the tie in with email services and default search engines on computers. By contrast the Huffington Post has significantly increased its audience in the last year in many of the countries we survey. In the United States it has increased online reach by 5 percentage points while Buzzfeed has doubled in popularity. We see similar trends towards socially driven news companies in other markets such as Italy.

Growth of Buzzfeed and Huffington Post for news – US and Italy

Scroll data area to see more

United States

	All	Change	18-24s
Huffington Post	22%	+5%	27%
Buzzfeed	10%	+5%	20%
Yahoo	23%	-5%	19%
MSN	11%	-3%	8%

Italy

	All	Change	18-24s
Huffington Post	7%	+2%	9%
Buzzfeed	1%	-	6%
Yahoo	11%	-4%	10%
MSN	8%	-3%	11%

Q5b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Via online platforms (web, mobile, tablet, e-reader). Base: Total sample/18–24s US = 2295/155, Italy = 2006/174. Note: We did not survey Buzzfeed consumption in Italy in 2014.

Both the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed are looking to develop a stronger news focus as they grow. This has involved hiring high-profile journalists and in most counties HuffPo has partnered with traditional news providers such as Le Monde in France, L’Espresso group in Italy, and El País in Spain. MSN, on the other hand, has been pulling back from original content and from their joint ventures in Australia and Japan to focus more on pure aggregation.

Many more sources of news but consumers stick to a few trusted brands

The growth of the internet has provided access to more and more sources of news than ever before – most of them free. These include digital-born brands (above), but also easier access to international brands like the International New York Times, Daily Mail Online, and the Financial Times. And then there is a plethora of specialist blogs and websites that provide information related to business, technology, and entertainment. Against this background, it is perhaps surprising that our data suggest most people continue to access a relatively small number of trusted sources. Looking at online news in particular, a quarter of our total sample (25%) only consume one source of news in a given week. That figure rises to a third in Japan (36%) and the UK (33%).

Number of online sources by country – single source vs more than four

The low number of sources used is perhaps a reaction to the bewildering amount of choice but also testament to the enduring power of strong brands. In Japan more than half (62%) of those who only use one online source access Yahoo and in the UK 46% use the BBC. Those groups who express a stronger interest in news, however, are far more likely to access multiple sources online. We see the same effect by country; in urban Brazil – where there is a strong self-declared interest in news – almost a third (30%) access more than four sources online each week, with a fifth or more doing the same in Ireland (20%), Spain (20%), Denmark (21%), and Finland (24%).

Online increases the number of news brands accessed overall

Taking an aggregate view of all our countries – we find that in combination with traditional platforms, the impact of online is to significantly increase the number of brands used for news each week. In all countries, those who consumed news online used between 1.4 and 2 times more news brands on average than those who did not. This pattern was most evident in Brazil (1.9x), and least evident in Germany (1.4x).

Effect of online use on the number of brands accessed

Results achieved by deduplicating brands from the list of traditional and online sources at Q5a/b and comparing with segments of online and non-online users derived from Q3 which asks about the broad sources of news accessed in the past week. Base: Total sample in each country.

Combined with data showing that online users continue to regularly access TV news (75%), radio news (37%), and print (41%), this shows that online is not replacing traditional media but is mainly being used as an additional layer extending choice and convenience.

Chapter Three: Paying for News

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 11:00:33 +0000

Ireland

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:32:21 +0000

Statistics
Population	5m
Internet	79%
Trust in news	46% (6^th out of 12)
Interest in news	71% (5^th out of 12)

Ireland’s media environment is buoyant and competitive, with new private media launched in the past year particularly in the broadcast sector. Public service broadcaster RTÉ dominates in both the digital and traditional news markets while Independent News and Media (INM) titles have seen extensive restructuring to meet digital first strategies. The television sector has seen the most dramatic changes, with new competitors entering the market. UTV Ireland launched in early 2015, while another new channel, Irish TV aimed at the Irish diaspora, launched on Sky channels and was approved for an Irish broadcasting license. TV3 has refocused its efforts on home-grown content.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	53%
Broadcasters	54%
Pure players	51%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	79%
Broadcasters	92%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	69%
Broadcasters	90%

The media diet is diverse, with national news being the central interest followed by international. In online news, eight of the seventeen most popular brands have a global scope – BBC and Sky being the most prevalent. New online-only news titles such as the Huffington Post 8% and Buzzfeed 6% are capturing growing sections of Ireland’s digital news market. Local news shows a lower level of engagement than national news, with 8% engaging digitally and 23% through local newspapers and 15% listening to local radio. Johnston Press Group exited Ireland with the sale of their regional titles. Their competitors at a local level INM also experienced much change with increased competition for advertising from local free sheets and new local websites. In digital, only one national daily news title, The Irish Sun, has moved behind a hard paywall. This was later followed by a very soft paywall from the Irish Times aimed at only its most active users. However, the Irish say they are reluctant to pay for online news, while RTÉ as well as INM have committed to offering online content free and expanding across digital platforms.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Over the past year social media played a central role in the protest campaign against the introduction of water charges. Facebook is Ireland’s most popular social network but Irish journalists are some of the heaviest Twitter users in the world according to recent research.[1. http://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/irish-journalists-among-world-s-heaviest-social-media-users-study-finds-1.2101471] While talking among friends is the most common way of engaging with the news, 21% shared news via social media and 19% commented on news in social media. JS, NK

Denmark

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:35:01 +0000

Statistics
Population	5.5m
Internet	97%
Trust in news	57% (4^th out of 12)
Interest in news	60% (11^th out of 12)

The Danish media environment is characterised by a combination of strong domestic broadcasters and newspapers. Two state-owned broadcasters, one a licence-fee-funded public service broadcaster (DR), and the other a public service broadcaster funded by advertising sales and subscription fees (TV2), dominate broadcast news and have a wide reach via digital platforms. A diverse national press has a strong position online while regional and local papers remain important in their respective markets but have more limited digital reach.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	70%
Broadcasters	55%
Pure players	25%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	87%
Broadcasters	92%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	74%
Broadcasters	89%

While traditional news brands generally remain stable and strong, metroxpress (the country’s only free daily) shows growth both in print and online editions as a result of investments in newsroom staffing, print circulation, and distribution, and online quality. The search for more paid customers online remains a key theme for the quality Danish titles. Denmark’s oldest newspaper Berlingske changed ownership from the British Mecom group to the Belgian De Persgroep. Berlingske and commercially funded public service broadcaster TV2 have renewed their deal to exchange business news, strengthening their collaboration. News video consumption has grown significantly in Denmark over the past year (+8 in our survey). Danish news agency, Ritzau, has boosted its supply of video content to the Danish media, while newspapers ramped up online video production. Smartphone and tablet use for news continues to soar, accompanied by increases for born-online pure players and for social media news. Denmark runs a media subsidy scheme to support news companies that produce more than 50% public affairs content. In 2014 this scheme was extended from print to include online-only news.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

The number of Danes who say they use social media as a gateway to news has more than doubled to 38%, directing them to a diversity of news sources they would not otherwise have accessed. This may be partly because news organisations have stepped up their presence, investing in new social media teams. Viral news discussions triggered by social media continue to be dominated by fun and weird news, but substantial political stories, for instance about privatisation of public utilities or immigration policy, also top social media charts. KCS

Finland

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:37:24 +0000

Statistics
Population	5m
Internet	97%
Trust in news	68% (1^st out of 12)
Interest in news	64% (10^th out of 12)

The Finnish media environment is characterised by a strong regional press. Daily papers are mainly purchased by subscriptions, often covering both print and online editions. The two national afternoon tabloids both reach half of the population weekly (mainly online). Tax-funded public broadcasting company YLE and commercial MTV3 dominate TV news and have a wide reach via digital platforms. The two afternoon tabloids Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti top online news usage with a mainly free offering but elsewhere the move to paid news is growing. Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s best known national daily, has been using a paywall online since 2012, and now half of its subscribers pay for online content, either by bundled subscriptions or pure digital subscriptions.[1. Ongoing subscription for print Helsingin Sanomat for one year costs €349/year, bundled €397. Online subscription with all services costs €178.80, and a more restricted online subscription at €118.80. Total circulation is 331,551 (of which only print 51%, bundled 35%, and only digital 14%). Total digital subscriptions are 163,826. This is a significant proportion of digital circulation (242,518) of 17 dailies that took part in a media audit in Finland in 2014 (http://mediaauditfinland.fi/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Levikkitilasto20141.pdf).]

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	79%
Broadcasters	55%
Pure players	24%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	93%
Broadcasters	88%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	78%
Broadcasters	82%

Some of the regional dailies have already erected paywalls – either metered or freemium. The rest are planning to do so in the near future. The Finnish regional press is also looking to cut costs – creating a new joint venture Lännen Media to create shared non-local content for syndication across 12 newspapers. New initiatives for 2015 include Flou, a personalised app from the Sanoma group which aggregates content from newspapers, TV, and magazines for €12.99 a month. Prejkfast is a home-grown Finnish start-up that is looking to create a widely used micropayment system for newspapers. Digital weekly reach is up to 79% for traditional newspapers and 55% for broadcasters – only 24% for pure players. The most popular pure player is a national news aggregator Ampparit. The Finnish language and small market seem to shield national news brands somewhat against international competition. Smartphone use for news has grown considerably. A quarter (24%) say the smartphone is the main way of accessing online news (15% in 2014).

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Facebook has retained its leading position as a top social media platform for news in all age groups. Suomi24, which ranks third, is the most popular general discussion forum in Finland. The use of Google+ seems to be decreasing sharply (now 5% compared to 12% in 2014) while WhatsApp is gaining popularity (weekly use now 4% for news and 32% for any purpose). ER

Urban Brazil

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:40:54 +0000

Statistics
Population	202.5m*
Internet	54%
Trust in news	62% (2^nd out of 12)
Interest in news	82% (2^nd out of 12)
* NB our data come from urban Brazil – rather than a nationally representative sample – and so represent richer and more connected users rather than the general population.

South America’s biggest media market is home to thousands of radio stations and hundreds of TV channels. Brazilians are among the world’s top users of blogs and social networks and use of online is growing fast, attracting foreign outlets such as Buzzfeed, the Spanish newspaper El País and the Huffington Post, which launched their Portuguese versions between 2012 and 2013.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	46%
Broadcasters	72%
Pure players	64%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	46%
Broadcasters	91%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	66%
Broadcasters	83%

Following the downturn in the Brazilian economy, mainstream media have suffered from a series of cuts and layoffs. The debate is the same as in New York or Madrid: how to compensate for the fall in traditional advertising revenue. Among the three big newspapers, Folha has been experimenting with television while Estado de S. Paulo is testing new models such as sponsored content. The BBC’s strategy of publishing text articles and videos in popular internet hubs UOL and G1, part of the giant Grupo Globo, appears to be paying off, with a solid 8% online reach in our survey. As in some other parts of the world, tablets have reached their peak in Brazil and are being replaced by cheaper cellphones with large screens that can do almost the same. 2014 was the year of the WhatsApp– or ZapZap as it is known in Brazil. News organisations like El País actively encourage sharing with the tool while radio stations have been using accounts to build a collaborative network sharing information about traffic jams in São Paulo. WhatsApp is cheap in comparison with normal phone rates, which explains its rapid growth.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Participation online increased markedly during the recent elections and economic crisis and can be linked to a highly political and polarised public.[1. http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/11/04/brazils-election-as-polarised-as-can-be] Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds were flooded with election-related videos, parodies, and memes – in addition to discussion and sharing via WhatsApp. Brazil’s Facebook community is the world’s second biggest outside the US. Google’s Orkut – once the top network in the country – closed down in September. FM

Japan

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:42:21 +0000

Statistics
Population	127m
Internet	86%
Trust in news	46% (=6^th out of 12)
Interest in news	66% (8^th out of 12)

There are five national terrestrial TV networks in Japan, amongst which NHK is publicly funded and runs national radio networks. Japan’s newspaper industry continues to buck trends with around 45 million copies still printed daily – delivering to more than 8 in 10 households. Print is still highly profitable, which means that the shift to digital is taking longer. Smartphone penetration is growing, but is lower than in other developed countries – as older generations stick with feature phones and once dominant services like iMode.

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	32%
Broadcasters	30%
Pure players	66%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	70%
Broadcasters	77%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	63%
Broadcasters	74%

2014 was the year of mobile news apps. Downloaded by millions, they are taking readers from browser-based news aggregators like Yahoo! News – the dominant digital news service in Japan for more than a decade. Smartnews, Gunosy, Newspics and Antenna grew significantly off the back of slick new interfaces that present news from multiple publishers. Aggregators of all sorts – including Yahoo, Google News and MSN – are the primary gateways to news content in Japan as newspapers have given away parts of their content in return for click-throughs. Change is in the air though with print papers experiencing the largest drop ever in total circulation by 3.5%. Nikkei (Japan Economic Daily) is leading efforts to transition paying customers to digital, with 380,000 paying subscribers, and Asahi Shinbun has 160,000 – though the figures remain a tiny proportion of their print circulation. Newspapers suffered a disturbing period editorially with Asahi Shimbun forced to retract stories on ‘Comfort Women’ in the Second World War and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Its conservative rivals lambasted Asahi, while media critics deplored both camps.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

Low online participation reflects Japanese people’s overall reluctance to speak about politics and social issues publicly. They also prefer anonymity online, with research[1. Japanese government: Research and Study into the Impact on the Society Made by the Progress of the ICT, Mar. 2014. http://www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/whitepaper/ja/h26/html/nc143120.html (Japanese language).] showing more than 75% of respondents have a Twitter account without their real name while in other five countries (US, UK, France, South Korea, Singapore) the proportion is 31–45%. This could explain the lower popularity of Facebook in Japan. YS

Australia

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 09:45:13 +0000

Statistics
Population	22.5m
Internet	94%
Trust in news	39% (8^th out of 12)
Interest in news	65% (9^th out of 12)

With near-universal internet access and high smartphone penetration, Australians are early adopters of new technology and avid digital news consumers. Australia’s broadcast environment includes two public broadcasters, three commercial terrestrial TV networks, the Foxtel cable/satellite/IPTV network, and multiple commercial radio networks. Despite the most concentrated print ownership of any Western democracy – coupled with a contracting traditional media industry – there is still excitement and potential in the sector: for example, the independently published weekly The Saturday Paper, launched in 2014, was accessed by 9% of survey respondents in the past week. Digital-only launches include free-access local versions of UK mastheads the Guardian (2013) and the Mail Online (2014) and of American sites Buzzfeed (2014) and the Huffington Post (2015).

Online

TV, radio, print

Digital reach

Newspapers	39%
Broadcasters	35%
Pure players	67%

Cross-platform reach

Newspapers	68%
Broadcasters	89%

Traditional (offline) reach

Newspapers	58%
Broadcasters	87%

Top digital subscriptions

The Age
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Australian

The easing in 2006 of cross-media ownership restrictions allowed for asset acquisition in two out of three of the television, newspaper, and radio sectors in a geographical area. Media ownership remains an ongoing issue, with the Communications Minister again raising the prospect of limited deregulation as recently as March 2015. National broadcaster ABC achieves high penetration in urban, regional, and rural regions via multiple traditional and online platforms. Whilst the ABC continues to move into the digital space with some confidence, the organisation has been subject to recent editorial and financial pressure from Australia’s right-wing Federal Government. The number paying – or willing to pay – for news remains low, which may affect the two major publishers in Australia’s largely duopolistic newspaper market.[1. Circulation figures in this section are from Australian Bureau of Circulation audit December quarter 2014. Digital news figures combine digital-only and print+digital subscriptions packages and excludes print-only subscriptions.] Fairfax Media operates a hard paywall for national business daily the Australian Financial Review and soft paywalls for metropolitan dailies the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age. Newsroom and back-office reductions may have reduced product quality and – as a result – sales. Fairfax reported 69% share of all metropolitan mastheads' digital-only subscriptions and 19.5% share of print sales, amounting to 26.2% of the total metropolitan newspapers share.

Apple devices vs the rest (news usage)

Top social networks*

* Use weekly for news

News Corp Australia operates a hard paywall for national daily The Australian, whose circulation drop is offset to some extent by a rise in print+digital subscriptions and digital-only sales. News Corp reported 31% share of all metropolitan mastheads' digital-only subscriptions and 71.3% share of print sales, amounting to 65.8% of the total metropolitan newspapers share. News’s other mastheads – including the web-only News.com.au – remain free to access. MDB

Chapter Two: News Access and Consumption

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 10:00:26 +0000

In this section we lay out the overall shape of news consumption across TV, radio and online. We look at different segmentations to help us understand the varying patterns of news use. We look at when and where people access the news, comparing data across seven countries. We also explore motivations for news and trust in different types of media. Finally, we focus on interest in different types of news, including political news, and look at the impact of political viewpoints on consumption and social sharing.

Sources of News

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 10:05:30 +0000

Television remains the number one source of news in most markets

Television and online remain the most popular ways of accessing news on a weekly basis. Amongst our sample, television is ahead in Germany and France, with online winning in many other countries. Given that this is an online survey and thus will underrepresent traditional users who are not online, it is probably the case that TV news is still ahead everywhere except for the United States and possibly Denmark, Finland, and Australia.

Sources of news by country

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	Finland	USA	Urban Brazil	Japan	Ireland	Australia
TV	75%	82%	82%	78%	80%	75%	75%	64%	81%	73%	76%	72%
Radio	37%	50%	40%	23%	28%	50%	45%	26%	39%	17%	50%	41%
Printed Newspapers	38%	38%	47%	38%	19%	33%	49%	23%	33%	44%	49%	39%
Online (inc. social media)	73%	60%	86%	81%	71%	85%	90%	74%	91%	70%	83%	85%

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

The strength of traditional platforms across many countries is also well illustrated by these data and reflects both investment in programming and some deep cultural habits that are proving hard to shift.

Generational splits

Though television remains the most regularly accessed type of news, this is not the case for all. Indeed every year in our data we see a significant generational split, with young people expressing an overwhelming preference for online news.

Main source of news by age – young prefer online – all countries

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news? Base: All who used a news source in the last week All = 23155.

Not only do young people prefer online, our data show that a significant proportion are abandoning television news completely. Some of the biggest falls have been in the United States, France, and Denmark – particularly with under 35s. Only a quarter (24%) watch TV news bulletins or programmes in the US compared with 37% two years ago. This is in sharp contrast to Germany where 58% of under 35s still watch bulletins or programmes weekly.

Television news bulletin use – under 35s

	UK	Germany	France	Denmark	USA
2013	51%	63%	67%	65%	37%
2015	42%	58%	53%	52%	24%
Change	-9%	-5%	-14%	-13%	-13%

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Please select all that apply. Base: Under 35s 2013/2015 UK=555/486, US=453/538, France=276/353, Germany=274/452, Denmark=294/568

The rise of social media as a source of news

Within online, we have also seen a sharp rise in the growth of social media in the past year as a source of news. Some of the biggest increases have come in the US, UK, Brazil, and Denmark.

Social media as a source of news – all countries

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

To understand better the value created by these different sources of news, we asked in more detail about a number of dimensions – including speed, serendipity, and accuracy – for each platform in the UK, US, France, Germany, Spain, and Ireland. In terms of the averages, we find that television news is most valued across the board. Online news websites and social media are valued more for serendipity (alerting audience to stories they didn’t know about). Social media are considered least reliable.

The value of different platforms for news – six countries

Q3ai–iv. For speed of coverage (breaking news)/bringing news stories to me/analysis and comment/accuracy and reliability, which one of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Base: All who used a news source in the last week UK = 2105, US = 2198, France = 1947, Germany = 1943, Spain = 2014, Ireland = 1486.

We see a very different story, however if we look at the under 35s. Here online is considered best on all dimensions, while social media is considered particularly valuable for alerting people to stories they didn’t know about. Interestingly, though, even this group of young people is highly distrustful of the accuracy of information in social media when compared with reputable brands online or on TV.

The value of different platforms for news – under 35s

Q3ai-iv Which one of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best for the following? Base: Under 35s who used a source of news in the last week UK=472, US=492, France=339, Germany=442, Denmark=568, Ireland=485

Segmentation Across and Within Countries

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 10:10:12 +0000

As last year we have created a number of segmentations to help us interpret the results. These give us a non-overlapping categorisation of the online news universe that we can apply across all of our countries.

Traditionalists vs Mainly Digital

Our first segmentation categorises respondents into those who exhibit traditional approaches (mainly TV, radio, and print) and those who are mainly digital in the way they consume the news. We also identify a sizeable group who are platform agnostic. They actively consume news across traditional and online platforms (see the table).

Segmentation by sources and devices

We classify Traditional users as those who consume more offline sources than online when we ask about specific newspaper, TV, radio, and online brands. (Q5a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? Via TV, radio, or print/via online platforms?) Mainly Digital users are those who consume more online sources than offline. To pick up anomalies we then further adjust these segments based on the number of digital devices used for news each week. Half & Half users who use more than two digital devices per week for news go into mainly digital segment and any traditionalists who use more than two devices for digital news go into the Half & Half category. Looking at the results of these segmentations by country we find that France and Germany still have the largest percentage of our online sample accessing news in mainly traditional ways. A large percentage of these (around three in ten) ONLY access news via TV, radio, or print – even though they are active online in other ways. All other countries in our survey have a majority of mainly digital (online) news usage, though the UK also has a large traditional segment (32%).

Traditional users vs mainly digital users – all countries

Sources and Platforms Segmentation Base: Total sample in each country.

We need to be careful in interpreting these results. The Urban Brazil sample is a much younger group and will not be representative of the national picture. Italy and Spain also have lower internet penetration so these data will significantly underrepresent traditional media use. But it is striking how different the patterns are – even in countries with very similar levels of internet penetration such as Finland and Japan. A number of large countries are taking longer to adopt digital news use and we also find that within those countries there are particular groups that prefer traditional platforms.

Comparing Finland and Germany we see very different patterns based on age. In Finland online news or multiplatform news sweep through all age groups. Only a proportion of over 55s are holding out – but the majority of them use a range of platforms. By contrast, in Germany a significant proportion of all groups over 25 are sticking to traditional patterns. The overall appeal of online news is much lower – despite high internet use in general.

Traditional/online split by age – Finland

Sources and Platforms Segmentation Base: Mainly Digital/Mainly Traditional Germany = 523/809, Finland = 762/258.

Traditional/online split by age – Germany

Sources and Platforms Segmentation Base: Mainly Digital/Mainly Traditional Germany = 523/809, Finland = 762/258.

These differences could be to do with a number of factors including digital literacy and the willingness (or not) of big media companies to embrace and promote online at the expense of their traditional businesses.

News Lovers, Daily Briefers, and Casual Users

Our second segment is based on a mix of frequency and interest in the news. The conceptual framework for our segmentation is set out in the next chart.

Segmentation by frequency of access and interest in news

Q1b.Typically, how often do you access news? Q1c. How interested, if at all, would you say you are in news? Base: All.

France has the highest proportion of Casual Users (44%), which reflects a self-declared low interest in news. Urban Brazil (28%) and Italy (26%) have the highest proportion of News Lovers, while Spain and Finland (58%) have the highest proportion of Daily Briefers.

Frequency of access

A key component of the News Lover category is frequency of access. Here we asked users about how often they accessed news on any platform.

Frequency of access by country

Q1b. Typically, how often do you access news? By news we mean national, international, regional/local news, and other topical events accessed via any platform (radio, TV, newspaper, or online). Base: Total sample in each country.

Around a quarter of those in Finland (27%) and Japan (23%) said they accessed the news more than five times a day. That’s more than twice as often as users in Spain, France, and Germany who said they were most likely to check on news between one and five times each day. The idea of daily briefing seems more established in these countries where the evening television bulletin remains a key source of news. The US and Australia have the highest proportion checking in less than once a day (several times a week or less). Across all our countries, 20% of men access more than five times a day, compared with just 10% of women. Increased frequency of access is strongly correlated with the growth of online, with mainly digital users almost three times as likely as traditionalists to access the news more than five times a day. Increased frequency also seem to be related to the growth of new devices – such as mobiles and tablets – which are extending the range of access points. The more devices we have, the more frequently we consume (see the next chart).

Online drives greater frequency of use

Sources and Platforms Segmentation Base: All who accessed news more than 5 times a day. All = 3579.

Scroll data area to see more

More devices you use, the more often you access news

Device	More than five times
ALL News users	15%
Computer	17%
Smartphone	19%
Tablet	21%
Tablet and smartphone	25%
All three	27%

When and Where do we Access the News?

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 10:25:13 +0000

The classic news consumption curve is being transformed by the growth in new mobile devices, which are extending the access points through the day. Aggregating data from all our 12 counties we see that mainly digital users have a much flatter consumption curve than those who still consume news via mainly traditional means. With the latter group, we see more distinct peaks around early morning, lunchtime, and early evening, coinciding with the key TV and radio broadcasts.

News access by time of day – digital vs traditional

Q4b. When do you typically access the news? Please select all that apply to you. Base: Total sample in selected countries. Mainly Digital = 3328, Platform Agnostics = 2669, Traditionalists = 1982.

Interestingly we see different patterns across countries. The UK curve broadly mirrors the times of the core radio and TV news shows – reflecting the high proportion of traditional users. The Spanish tend to start and finish later, with a major dip in usage during the afternoon – showing that there is some underlying truth in national stereotypes. In Finland, the main TV news shows are spread throughout the evening, leading to their slightly later consumption curve.

News access by time of day – selected countries

Q4b. When do you typically access the news? Please select all that apply to you. Base: Total sample UK = 2149, US = 2295, Spain = 2026, Finland = 1509.

Where people access the news – six-country study

This year we looked in detail at where people access the news in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and Finland. Across all our countries we see that the majority of news access remains in the home – most of it in communal spaces like the living room and kitchen. Much of this is driven by older people who tend to spend more time at home, while the young are on the move more using public and private transport and spending time in other people’s homes. The patterns are remarkably similar across counties, although work usage is almost twice as low in France as in Finland. The Germans, Danes, and Finns access news more in private transport, which reflects different patterns of commuting (more driving, etc.) when compared with Spain.

Where people access the news – percentages in selected countries

OPT4c. Where were you when you looked at/listened to the news over the last few days? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample UK = 2149, France = 1991, Germany = 1969, Denmark = 2019, Finland = 1509, Spain = 2026.

Scroll data area to see more

	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
Home	84%	84%	88%	92%	96%
Travelling / Out & About	34%	29%	29%	27%	19%
Work / place of study	39%	38%	34%	26%	11%

The impact of mobile phones and tablets on the daily commute

On public transport the mobile phone has extended its lead over printed newspapers and over the tablet in Denmark and the UK, where we’ve been collecting data since 2013. In the UK, smartphone use has jumped 18 percentage points to 66%. Print in the UK has only shown a marginal decline, partly because of the availability and convenience of free commuter newspapers like the Evening Standard and Metro.

Mobile phone is main device for accessing news on public transport – UK

OPT4E_5. Please mention the key news media you used in these locations. Please select all that apply to you. Whilst travelling, commuting on public transport. Base: All who consumed news whilst travelling on public transport 2013/2015 UK = 274/249, Denmark = 92/189.

Mobile phone is main device for accessing news on public transport – Denmark

When we look at the specific platforms used in the home to access news, we can see the wide range of choices in play every day. In communal spaces such as the living room and kitchen, the TV remains by far the most regularly accessed but, over the last two years, we see a significant increase in the use of mobiles and tablets in both the UK and Denmark.

Mobiles and tablets are invading communal spaces in the home – UK

OPT4e_6. Please mention the key news media you used in these locations. Please select all that apply to you. At home: communal space (living room, kitchen, etc.). Base: All who consumed news whilst in a communal space at home, 2013/2015 UK = 1421/1719.

The attention challenge for TV News

As people spend more time with digital devices in the living room, we wanted to explore levels of distraction around traditional TV news bulletins and programmes. Are people paying less attention – and thus less well informed – because they are regularly multitasking? In the UK we found that on average more than half of those who watched TV news said they were not paying full attention. Most attention was paid in the evenings, the most popular time for television news. For those who admitted to being distracted, getting on for half were checking their emails (43%) or browsing the web generally (42%) during the television news. A quarter (27%) said they regularly checked social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Under 35s were 50% more likely to be doing something else than over 35s. They were also much more likely to be checking social media feeds.

Distraction around TV news by time of day and type – UK

Q4a1/2/3/4/5/6/7. Thinking about the way you watch TV news during which of these times do you give it your full attention/do something else at the same time? Base: All who watched TV news in the last week UK = 1656,

Scroll data area to see more

Those who pay partial attention, say they tend to do these tasks when watching TV...

Domestic tasks (cooking, ironing, cleaning)	55%
Talk to friends and/or family	41%
Check social media feeds	27%
Check email computer	43%
Browse web generally	42%
Play online games	18%
Read newspapers, magazines, etc.	22%

Q4ai. On those occasions when you give TV news only part of your attention, what are the other things you tend to do? Base: All who watched TV news in the last week but only gave it part of their attention UK = 1402.

In personal spaces, the internet has now overtaken the TV as the main way of getting news. There are fewer TVs being used for news in these parts of the home than there were two years ago.

Interest in Different Types of News

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 10:30:54 +0000

Our survey asks respondents to select their five most important types of news. Once again this produces some interesting country-based variations. International news is considered most important in Germany, Japan, and also in one of our new countries, Australia, where so many inhabitants have roots in Europe or Asia. Respondents in the United States and urban Brazil are least interested in this type of news. Regional news is most important in Germany, Finland, and Spain reflecting the relative importance of devolved political power in those countries – and the media systems that have grown up around this. Local news matters more in a vast country like the United States where city newspapers and local TV stations remain a core part of the media diet. Elsewhere, the Japanese are most interested in entertainment and celebrity news, with the Spanish, Danes, French, and Germans showing the least interest. The Irish take a particular interest in the business news and the economy – as do the Japanese and Australians. Italians and Spanish are interested in arts and culture news while our sample from urban Brazil is far more interested in health and education than are the rest of our countries.

Scroll data area to see more

Interest in different types of news – all countries

	UK	Germany	Spain	Italy	France	Denmark	Finland	Ireland	USA	Urban Brazil	Australia	Japan
News about the country	72%	67%	63%	56%	65%	64%	74%	59%	57%	61%	62%	55%
International news	51%	70%	53%	49%	59%	66%	62%	64%	46%	43%	75%	46%
Local news about my town or city	44%	41%	34%	44%	33%	38%	44%	42%	52%	40%	41%	22%
News about my region	37%	54%	41%	35%	40%	25%	49%	29%	28%	32%	29%	26%
Business and financial news	20%	12%	15%	15%	14%	26%	11%	27%	19%	25%	28%	25%
News about the economy	37%	29%	40%	30%	32%	34%	35%	42%	41%	31%	35%	45%
Entertainment and celebrity news	16%	13%	7%	16%	9%	9%	17%	21%	13%	15%	20%	29%
Fun/weird news	14%	12%	16%	19%	12%	18%	13%	18%	17%	18%	15%	18%
Health news	27%	22%	32%	33%	27%	25%	28%	30%	28%	43%	26%	31%
Education news	12%	12%	25%	14%	14%	12%	7%	13%	15%	32%	11%	11%
Arts and culture news	11%	8%	21%	26%	15%	15%	12%	13%	10%	19%	11%	18%
Sports news	30%	28%	30%	30%	21%	28%	26%	33%	21%	30%	29%	32%
News about the country’s politics	41%	50%	46%	46%	46%	46%	32%	32%	47%	36%	29%	47%
Science and technology news	24%	25%	31%	35%	23%	33%	28%	27%	28%	34%	28%	26%

Q2. Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please choose up to five. Base: Total sample in each country.

Election stimulates interest in UK politics

Our survey took place in the run-up to the UK election and in our data this year we can detect greater interest in politics – as well as the continuing fall out from the Scottish referendum in September 2014. Across the board the biggest rise in interest levels in the UK has been amongst the young and older groups (see table).

Scroll data area to see more

Level of interest in politics – UK

	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
2013	33%	28%	29%	32%	37%
2015	48%	30%	31%	36%	46%

QPOL2a. How interested would you say you are in politics? Base: Total sample 2013-2015 UK = 2078/2082/2149, Scotland = 156/219/198. Note: Interested refers to those that indicated that they were either ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ interested

In Scotland, the stimulation of interest in politics has been remarkable. In 2013 people in Scotland showed similar interest to the UK average but the passions raised by the independence campaign and the closeness of the result have left Scots ahead on pretty much every indicator. A quarter (26%) regularly post political comments via social networks. More than a fifth (20%) follow a politician on social media, while the percentage of people contributing money to a political party has tripled in two years.

Impact of Scottish referendum on political participation

QPOL2c. In which, if any, of the following ways have you used the internet in the last year to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample 2013-2015 Scotland = 156/219/198.

Social media played a significant role in the referendum campaign and even today we find that supporters of the Scottish National Party (SNP) are more likely to use social media for commenting on politics (34%) when compared with Tories (16%) and Lib Dems (11%).

Changing sources of political news

Across the UK, our data also show the rise in importance of information that is pushed to individuals though new one-to-one digital channels such as social media and email.Broadcaster brands like the BBC, ITV, and Sky and newspaper brands (in print and online) remain the most important sources of news but their overall reach is on a downward curve. By contrast, those who say they get political news from social networks like Facebook and Twitter has risen from 15% to 25% in four years. More people are also getting information directly from political parties (7% to 14%).

Main sources of political news – UK

QPOL2b. Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with political and government issues Please select all that apply. Base: All who had an interest in politics 2013-2015 UK = 1924/1934/2057.

Trust in the News

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 10:15:44 +0000

This year we have also explored the levels of trust in the media generally and compared this with trust in the media that people use. Overall we find significant differences in general trust with over two-thirds (68%) agreeing that they trusted the media in Finland, compared with only one-third in the United States (32%), Spain (34%), and Italy (35%).

Levels of trust in the news media – all countries

Q6a. Thinking about news in general, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? ‘I think you can trust most news most of the time’. Q6b. ‘I think I can trust most of the news that I use most of the time’. Shows those who strongly or tend to agree with the statements. Base: Total sample in each country.

Trust in the news media rises with age, education, and income. Casual Users are much less likely to trust the news than News Lovers or Daily Briefers.

Trust rises with age

ALL	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+
47%	41%	40%	47%	51%	50%

Q6a. Thinking about news in general, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? ‘I think you can trust most news most of the time’. Base: All = 23557.

In our online focus groups – held in the UK and US – we uncovered some of the reasons for the lack of faith in the news media. Much centred on a perceived loss of accuracy and reliability:

My rule is chuck 50% of the news out … at the beginning of January … the ANSA in Rome spread rumours that Fidel Castro had died and I knew it was not true. (Daniela, US)

Half the time the ‘news’ turns out to be fake. (Trent, US)

I used to read a lot of CNN, particularly for US political news. But recently they have garnered a reputation as 'untrustworthy' and often hasty in their reporting. (Ben, UK)

Apart from accuracy there were also concerns around agendas and bias – political or commercial.

There are often times stories that are considered news but turn out to be adverts or come from a source that is obviously trying to sell something other than the news. (Jenn, US)

Some sources have an obvious slant in one direction or the other, but the overall effect is to make me not trust anything they say. (Helena, UK)

The greater trust in news you use in the United States may be explained by the highly partisan nature of TV channels like Fox News and MSNBC (see comparison with UK below). Those who watch these US channels may feel more positively about sources that express their own political viewpoint while disapproving of other channels that take an alternative position.

Partisan viewing of TV news channels – United States

Q1f. Some people talk about 'left', 'right', and 'centre' to describe parties and politicians. With this in mind, where would you place yourself on the following scale? Q5a. Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the last week? (Traditional platforms) Base: Left wing/Centre/Right wing, UK = 521/1029/235, US = 461/974/536.

Partisan viewing of TV news channels – United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom focus group the impartiality and fairness both of broadcasters and reputable online newspaper sites came through strongly as a major driver of trust.

(I trust) names (brands) in news that are respected, I guess, and have a reputation for objectivity. (Helena, UK)

[Reputation comes from] track record, both professional and those I've read in the past and deemed reputable. (Ben, UK)

Motivations for Watching and Reading the News

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 10:20:24 +0000

For the first time this year, we have asked about why people access the news. Across all markets the most important reasons were to ‘know what’s going on in the world’ and also ‘to understand how news may affect me’. In Germany, the UK, and Denmark habit is a key driver of usage, while in Italy and the United States there is a strong motivation around the duty of the citizen to stay informed. Only a quarter of our Danish sample (24%) agrees that passing the time is a key motivation – compared with a third in the UK (35%) and the United States (31%).

Motivations for following the news – selected countries

Q2aNEW1/2/3/4/5/6. People have different reasons for following the news. To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the statements below? Base: Total sample in UK = 2149, US = 2295, Germany = 1969, Denmark = 2019, Italy = 2006.

News Lovers, as one might expect, have much stronger motivations to access news in general and are far more driven by habit (80%) than Casual Users (50%).

Newspaper Purchase across Countries

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 11:05:25 +0000

In addition to tracking newspaper consumption by brand and country our survey also benchmarks those who say they have bought a newspaper in a given week. Newspaper purchase does not equate to readership, particularly with the popularity of free papers and the increased bundling of online and print. In addition it should be noted that the figures in our online survey will not match the accuracy of face-to-face surveys or audited circulation figures in this regard. This question may also under-represent newspaper purchase in high-subscription countries like Denmark and Finland, as many of those who pay quarterly/annually may have answered no. Brazil is also an urban sample.

Newspaper purchase in past week by country

Q7. Have you bought (paid for) a printed newspaper in the last week? (This could be an ongoing subscription or one-off payment for a physical copy.) Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

A number of countries have shown a significant decline in newspaper purchase over the last two years including Germany (-9), Japan (-7), US (-7), and the UK (-8). In Japan much of that loss has come from under 35s who are embracing digital ways of accessing news but purchase by over 55s remains strong (73%). In the United States, by contrast, print has lost readers across all age groups, with less than half of over 55s (48%) purchasing and less than a quarter (24%) of under 35s.

Paying for Online News

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 11:10:31 +0000

The decline in print sales and print advertising has put renewed pressure on newspaper groups to find new sources of digital revenue. But the transition remains anything but straightforward. Returns from digital advertising have been falling for years, made worse by lower rates on mobile. But in general, only a few specialist publishers or heritage brands have been able to charge significant amounts for content in a world when there is so much free news available. After a sharp upturn in 2012–13 – when a large number of paywalls were introduced – our data show very little change in the absolute number of people paying for digital news over the past year. In most countries the number paying for any news is hovering around 10% of online users and in some cases less than that.

Percentage paying for online news by country

	UK	Ireland	Germany	Japan	France	US	Spain	Australia	Italy	Denmark	Finland
Ongoing	71%	31%	60%	76%	51%	67%	49%	70%	45%	71%	69%
One-off	27%	63%	47%	39%	50%	30%	53%	27%	63%	17%	23%

Q7. Have you paid for ONLINE news content, or accessed a paid for ONLINE news service in the last year? (This could be digital subscription, combined digital/print subscription, or one-off payment for an article or app.) Base: Total sample in each country. Q7ai. Which, if any, of the following ways have you used to pay for ONLINE news content in the last year? Base: All who paid for online news UK = 127, US = 255, France = 172, Germany = 142, Denmark = 266, Finland = 207, Italy = 244, Spain = 217, Japan = 196, Brazil = 472, Australia = 213, Ireland = 107.

These headline figures, however, mask very different yields from paid content online. The US, Australia, and the UK are three countries where news companies have been pushing hard to sign users up to digital or combined subscription packages. In all three countries these ongoing payments now stand at around 70% of all receipts for paid content. By contrast, in Spain smaller one-off payments are the norm.

Breakdown in monthly payments for online news – UK

OPTQ7ciii. How much have you paid for online news content, or for access to a paid for online news service in the last year? Choose the option that comes closest to the amount you have paid. If you have paid to different providers for online news, think only of the single provider you have paid the most to. Base: All who paid for online news UK = 127, US = 255, Spain = 217, Australia = 213.

Breakdown in monthly payments for online news – US

Breakdown in monthly payments for online news – Australia

Breakdown in monthly payments for online news – Spain

Average (median) monthly payment

United Kingdom	£10
United States	$10
Spain	€5
Australia	AUS$10

We can use this data, combined with data about the size of the adult population, to make a rough estimate of the total online news revenue in each country. Despite a smaller overall percentage paying for news, the total revenue in the UK is roughly double that of Spain due to the higher average payment and larger population. The picture does not get much better when we ask whether – and how much – people would be prepared to pay online in the future – for brands that they like.

Amount people would be prepared to pay for online news – selected countries

OPTQ7civ. What is the maximum price you would pay for a subscription to a digital-only news service – including full access to its website, apps and any digital replicas of the newspaper? Base: All who had not paid for online news UK=1992, US=1973, Spain=1773, Australia=1805

Chapter Four: Online News in Detail

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 12:00:25 +0000

In this section we look in more detail at online consumption habits: which devices people use to access online news, what types of formats they access, and how they find and share the content they enjoy.

New Formats and the Role of Video

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 12:10:19 +0000

Over the past few years, news publishers have been moving beyond the online ‘article’ to develop a range of native formats – from quizzes to lists to live blogs to infographics, pictures, and short videos that are made for the web. Many of these formats are specifically designed for consuming and sharing in social networks and other offsite platforms. In our data this year we see the impact of these new formats and of changing patterns of discovery. Homepages (lists of stories) have become less important over the past year as more people find stories and other content via social networks, search, email, and mobile alerts. Strong trends towards viral sharing in social networks have helped a range of formats to grow, including individual pieces of content like video, and pictures are becoming more regularly accessed.

Ways of consuming news across all countries

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online (via any device) in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use? Please select ALL that apply. Base: All. Note: ‘Looked at a list’ added in 2015. ‘Read news stories or articles’ was previously ‘Read longer news stories or articles’.

For the first time this year we asked about the list format, popularised by Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post amongst others but adopted by many traditional publishers. The Japanese, Brazilians, and Finns have particularly embraced these formats, but only 5% of Germans and 7% of French access them in a given week. Usage of lists is driven by younger groups and by users of new digital-born sites.

List news consumption by country and age

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online (via any device) in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use? Please select ALL that apply. Base: Total sample in each country/under 35s in each country.

Video use grows significantly

News video formats are going through a significant transformation. Traditional Publishers like the New York Times in the US, Trinity Mirror in the UK, and Bild in Germany have gained audience and advertising revenue through creating a range of video output for their own websites and for distribution through social media. In our data, we see a significant jump in the use of online news video in all countries except Germany and also in the US, where the big move happened between 2013 and 2014. Almost a third of US audiences still consume video each week (30%), with Spain and Italy catching up with growth of +10 and +5 respectively. There has also been strong growth in Denmark (+8), the UK (+5), and Japan (+5).

Video consumption by country – 2014 and 2015

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online (via any device) in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use? Please select ALL that apply. Base: Total sample in each country 2014/2015.

Also in 2015

Australia	28%
Ireland	27%
Brazil	26%

We do still however find a number of constraints around the use of video news online. Of those who don’t use video, four in ten (40%) said they found reading quicker and more convenient, with 19% agreeing with the statement that videos rarely add anything useful to the text. Older groups are two-thirds as likely to express a preference for a bigger screen. Younger groups, who expect web applications to respond instantly, are more impatient about load times and about preroll advertisements getting in the way of content.

Scroll data area to see more

Barriers to video usage – selected countries

	UK	US	France	Germany	Finland	Italy	Ireland
I find reading more convenient	41%	39%	33%	37%	46%	40%	43%
Don’t add to text story	19%	20%	8%	23%	24%	22%	21%
I can’t get them to play properly	7%	11%	6%	6%	6%	11%	8%
Take too long to load up/play	15%	21%	17%	18%	20%	24%	22%
I would rather watch on a bigger screen	29%	23%	16%	20%	19%	16%	26%
Preroll ads tend to put me off	22%	23%	31%	33%	36%	30%	26%
Concern about cost of access (e.g. via mobile)	6%	6%	6%	9%	4%	8%	10%

Q11ai. You said that you don't usually watch news videos online. Why not? Please select all that apply. Base: All who haven't watched online news video in the last week UK = 1689, US = 1588, France = 1609, Germany = 1616, Finland = 1175, Italy = 1495, Ireland = 1093.

Types of video news

Of those who do use video news, consumers access a wide range of video formats. Short news clips (66%) are accessed most regularly; providing eyewitness testimony – particularly on a breaking story – or additional context. This might include a reporter’s analysis or an interview with an expert that supports the text content on a page. Live streams are popular on big breaking-news stories and scheduled events across all genders and ages, but tend to be watched by those who are most interested in news (64% of our News Lover category compared with 45% of Casual Users). News clips have much wider appeal, including for Casual Users who may come across them through browsing on social media. Clips that add drama to a story were generally most popular but in the US, UK, and Ireland there is more interest in short interviews with journalists or politicians that contextualise the news. Longer news programmes are watched most in France (33%) and Germany (34%), with breaking-news live streams also unusually popular in France (59%).

Scroll data area to see more

Types of video news consumed – selected countries

	UK	US	France	Germany	Finland	Italy	Ireland
Live stream (breaking news)	40%	43%	59%	42%	47%	53%	47%
Live stream coverage of other scheduled event (e.g. political, fashion)	19%	25%	36%	28%	23%	37%	24%
News clip that adds drama to a text story (e.g. eyewitness testimony, raw footage of a news event)	52%	52%	44%	51%	48%	47%	47%
News clip that provided context or analysis on a text story (e.g. journalist/politician talking to camera, or a short interview)	48%	59%	38%	38%	40%	35%	51%
Longer news programme accessed on demand (e.g. a stream or download of politics, health, tech, film, food)	15%	18%	33%	34%	15%	25%	16%

Q11aii. Which TYPES of news video have you watched online in the last month? Please select all that apply. Base: All who watched online news video in the last month UK = 460, US = 707, France = 382, Germany = 353, Finland = 334, Italy = 511, Ireland = 408.

In seven countries we asked extra questions about preferences towards video or textual news. In all cases the vast majority preferred to only read text or mainly read text – with video as a supplementary format. Only a small minority – ranging from 14% in the United States to 2% in Finland – actually prefer to access online news in video form. However in all these countries (apart from Finland) we have seen a significant move towards video usage in the last year, with fewer people saying they mostly read news in text and more saying they occasionally or regularly watch news videos. The number saying they watch and read about the same has doubled in the UK and Germany in the last year.

Attitudes to video news – selected countries

Q11d. In thinking about your online news habits, which of the following statements applies best to you? Please select one. Base: UK = 1981, US = 2138, France = 1807, Germany = 1810, Finland = 1288, Italy = 1734, Ireland = 1357.

Overall, video users are more likely to be male, better educated, and more interested in news (News Lovers).

Explore the 2015 Report

simonl — Fri, 15 May 2015 19:00:04 +0000

Download the 2015 report

Participation and Engagement Online

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 12:25:24 +0000

Over the past four years we have been tracking a range of participation metrics around news. The next two charts show the overall percentage of respondents who interacted with news in one of 12 different ways. Here, we see different participatory cultures at play. Latin and Mediterranean countries actively engage far more often and in a greater range of ways. Our two new countries Ireland and Australia are also comfortable participating and discussing news online – just as they tend to do offline. Some Northern European countries like Germany, the UK, and Finland tend to be more reserved, while Japanese respondents are even less likely to share or comment directly on news online.

Total participation, sharing and commenting by country

Q13. During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

In most countries, levels of participation are relatively stable but we have seen significant shifts in Denmark and also in France, where our survey was conducted in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. In all countries we find that more people are willing to share than to comment – and sharing of news online has increased in many countries over the past year. Of those who comment, there are more people posting news via social networks than there were in 2013 but slightly fewer using news websites. This trend towards more conversations happening off-platform has led some news websites to close their message boards and forums over the past year.

Types of participation by country

Scroll data area to see more

	US	UK	Germany	France	Ireland	Denmark	Finland	Spain	Italy	Urban Brazil	Japan	Australia
Share via Social Network (SN)	21%	14%	13%	18%	21%	19%	18%	34%	30%	47%	9%	21%
Share via email	17%	7%	10%	13%	13%	7%	6%	21%	16%	28%	6%	16%
Rate or like story	16%	8%	14%	18%	14%	20%	11%	32%	16%	17%	5%	16%
Comment in SN	21%	13%	11%	15%	19%	16%	16%	32%	25%	44%	6%	19%
Comment on news website	15%	7%	6%	8%	10%	7%	8%	12%	13%	20%	4%	10%
Write news blog	4%	1%	2%	3%	2%	1%	2%	5%	4%	5%	2%	1%
Post picture to SN	10%	4%	6%	9%	10%	9%	8%	17%	10%	20%	3%	10%
Post picture to news sites	3%	1%	4%	5%	4%	3%	1%	7%	8%	12%	2%	3%
Online vote	25%	15%	14%	22%	16%	14%	15%	21%	18%	19%	4%	14%
Campaign online	5%	5%	6%	6%	5%	3%	4%	7%	6%	7%	2%	7%
Talk friends online	26%	16%	15%	18%	24%	21%	15%	32%	20%	44%	8%	30%
Talk about news face to face	45%	42%	40%	33%	52%	58%	46%	48%	42%	45%	24%	54%
Total	72%	63%	63%	68%	80%	76%	67%	85%	78%	91%	43%	77%

Q13. During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

Motivations for sharing are of intense interest to news organisations and to academics. Studies have shown that content that drives a strong emotional response (either positive or negative) tends to become viral.[1. ‘What Makes Online Content Viral’, http://ldi.upenn.edu/uploads/media_items/virality.original.pdf] Our data suggest that someone’s level of trust in the news may also be a factor. In most countries, those who said they trusted or distrusted the news were more likely to share the news than those who neither trusted nor distrusted it. This association was not significant in Japan, Ireland, and Germany.

Trust and the impact on sharing

Q6B. Thinking specifically about news sources that you use, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? ‘I think I can trust most of the news that I use most of the time’. Q13. During an average week in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Base: Total sample in each country.

Though it may be tempting to assume that those who trust the news they consume would be more likely to share it, in most countries there was no significant difference in sharing news between those who trusted their news and those who distrusted it. This may point to the use of news sharing for the purposes of both criticism and ‘collaborative verification’. It is clear from all the data in this report that we’ve seen a significant increase the discovery and sharing of news through social networks over the last few years. People are using social media far more as a source of news and as a filter of news. But in most of our countries this has been not been mirrored by an increase in participation. A quarter of us (25%) may comment about news online each week but three-quarters don’t. Only 3% write a blog on a political or news issue, 5% take part in an online campaign. Online may bring us more convenience and control over when and where we access the news but it hasn’t transformed our experience and our relationship with news brands to the extent that many hoped – at least not yet.

Resources and Charts for the 2015 Digital News Report

simonl — Fri, 15 May 2015 19:20:57 +0000

Mind the Gap

james.harding — Fri, 15 May 2015 13:50:23 +0000

Let us start with two observations, emerging both from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report and daily life in the newsrooms of the BBC. One is that the world is changing both more quickly and more slowly than we expected. On the one hand, smartphone use is revolutionising the news, particularly for younger people. On the other, TV bulletins and radio programmes are the way millions of people prefer to get the news - and will be for years to come. (Indeed, the BBC’s TV news audiences are holding up surprisingly strongly in the UK and growing, rapidly, around the world.) The other is that the digital future is fabulous, but it is not fair. The internet is enabling us to tell more stories in more engaging ways to more people than ever before. But there is a widening information gap between people online and those offline, an emerging generational divide in news consumption, a greater imbalance in reporter numbers between news organisations and uneven patterns in the fewer stories that seem to get ever bigger audiences and the many more that do not. For any news organisation, but particularly for the BBC, these two trends present a singularly difficult challenge: how do we keep everyone informed? We all need reliable information to make good decisions - for ourselves, our communities, the country we live in and the world we share. How do we best serve traditional media habits, while anticipating new ones so that everyone can access the real story?

Information inequality

In January, the BBC published the first part of a report on the Future of News. It set out a range of views about what is happening in the news industry as a whole - and what changes in technology, people and stories might mean for news organisations in the next decade. The report made the case that, for all of the benefits of digital growth – and there are many – this is an age of growing information inequality. Sir Tim Berners-Lee said:

Around 40% of people in the world use the web so for the other 60%, every time the power of the web increases and it’s possible to do more things online, those 60% are left further behind. To a certain extent, the web is increasing the gap between the have and the have-nots.

I will not dwell on inequality relating to digital access as this is a digital report. Information inequality takes many other forms – with people less well informed because the news industry speaks to some groups in society more than others, because the modern media offers ever more alternatives to the news, because people are overwhelmed by communications or because the nature of the internet and, in particular, social media, can sometimes lead them to an incomplete picture. The findings from this year’s Digital News Report offer further support to the idea that there are growing inequalities, even amongst those who do access the internet for news.

Generational divide

The world increasingly divides into those who actively seek out the news, and those who skim or even avoid it. When it comes to news consumption, we saw in our Future of News work that the information gap between younger people, poorer people, and some ethnic minority groups on the one hand, and older people, richer people, and some groups of white people on the other, is widening.

Daily access to news by age and income - all countries

18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55+	LOW INCOME	MEDIUM INCOME	HIGH INCOME
75%	81%	85%	89%	92%	83%	87%	90%

Q1b. Typically, how often do you access news (via TV, radio or online)? Base: Total sample from 12 countries = 23557

A generational divide has always existed within news. In the 2015 Digital News Report, 86% across the countries said they get the news at least once a day – but this falls to 75% amongst 18-24s and rises to 92% among those aged 55+. A change in the way young audiences consume the news is already well under way and, in the last year, has accelerated. Younger audiences are turning away from TV news bulletins, and towards mobile (and increasingly, online video and new visual formats). In the UK, 56% of over 55s said the TV was their favourite news source, compared to just 12% of 18-24s (76% of this younger age group chose online).

Main source of news - UK

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news? Base: 18-24s/Over 55s who used a source of news in the last week UK = 219/898

Even when watching TV, the second screen can be a distraction to attention - half of those who watch TV news said they are regularly distracted by other things (higher amongst under 35s) and 8 in 10 under 35s (82%) said this distraction is from a second screen (emails, social media, web browsing).

Distraction around evening TV news – UK

Q4A_5. Thinking about the way you watch TV news in the early evening do you give it your full attention/do something else at the same time? Base: All/Under 35s who watched TV news at particular times in the last week UK=1656/267.

Scroll data area to see more

	ALL	U35s
Check social media feeds	27%	49%
Check email computer	43%	48%
Browse web generally	42%	56%
Play online games	18%	25%
ALL SECOND SCREEN	73%	82%

Q4ai. On those occasions when you give TV news only part of your attention, what are the other things you tend to do? Base: All/Under 35s who watched TV news in the last week but only gave it part of their attention UK=1402, U35s=248.

This year’s data shows a quickening towards mobile news-use overall, with the smartphone emerging as the central platform for digital news. What does the rise in smartphones and decline in TV mean for attention and engagement with news? Within use of BBC News on mobiles, we see more skimming, with shorter session durations – although there could be changes in future, with the 2015 Digital News survey showing the proportion overall saying they read stories online having risen (overtaking just reading the headlines) and online news video also up (now 31% amongst 18-20s).

Different gateways to news

Audiences are increasingly getting news via social media. In the UK, those using social media as a source of news has risen significantly in the last year – up from 23% to 36%. This year, we also see an increased role for Facebook in how people find, discuss and share news. WhatsApp and Instagram have further cemented Facebook’s position with young audiences.

Social media as a source of news

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Base: All/Under 35s 2012-2015 UK = 2173/2078/2082/2149, 675/555/502/486.

Top social networks for news - UK

Q12b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for reading, watching, sharing, or discussing news in the last week? Base: Total sample/Under 35s UK = 2149/486.

The increasing importance of search and social as gateways to news has raised concerns over the degree to which it gives users a filtered view – and Emily Bell at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism has pointed out that the internet is not necessarily a neutral curator of the news. That said, this year’s survey has new data that suggests news-users tend to feel that these services help them find more diverse news and lead them to click on brands they do not normally use – and news organisations see the huge value of social media in reaching audiences less likely to come to news websites.

Addressing information inequality

It is clear than the growth of digital is overwhelmingly beneficial to audiences and news organisations. But the internet is not keeping everyone informed, nor will it. And news organisations – particularly those with a mission to serve a universal audience, like the BBC – must try to address that gap. To do that, the BBC’s oldest values are key to its future: trust – rooted in a commitment to accuracy, impartiality, diversity of opinion and fair treatment of people in the news – is the BBC’s most prized asset. It is what will make people come to the BBC in the ever noisier marketplace for information on the internet. But we will also need to experiment – in what we do, in how we look, in how we sound. We will need to be even more open to having content on other platforms. We will have to keep on innovating in our storytelling. We will have to give much more power to people to select, scrutinise and shape the news. This year’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report will focus minds. It will also underline two headaches. The first is caused by the need to meet the enduring requirements of old media habits, while racing to get ahead of the possibilities of new platforms. The second brought by the need to embrace the exciting possibilities of news in the internet age, without losing sight of the information gaps it is creating. To keep everyone informed – i.e. to fulfil the democratic purpose of the news – we will have to grasp both broadcasting to mass audiences and personalised services streaming to the individual; both breaking news in quick snaps as well as investigations, analysis and reporting that have the benefit of time and slow consideration; news for both big screens on the wall and small ones in the hand. Our aim, though, is singular: to be the place people come for the real story – what really matters, what is really going on, what it really means. In the internet age, the mission of BBC News remains the same – to inform.

The Rise of Mobile and Social News – and What it Means for Journalism

emily.bell — Fri, 15 May 2015 14:00:57 +0000

News consumption is undergoing two fundamental shifts across the globe. One is the rise in news audiences accessing journalism through their phones and mobile devices, the other, related to this trend, is the increase in people who read or watch news through social platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, WhatsApp, or Twitter. This report documents that these two trends are not national phenomena confined to the US or just a few markets. They are playing out all over the world. What is perhaps most important about this development is the speed of the change, and the profound change it signals for journalism organisations. The existential question of a decade ago ‘who is a journalist?’ was born out of the access of the general populace to publishing tools. Now the question has been replaced by ‘who is a publisher?’ Protocols like Twitter and social platforms like Facebook are being joined by messaging services such as WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) and Snapchat. News organisations have realised that, in order to reach readers or viewers, particularly in younger demographics, they have to publish through these platforms.

This report documents that these two trends are not national phenomena confined to the US or just a few markets. They are playing out all over the world.

The overall effect of this shift has been to affect how journalism is produced. Perhaps the most forward thinking of the ‘new’ news organisations is the US company Buzzfeed, which has managed to raise in excess of $70 million in venture capital funding and has rapidly grown to a monthly reach which rivals many older and traditionally larger organisations. Buzzfeed has been built around the proposition that distribution of journalism will happen primarily through social networks. It has expertise in understanding how social platforms spread news stories, and what formats of journalism work best on the real-time social web. Buzzfeed does not care very much what its homepage looks like because it doesn’t expect people to visit it as a ‘destination site’, but rather to encounter the news through social feeds.

Who controls the pathways to the audience?

If Buzzfeed is correct in its strategic direction (and it is already being emulated by many legacy news organisations), then the control of pathways to audiences no longer lies with the organisations which publish news but with the platforms that carry it. In my 2014 Reuters Memorial Lecture,[1. http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Speech%20-%20Silicon%20Valley%20%26%20Journalism%20-%20Make%20up%20or%20Break%20up_Emily%20Bell_Reuters%20Memorial%20Lecture%202014.pdf] I outlined this new relationship between the social media companies born in Silicon Valley and news publishers and journalists as creating a new paradigm. The free press is now controlled by companies whose primary interests are not necessarily rooted in strengthening public discourse and democracy. On the one hand, journalists can reach far greater audiences immediately than was the case in the past. On the other hand, journalists and publishers have very little control now over how information reaches the world and there is limited transparency. Facebook does not see itself as a publisher, it only sees itself as a platform. But once Facebook is the world’s front page, publishing responsibilities begin to attach themselves to the company. The most clear example of this is the process by which Facebook decides which news to feature in the feeds of its users. If it only features news which is recommended by friends and family, then Facebook’s users might miss an important event. Does the Facebook news algorithm take into account other factors like how recently the news happened? Does it worry about whether the stories that its users are spreading are true? Does it get rid of stories which might be deliberately biased or misleading? Does it want to show us stories which are videos before it shows us stories which are text? Each decision means reprogramming the algorithm which selects types of news stories. Facebook might see this as an engineering task, but these simple decisions are also editorial. The Facebook effect spreads beyond simply offering a platform and into actually shaping journalism. In the coming years we will increasingly see news organisations employing journalists who are there to report directly onto social sites exclusively. Over time if it makes economic sense for technology companies to employ more explicitly editorial staff, such as Facebook’s ‘content curators’ who effectively perform an editing function, then we might see social media companies more consciously expanding their editorial role.

The Facebook effect spreads beyond simply offering a platform and into actually shaping journalism.

How can publishers respond to the rise of platforms?

It does not look as though this trend inspired by the rising importance of smartphones is going to slow down anytime soon, and it certainly never going to reverse altogether. News organisations are stuck as to how to respond, particularly as they lack any scale or technological solutions that might match those created by Silicon Valley. In America at the beginning of 2015, Facebook initiated an experiment with publishers whereby it would publish whole articles or videos instead of just publishing links to them. The rationale for the development was that links to external sites slowed down the way news reached readers.

News organisations are stuck as to how to respond, particularly as they lack any scale or technological solutions that might match those created by Silicon Valley.

Most surprising was that news organisations like the New York Times signed up to a greater loss of control by being one of the first organisations to participate in the test. (Others are said to have been approached but declined to take part; most have not been asked.) The idea that an organisation so apparently dedicated to the control of its own brand would take this route is a signal of how much changed behaviours in news audiences is forcing even the most resolute organisations to make compromises. This is a decision every publisher has to make. The trade-off between control of your own journalism, versus reaching large audiences, is inevitable for both national and international media. Fragmentation of news provision, which weakens the bargaining power of journalism organisations, has coincided with a concentration of power in platforms. The only remaining question is how fast will we see a shift from the old models of distribution to the new?

How can platforms deal with publishing?

The conundrum of how social platforms should handle news is made more complicated by the fact that their internal structures and code are highly commercially sensitive. How Google, Facebook, and Twitter make their money is by using data to meet the needs of advertisers and users. If we can see exactly how they do that, then their businesses lose a competitive advantage or their algorithms could be ‘gamed’ by unscrupulous third parties. An absence of data, or rather the secrecy of that data, about what happens between the creation of news and how it is consumed creates commercial problems for publishers and raises broader issues for democracy. In Europe there is a highly regulated media environment. Even in the US commercial broadcasters are licensed to operate. By contrast the largely Silicon Valley-based companies which are growing vast influence in this area remain largely untouched by media regulation in the US (though they are of course subject to copyright, patents, etc.), and strenuously try to avoid it in Europe and other markets. Fragmentation might mean that we can no longer even identify what news media are, let alone check that plurality and equality of access are guaranteed. We can no longer really know which stories are being promoted the hardest or which are suppressed with any degree of certainty. Social media companies and other technology companies that control information channels – Apple via its App Store for instance – have become dominant players in global news distribution by accident rather than by design and we are still grappling with how to address this new order.

Mobile and social news and the future of journalism

As journalism becomes ever more dependent on these new distribution platforms to find audiences, news publishers are forced to examine their business models and strategies for the future. If a news company wishes to reach a large audience on the web it has little choice but to develop relationships with third-party platforms, but this puts revenue models and decisions over the ultimate shape of journalism even further into the hands of software companies. Will Facebook and their peers become news organisations? Should news companies create their own technologies? Can regulation step in to take a more significant role in bringing transparency to these new processes? These are all important questions. I suspect that in each case at least part of the answer is ‘yes’. What about news audiences? For the news consumer there is a lot to be said in favour of the new environment. The real-time world of news and events fits in your pocket. The social web is a great empowering force for information and journalism. However, the civic impact of having the paths to audiences controlled by largely US-based social platforms is as yet unexplored. Understanding of where these clear trends are taking us ought to be a major policy issue, just as it is already a major business issue.

Existing journalism businesses and new entrants into the market must have a strategy to deal with their future which is centred on mobile distribution and which accepts that there is little they can do to control the environment in which their journalism is distributed.

The next phase of development is already upon us. Messaging services like WhatsApp are growing more quickly in some parts of the world and among a younger demographic than platforms like Facebook. These platforms are if anything even further removed from the broadcast environment we are all used to as a driver of news and discussion. Existing journalism businesses and new entrants into the market must have a strategy to deal with their future which is centred on mobile distribution and which accepts that there is little they can do to control the environment in which their journalism is distributed. News businesses, which thought the shift from an analogue model to a digital model was painful and fraught a decade ago, now have to make even greater adjustments. Social platforms which felt they could maintain their status as ‘just a platform’ and avoid the implications of bearing publishing responsibility are also realising that this is untenable. What follows will reshape journalism more profoundly than we once could have imagined. This might be good news for consumers, but in terms of civic and democratic health, the jury is still out.

The Business Outlook: Constraints on Growth, But Some Hopeful Signs in Digital News Provision

robert.picard — Fri, 15 May 2015 13:40:26 +0000

Overall consumption of news on digital platforms is growing, reflecting the rising penetration of smartphones and tablets and the access they provide customers to digital news throughout the day. Growth in the number of paying digital news consumers, however, has slowed and it appears that the number of paying users in many countries is stalling at a lower level than many news organisations hoped. The majority of news consumers obtain news without payment from free news sites, aggregators, and social media, but some heavy news users seek out specific news sources they trust – and are willing to pay for them. Digital advertising expenditures are growing globally, but the primary beneficiaries are large internet firms such as Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. News providers are developing strategies to try to gain more of the available advertising expenditures, but those must contend with the larger firms’ dominance of digital ad provision infrastructures and the fact that news represents only a portion of overall digital media use. The overall picture is one of low growth in paid content consumption and a digital advertising market that is not highly favourable for news providers. However, some firms are finding ways to overcome these challenges, benefit from market opportunities, and make digital news provision a viable and sustainable business through sophisticated service strategies with multiple revenue streams.

Developments in paid content

Consumers who are now paying for digital news, combined with those who indicate they are willing to pay in the future, now make up a significant proportion of national populations, but average about half the level of those who pay for print newspapers (for the nations in the DNR study, the average is 24% compared to 46% who report they pay for print news). Growth has slowed or plateau-ed in many countries, and it appears that digital news providers are struggling to grow the total market for paid news.

Current and potential market for paid news online

Scroll data area to see more

	UK	US	France	Germany	Ireland	Denmark	Finland	Italy	Spain	Japan	Australia
Paying for news	6%	11%	10%	7%	7%	13%	14%	12%	11%	10%	11%
Likely to pay*	6%	10%	8%	8%	12%	10%	7%	17%	15%	14%	12%
Total	12%	21%	17%	15%	19%	23%	20%	29%	26%	24%	23%

Q7a. Have you paid for ONLINE news content, or accessed a paid-for ONLINE news service in the last year? (This could be digital subscription, combined digital/print subscription, or one-off payment for an article or app.) Base: Total sample in each country. Q7aii. You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year... How likely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like? *Showing very likely to pay/somewhat likely to pay. Base: Total sample in each country.

Paying for print (weekly)

	UK	US	France	Germany	Ireland	Denmark	Finland	Italy	Spain	Japan	Australia
Paying for print	46%	35%	45%	47%	54%	31%	45%	51%	48%	61%	34%

Q7. Have you bought (paid for) a printed newspaper in the last week? (This could be an ongoing subscription or one-off payment for a physical copy.) Base: Total sample in each country.

Nevertheless, news organizations worldwide are reporting some growth of revenue from digital subscriptions on various platforms and consumers are being allowed to purchase weekly, monthly, and annual subscriptions, and, in some cases, daily access. The New York Times, for example, now offers subscription packages that bundle free digital access with a print home delivery subscription and separate digital-only bundles that provide differing access via the web, smartphones, and tablets.

New York Times Digital Subscription Packages

Scroll data area to see more

NYTimes.com, plus smartphone	$3.75 per week
NYTimes.com, plus tablet	$5.00 per week
Unlimited Digital (NYTimes.com, plus smartphone and tablet)	$8.75 per week
Times Premier (NYTimes.com, smartphone and tablet, T books, talks, etc.)	$11.25 per week
Opinion section only	$1.50 per month
Crossword subscription	$6.95 per month

Subscription has become news providers’ preferred method for revenue because it leads consumers to purchase more content overall and produces greater stability in the revenue stream. Those offering multiple subscription packages, with access to different amounts and types of content, appear to be more successful at widening the group of consumers that is willing to pay. Some are offering different levels of paid access, with higher prices for access to premium or specialist content offerings and services, and these are helping increase overall use and revenue. Many news providers who instituted paywalls in the past with generous metering policies are now reducing the number of free articles in an effort to turn regular free readers into paying customers and increase revenue. Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland, for example, quadrupled its digital subscribers in two years to more than 55,000 using a combination of a tighter metering system and a premium content tier system that provides some free content, some basic paid content, and different types of paid premium content. About one-quarter of all its total customers (print and digital) are now digital subscribers. The Financial Times is continuing to sharpen its digital payment strategy. Last year the number of digital subscribers rose 21% to 504,000, about 70% of its total readership. This spring it abandoned its longstanding metered model in favour of a hard(er) paywall combined with low-cost trial subscriptions in an effort to attract regular but lighter users. They are also testing different approaches to acquiring new readers including allowing one click free models from search and social media. The central factor in willingness to pay is the perception that the value of paid content is higher than that of free content. News providers must produce more original digital content while at the same time making it more relevant and valuable to each paying user. This requires extensive knowledge of individual consumers and is why news providers such as The Globe and Mail in Canada are investing heavily in data systems that provide regularly updated information to circulation, advertising, marketing, and editorial managers. O Globo in Brazil is employing a sophisticated strategy data acquired across its free content on its own platforms, search, aggregators, and social media. The company is targeting heavy news consumers most likely to subscribe and offering them various subscription options to turn them into regular customers. Although data strategies are being improved in many organisations the tools for doing so still remain rough and do not yet follow consumer usage well across platforms. Business and financial news providers and providers with specialist coverage and analysis tend to have the highest growth in paid digital users and some are closer to making a transition away from print. One of the more successful apps has been Economist Espresso, a daily digest of short stories, which induced 175,000 existing Economist subscribers and 25,000 new users to subscribe. This indicates that the majority of mobile subscribers are resulting from providing added value to existing subscribers rather than new ones. Some news organisations, such as the Guardian and the New York Times, that have desirable and well-known special features such as crossword puzzles, are disaggregating that content and offering separate subscriptions for those unwilling to subscribe to all their content, thus increasing their overall revenue. Despite a great deal of digital product development and innovative marketing strategies, the primary customers of paid digital news remain the heavy news users who already paid for news delivered in other ways. Efforts to widen the paid audience among those who do not otherwise pay for news have not been widely successful. Highly trusted brands, however, have been able to use the digital advantages to gain new subscribers from geographic areas their print editions did not serve.

A challenging advertising market

Advertisers continue to move increasingly larger portions of their expenditures to digital media, especially mobile media, but the primary beneficiaries remain the large US-based search engine, aggregators, and social media firms at the global level, as well as the national level in much of the world.

Digital ad spend vs ad spend for news brands (UK only)

Sources: IAB, News digital ad spend from Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report

Digital advertising revenue remains a challenge for news providers and it is not going to contribute as large a portion of income as it has for offline operations. This is because the inventory of advertising opportunities far exceeds that of print and broadcasting, reducing demand, and depressing prices paid for digital advertising. Consequently, digital firms require very large numbers of users to gain sufficient advertising to produce a large revenue stream. In addition, most digital advertising does not provide the display advertising benefits that continue to attract large advertising purchases by major department and grocery stores. The digital environment is also less friendly to advertising than the offline environment because software allows consumers to block advertising messages, particularly on personal computers, and many consumers are now employing them. News providers are working to increase the prices by improving the connection of users to relevant advertising messages through better user data management, by improving the presentation of advertising messages, and by creating advertising alliances with other news providers that collectively generate greater exposure for advertisers. The Guardian, Financial Times, CNN International, and Reuters established Pangea this year to jointly sell and deliver digital advertising to their high-quality audiences on various platforms, bypassing Google, Facebook, and other major online players who are less willing to share customer data needed to better service the audiences. Mobile advertising – targeting smartphones and tablet users – is growing, but the number of news providers effectively capturing advertising revenue remains low because much of the advertising is delivered by intermediaries who do not share, or share little, revenue and because necessary consumer data – especially across platforms – is not yet available to make its value to advertisers less ambiguous. News providers would like to derive a revenue stream from consumption of news shared on social media, but few are gaining much revenue today. Significant issues are how advertising revenue should be split and the sharing of users’ data. Companies such as Facebook and other social media operators are powerful intermediaries and that will make it even tougher for news providers to make money as more content moves off their sites and apps to social media. Despite the general growth of digital advertising expenditures, advertisers are not fully satisfied with the performance of digital advertising. It was reported that that more than half of digital ads served are not actually seen by users.[1. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/infographics/5-factors-of-viewability.html] Many are now allocating more of their expenditures to other activities such as search placement fee, content marketing, and sponsored content.

A growing emphasis on multimedia

News providers are increasingly providing news video to consumers, with larger organisations producing some original video and smaller organisations relying on video from video agencies or links to video at other providers. Some companies are using video to improve advertising sales and delivery through the use of preroll, midroll, and postroll videos. The advertising rates for digital advertising included with video are generally higher than that for other forms of content, but it is uncertain whether that pricing advantage will continue as the amount of video content increases. Some news providers are obtaining additional revenue from sponsored video content, such as documentaries and other short- and long-form video. Sponsored content creates concerns for highly reputable news organisations noted for their independence and original content, however, so it is not expected to play a significant role in their revenue.

Where is digital news provision going?

Contemporary developments and trends suggested a number of conclusions about the nature of the digital news market. Only a few large well-established news brands are likely to achieve the scale and volume of consumer and advertising necessary for success at the global level and we will see competition to be in that group increase in the coming years. Even as companies pursue such global ambitions, they will need to localise content, a factor that has led the Guardian to establish newsrooms and separate editions for its US and Australian editions. Another approach is to offer services in multiple languages, as the Huffington Post has done in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese. National brands enjoy some level of protection in their domestic markets and a few in each country are likely to garner the bulk of domestic digital consumer and adverting revenues. News providers in smaller markets—Finland and Australia, for example—may find that getting the majority of news providers to simultaneously implement paywalls will lead to more rapid acceptance of paying for content, as occurred in Canada. The outlook for local digital news remains uncertain. It is proving difficult for local news providers in many countries to gain large numbers of paid digital users – one exception being Canada where more than three-quarters of all newspapers now charge for digital content – and the ability to attract and survive on digital advertising varies widely. Venture capitalists are watching developments carefully. Few have invested directly in digital operations of legacy news providers, but a number have invested in related services such as content payment systems, digital advertising services, and data management systems, and some have invested in commercially oriented start-up news providers such as Vox, Buzzfeed, and Vice. Many in the industry continue to hope that paid content use will rise and that those increases, combined with better data and knowledge about the users, will create the ability to better match content and advertising with specified users in ways that increase its value and permit higher prices for content and advertising. The constraints on and requirements of the digital news provision business are becoming clear. This is a highly competitive space that requires clear strategies and the flexibility to create multiple revenue streams necessary to produce levels of income required for sustainability.

Generational Gaps – UK News Consumption and the Impact of Age

alison.preston — Fri, 15 May 2015 13:30:41 +0000

This essay reminds us of the diverse ways in which different generations consume and think about their news media. The analysis covers three core areas:

people’s motivations for following news in general;
the devices, platforms, and sources people use for news, including whether these vary according to the different types of news accessed;
a particular focus on online news consumption and which types of format are used and for which reasons.

I focus on the UK picture, but make some indicative comparisons across other countries – France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and the US – to see whether the differential use of news platforms by age follows a similar pattern. It is important to note, as indicated elsewhere in this report, that respondents to this survey are online users, and as such findings which relate to ‘offline’ consumption are likely to be under-represented.

Motivations for following news

Motivations for following news are more about convenience and being social for younger people; more about civic duty and habit for older people

We asked respondents about the reasons they had for following news, and the first chart shows their agreement with a range of possible reasons. While eight in ten of those aged 65+ say that following news is part of their daily routine, only two-thirds of 18–35s choose this response. However, twice as many younger people as older people are likely to follow news as a ‘good way to pass the time’ – half of 18–24s (49%) say this compared to one in five (22%) of those aged 65+. This is likely to relate particularly to smartphone or out of home news consumption, perhaps fitting this into their daily routines while travelling. We asked respondents about the reasons they had for following news, and the first chart shows their agreement with a range of possible reasons. While eight in ten of those aged 65+ say that following news is part of their daily routine, only two-thirds of 18–35s choose this response. However, twice as many younger people as older people are likely to follow news as a ‘good way to pass the time’ – half of 18–24s (49%) say this compared to one in five (22%) of those aged 65+. This is likely to relate particularly to smartphone or out of home news consumption, perhaps fitting this into their daily routines while travelling.

Reasons for following the news by age

Q2a. People have different reasons for following the news. To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the statements below? I follow the news because... Base: Total sample UK = 2149

Platforms and sources used for news

Given these varying motivations, which platforms and sources do different age groups use for news? Is consumption by platform polarised by age, and does this become more or less stark when it is nuanced by particular factors, for example when seeking speed of coverage, or accurate and reliable news? Thus television remains considerably ahead of other platforms for both initial reporting of a news event, and then further information and explanation, when the overall UK sample is considered. However, this pattern belies considerable differences by age group.

Older people are more likely to use TV for news; younger people are predominantly online although their use of ‘traditional’ media sources remains substantial

As the next chart shows, there is considerable variation in terms of the overall platforms used for news by age group, as well as their ‘main’ source. Young people are far less likely than older people to see TV as their main source of news – just 12% compared to 56% of those aged 65+. Three-quarters of 18–24s say online is their main source, compared to 15% of the 65+ age group. However, as with ‘any’ news source, online forms of traditional news media remain popular for 18–24s – 28% nominate online broadcast news sources, and 20% online newspapers, as their main source. Social media are the main source for 18% of this age group, compared to 1% of those aged 65+.

Sources used in the last week

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample UK = 2149

Single main source used in the last week

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news? Base: All who used a source of news in the last week UK = 2105

It is interesting to compare findings relating to the single main source of news across countries, to see the extent to which this UK picture of considerable variation by age group is replicated. It is noteworthy that, as shown in the next chart, young people in the UK are considerably less likely than other countries to nominate TV as their main source. Young online users in Japan are most likely (41%), closely followed by those in France (39%). The use of the press as a main source for news is relatively low in all these countries, although older people in Japan and Germany are comparatively more likely to nominate the press as their main source, along with the UK.

Scroll data area to see more

Main source of news by country

	UK		France		Germany		Spain		Japan		US
	18-24	65+	18-24	65+	18-24	65+	18-24	65+	18-24	65+	18-24	65+
Any TV	12%	56%	39%	65%	34%	65%	27%	47%	41%	65%	20%	64%
Any printed newspaper	6%	17%	3%	3%	9%	12%	8%	9%	6%	18%	5%	8%
Any online	76%	15%	55%	20%	44%	8%	61%	29%	51%	12%	63%	19%

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news? Base: All who used a source of news in the last week UK = 2105, US = 2198, France = 1947, Germany = 1943, Spain = 2104, Japan = 1939.

TV becomes more popular for younger people when they are seeking accuracy and reliability; social media use is mainly for breaking news

We asked respondents which sources they found best for different attributes of news coverage, including speed of coverage and accuracy and reliability (see chart).

Sources used for breaking news

Q3ai. For speed of coverage (breaking news), which one of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Base: All who used a source of news in the last week UK = 2105

Sources used for accurate and reliable news

Q3aiv. For accuracy and reliability, which one of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Base: All who used a source of news in the last week UK = 2105

At an overall level, TV and online are broadly equal in terms of being seen as best for breaking news, although this again masks considerable differences by age group. Interestingly, 25–34s are less similar to the responses of 18–24s than we saw previously, suggesting that the habit of using TV as the default place to go for breaking news is either more ingrained in this age group or that their lifestage habits mean that TV is more accessible to them. Younger people are much more likely to use social media for breaking news when compared with older groups – though they also use mainstream media websites. For accuracy and reliability, again TV is more popular among those aged 65+, and online is more popular for 18–24s. Online broadcast sources are favoured by 18–24s, with 29% nominating them as their best means of getting accurate and reliable news, 13% online newspapers, and only 5% social media. Thus, it appears that, for the time being at least, social media are being used selectively by younger people. It seems to be a useful source of breaking news but not to be relied on in terms of its accuracy.

Online news consumption habits

Tablets are preferred by older people for their news, while smartphones are the strong preference for younger people

The next chart sets out how general use, use for news, and preference for devices for online news shifts across age groups. While tablets are used by similar proportions of each age group, it is the preferred device for news for three times as many older people as younger people. And the smartphone is the preferred device for news for four times as many younger people as those aged 65+. Such clear preferences are likely to be an outcome of the different lifestyle patterns of these two age groups, with the smartphone being particularly useful for access out of the home. Indeed, when asked where they access news, 43% of 18–24s say they do so when out and about or travelling, compared to 20% of those aged 65+.

Scroll data area to see more

Use of online device for news

	Use at all				Use for news				Main use for news
	All	18-24	25-34	65+	All	18-24	25-34	65+	All	18-24	25-34	65+
Laptop/PC	81%	77%	71%	90%	59%	66%	55%	56%	48%	46%	35%	60%
Smartphone	67%	84%	82%	44%	42%	69%	64%	16%	27%	42%	47%	9%
Tablet	51%	46%	51%	50%	31%	23%	31%	29%	18%	8%	14%	22%

Q8a. Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use (for any purpose)? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample UK: 2149. Q8b. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample UK: 2149. UK8b6_5. You’ve said you use the following devices to access news in the last week, which is your MAIN way of accessing online news? Base: All who used a device for news in the last week UK: 1795.

The most common route to online news is directly via an app/URL, although around one-third use search engines and three in ten social media

The most common way to access online news is directly via the URL or specific app, as shown next. Use of social media to come across news is considerably higher for younger age groups than it is for those aged 65+, with almost three times more 18–24s saying they come across news this way than those aged 65+. It appears that social media as a news source remains additive for this age group – they also find news in the other ways listed, at a similar if not greater extent than older age groups.

Scroll data area to see more

Gateways to online news

	All	18-24	25-34	65+
Directly accessed one or more news websites apps	52%	53%	52%	48%
Search	32%	38%	34%	29%
Used a search engine and typed in a keyword for the name of a particular website	23%	25%	26%	19%
Used a search engine and typed in a keyword about a particular news story	18%	25%	17%	17%
Used social media and came across news that way	28%	45%	37%	16%
Got news via an email newsletter or email alert	10%	10%	7%	16%
Received a news alert through an app on my mobile phone/tablet or via SMS	10%	12%	9%	9%
Used a website or mobile app that pulls together different news links	4%	6%	9%	1%

Younger people use a wider range of online news content formats, although these are largely additive to the core reading of news online

Turning to the content of what people access online, the next chart shows the different formats that people can get their news in. As we can see, younger people are using a wider range of types of content – one in five say they follow live pages, compared to one in ten aged 65+, and one quarter look at top 10 lists, compared with 4% of those aged 65+. They are also more likely to read a news blog (16% vs 7%), and much more likely to look at a news graphic (15% vs 2%). That said, these elements appear again to be largely additive to the core means of consumption – which are reading news stories and looking at headlines.

Scroll data area to see more

Use of types of online news content

	All	18-24	25-34	65+
Read news stories or articles	59%	59%	59%	57%
Looked at a list of news headlines (for example on the front page of a news website)	40%	40%	39%	37%
Watched an online news video (live, clip or programme)	21%	23%	21%	17%
Look at a sequence or gallery of pictures about news	17%	22%	18%	16%
Followed a LIVE news page within a website	12%	19%	14%	11%
Looked at a list (e.g. a top 10)	11%	24%	14%	4%
Read a news blog	9%	16%	12%	7%
Listened to news audio online (live, clip or podcast/ programme)	8%	8%	13%	7%
Viewed a news graphic (infographic)	7%	15%	10%	2%

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online (via any device) in the last week, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample UK = 2149.

Summary

This analysis confirms that there are stark differences between younger and older age groups, and underlines the fact that all-user figures mask some very real divergence in responses. The motivations for news consumption cited by different age groups shows that while younger age groups still feel purposive about news consumption, they do so to a lesser extent than those aged over 65. For the most part, those aged 25–34 show more similarity with 18–24s than with older age groups, but there are areas where this is less likely to be the case – particularly around the choice of using TV as a main or most important source for news, where 25–34s are more likely to nominate TV and less likely to nominate online than 18–24s. This could be due to their changing life circumstances and consequent media habits, or that this group have a residual connection to TV that is less clear among 18–24s. Subsequent waves of this survey will be able to give more indication as to which is the case. The devices used for news show that young people have a strong affinity with and use of their smartphone for news, while older people are more likely to use their tablet. This has implications for the versioning of content on such devices, and the differing expectations from practitioners about the available time, background context, and likely attention given to online news. Finally, younger people’s use of social media is interwoven with their news consumption. It is used a key source, and provides ‘bump into’ content. But young people don’t use it for accurate and reliable news. As such, it is still largely additive as a source, with young people continuing to use other sources, and particularly ‘traditional’ online brands such as broadcast and press titles.

Supporters for the 2015 Digital News Report

simonl — Fri, 15 May 2015 19:25:58 +0000

Supporters

Partners for the 2015 Digital News Report

simonl — Fri, 15 May 2015 19:30:51 +0000

Attitudes to Sponsored and Branded Content (Native Advertising)

shaun.austin — Fri, 15 May 2015 13:25:35 +0000

Traditional display advertising on the web is in trouble. Fewer people are clicking on banners, yields for publishers are static or falling, and many users shut off ads completely. YouGov’s research for this report shows that in both the US and UK between a third and a half of online news users use software that blocks the most popular forms of display advertising. Against this background it is not surprising that content providers, brands, and platforms are looking for new and better ways to reach and engage audiences. Budgets are switching to so-called ‘native’ advertising where brand messages look more like regular content – sitting in the same templates and using the same formats that might be used for a standard piece of journalism or a user-generated post on social media. This essay looks at what people think about these new and sometimes controversial forms of advertising. Using survey evidence and focus group interviews in the UK and US we explore consumer attitudes towards this form of sponsored content and the issues of labelling and trust that surround it.

Native advertising explained

Sponsored or branded content is not a totally new phenomenon. Newspapers have been producing advertorials and special supplements paid for by advertisers for decades – but somehow the separation seems clearer in a physical product. In social media, sponsored posts now sit cheek by jowl with regular updates and content posts. Formats and functionality are identical, labelling is understated and brands are learning fast how to adapt their messaging to be part of a conversation not a broadcast. Facebook and Twitter are building billion dollar businesses on enabling this approach. New media platforms like Buzzfeed and Vice have also turned their back on display and already make the majority of their money from native advertising formats. They have set up digital commercial teams to develop ‘viral moments’ for brands – articles, lists, infographics, videos, or full-blown web documentaries. In the example here a Buzzfeed list is repurposed to make a fun item for young people around different ways to use tequila in cooking. The item was paid for by Sauza® tequila. Venture capitalists are investing millions of dollars in companies like Buzzfeed because they have learned to use technology to develop and perfect formats like listicles and quizzes that resonate with internet users of a particular demographic. Effectively, they’ve built world-class systems for content creation, analytics, and advertising. Over the past year, traditional publishers have been trying to learn from this approach and have set up their own digital studios to do something similar. The New York Times (T Brand Studio), the Guardian (Guardian Labs[1.http://Guardianlabs.theGuardian.com]), and the Wall Street Journal have invested heavily – in a tacit endorsement of the emerging practice. In one of the most successful examples to date, the New York Times published a 1500 word native ad[2.http://paidpost.nytimes.com/netflix/women-inmates-separate-but-not-equal.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0#.VKvhTNz-1uY] for the Netflix series Orange is the New Black, using video, charts, and audio to supplement text about female incarceration in the US. It was one of the first pieces of sponsored content generated by a new T Brand Studio, a nine-person team dedicated to the task. The Guardian is also creating ‘paid post’ formats as well as pursuing more traditional approaches where journalists create content independently – but still paid for by an advertiser. Unilever paid over £1m for a range of content to be produced on the subject of sustainable living. The section and the articles were clearly marked ‘Sponsored by Unilever’, but in other respects the content melded into the overall Guardian experience. Definitions and approaches to sponsored and branded content are varied and still emerging. There is no standard approach to labelling and a number of publishers have been caught out, such as when The Atlantic admitted to misjudgements over a Church of Scientology sponsored post.[3. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/15/the-atlantic-on-that-scientology-advertorial-we-screwed-up] While the IAB has announced some plans in the UK to start rolling out regulations for native advertising and sponsored content, it’s still early days and consumers think more work is needed.

Consumer attitudes

As part of the Digital News Report 2015, we included questions relating to native advertising in the survey for both USA and UK. We followed this up with online focus groups in the same markets to explore attitudes in further detail. In the UK, all respondents were members of our YouGov Pulse panel, our passive web tracking tool. We used web browsing data to select respondents who had engaged with native advertising content, and compared stated attitudes and perceptions alongside actual behaviours of consuming native content. Many consumers are losing patience with traditional forms of online advertising and there seems to be a close relationship between the amount of interruption caused and the vitriol consumers feel towards it. Around three in ten respondents in both the USA (29%) and UK (31%) say they find traditional banner advertising distracting and will actively avoid sites where they interfere with the content too much. Static banner advertising is more tolerable for readers than video advertising, with pop-up advertising being seen as the worst offender of all. There is also a perception that video advertising impacts on the speed of browsing, which is also particularly frustrating for readers.

Self-playing videos are the devils [sic] creation. You're browsing the news late at night and suddenly an ad for laxatives is blasting out from your laptop at full volume!

Tanya, 51, UK

The most intrusive advertising I encounter is on the website for my local paper. Huge pop up videos before you can access content. If they weren't auto playing they wouldn't be so annoying.

Alan, 31, UK

Pop ups irritate me the most. I don't like video adverts, but I can live with them because I never willingly listen to them. Banner advertising doesn't really bother me because I just ignore it.

Helena, 36, UK

Pop ups are most annoying, particularly if you are browsing on a phone as sometimes they can be really hard to close down.

Eleanor, 32, UK

Consumers’ annoyance with advertising and the interruption it causes to their reading experience has led large numbers of them to install ad-blocking software to minimise its impact. In the UK, 39% have installed ad-blocking software on their PC, mobile, or tablet, whereas in the US this rises to 47%. The figures are even higher for 18–24s (56% and 55% respectively).

Attitudes to traditional banner advertising

QSpons1. Which of the following statements best sums up your view of traditional banner advertising on news websites? Base: Total sample UK = 2149, US = 2295.

Attitudes to ad blocking software

QSpons2. Do you regularly use Ad Blocking software (software you have installed on your device specifically to remove advertisements from news or other websites)? Base: Total sample UK = 2149, US = 2295.

Many consumers agree that advertising is a necessary part of continuing to get free news. However, the increasing use of ad-blocking software means that advertisers need to find new ways of reaching their audiences, and native content has the potential to reach audiences, particularly younger consumers.

Awareness

After respondents in the quantitative survey were shown a number of native advertising articles, a relatively high proportion reported having come across this type of content before. In the US, over one in three (35%) said they frequently or often see sponsored content, compared to around a fifth (21%) in the UK.

Awareness of sponsored content

QSpons3. How often do you see this kind of sponsored content in online news sites these days? Base: Total sample UK = 2149, US = 2295.

There is however much confusion over the language around sponsored content and native advertising. For example, one member of our focus group in the US confidently and spontaneously talked about seeing more native advertising. However, once we delved further into it, we found they were actually describing retargeted advertising, based on their browsing history.

Being misled?

There is a perception that readers are disappointed or feel deceived if they later find out content was sponsored by a brand or company. In the UK, a third (33%) have felt disappointed or deceived, a level that rises to more than four in ten (43%) in the US. The higher figure in the US could be down to the fact that native advertising is more prevalent there.

Feeling disappointed or deceived

I have felt disappointed or deceived after reading an article which I only discovered later was sponsored by a brand/company QSpons5. In general terms, to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? (Please select one option on each row.) Base: Total sample UK = 2149, US = 2295.

There are stark differences by age, with younger respondents considerably less likely to feel they are being ‘deceived’ by native content. This is likely to be down to a number of factors. First, they have grown up in a commercial world, with brands firmly ingrained in their lives. Secondly, they are more likely to visit sites such as Buzzfeed, which are considered to be more about ‘fun news’ and therefore a more natural environment for sponsored content. Native advertising is more established and more prevalent on these sorts of sites. We also found a great deal of inconsistency in the labelling of sponsored content across different news sites, to the extent that frequently readers aren’t aware of what they are looking at before they start reading an article. ‘Paid for’, ‘Sponsored by’, ‘Promoted’ are words used to signpost native advertising content, with some meaning one thing on some sites and another on a different site. The Guardian website has a page that outlines clearly the definitions of each of the terms it uses, however this is a bit like the ‘terms and conditions’ pages which are rarely read. In order to reduce levels of perceived deception, the industry needs to adopt consistent and clear signposting across different sites if all consumers are to have faith in what they are reading.

The type of content influencing perceptions

With this trust comes a responsibility to ensure that readers are not misled. Many in our focus groups felt that there are some content areas – such as home and world news, politics, and financial news – that should be considered sacred and free from native advertising. These hard lines in the eyes of the consumer are well-illustrated by these responses:

News, politics, finance, for sure [are a no-no for native advertising]. Those are the topics you don't want people messing with for profit.

Helena, 36, UK, spent around 1.30 minutes reading Netflix/New York Times native advertising

The news press are there also to hold politicians, business and other interest groups to account. If any of them are seen to be influenced by them then they will suffer i.e. HSBC.

Alan, 31, UK, has visited the Guardian Cities site three times over the last year, and spent around 9 minutes on the site

If the news brand wants to be seen as independent and trusted then news, politics, business should not be influenced by commerce.

Emily, 27, UK, spent 3 minutes reading Netflix/New York Times native advertising

I don't want to see coverage of human rights in Papua brought to me by the companies who make soap out of palm oil.

Tanya, 51, UK

Respondents tell us that, should the brands start introducing native advertising to the more serious news content areas, it would have a damaging impact on their perceptions of the news organisation. On the other hand, less ‘serious’ areas of news, such as entertainment, lifestyle, fashion, travel, and motoring, are deemed to be more suitable environments for native advertising. This could be due to the fact that brands are already an important part of the landscape in these areas and therefore respondents are more open to hearing from them on these subjects. They also feel that their decisions in these areas may have little long-term impact.

Lying or deceiving me about these topics will have no lasting effects on my life.

Jenn F, 32, US

I think the rule of thumb should be – if the industry is already reliant on advertising (movies, lifestyle, sports, etc.) then it's OK. But not news and politics. That's not commercial – or it shouldn't be.

Helena, 36, UK

I wouldn't care who wrote it if it was informative and interesting. I would only be annoyed if I read a story and realised it was advertising half way through.

Eleanor, 32, UK, spent time reading Daily Mail/Now TV’s ‘The Warrior Plan: 8 ways to get a body like a Game of Thrones hotty’

Does it hurt news brands or advertisers?

In general, the majority of news audiences say that sponsored content has neither a positive nor negative impact on either the brand in question or the news organisation that carries the content. Around a fifth (22% in US and 21% in UK) say that they have a less positive view of the brand paying for an advert. However, the impact on the news organisation that carries the ad is more negative, with 28% of UK and US respondents having a less positive view of the news brand.

Impact on brand and news organisation

Scroll data area to see more

	USA		UK
	Brand in Ad	News org	Brand in Ad	News org
More positive	10%	11%	8%	7%
Neither nor	68%	62%	72%	66%
Less positive	22%	28%	21%	28%

QSpons4. Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news in the last week? Base: All who saw this kind of sponsored content in online news sites UK = 1374, US = 1761.

Younger consumers are more open to native advertising on news brands. Almost a fifth (19%) of 18–24 year olds and 15% of 25–34 year olds in the US say they feel more positive towards the brand. In the UK, 13% of 18–24 year olds say they feel more positive towards the brand, a figure that falls to 11% amongst 25–34 year olds. The proportion saying they feel more positive towards the news organisation is slightly lower, but again younger respondents are more positive than older ones. When talking to respondents in more detail about specific examples, there were significant differences between the UK and the USA. In the US, the reaction to a Buzzfeed article sponsored by Sauza tequila (‘12 Holiday Treats to Spike with Tequila’) was very positive. The respondents thought that the article contained some interesting tips and they weren’t put off at all by a brand sponsoring it. However, in the UK we showed an article sponsored by Renault and the content was perceived to be not really engaging enough to positively impact respondents’ perceptions of the brand. Furthermore, Buzzfeed wasn’t perceived to be a serious news site by these respondents. However, it was a different story when we showed respondents a New York Times article sponsored by Netflix (‘Women Inmates: Why the Male Model Doesn’t Work’). The reaction from the UK audience was significantly more positive than both their response to the Buzzfeed case study and also the feedback from consumers in the US.

I think this is a very slick looking article. Relevant to the product being advertised but seems to be informative and in-depth.

Alan, 31, spent around a minute reading the Guardian Witness page, powered by EE

The problem is if I see this in the NYT, I assume an editor vetted the article and read it and edited it. Who vouches for the author?

Kathleen, 60, US

Among UK consumers, the New York Times content was perceived to be informative and interesting, while the sponsorship was perceived to be relevant and a good fit. In the US the response was a little more mixed. Some found the content interesting, whilst others felt perturbed that it was advertising dressed up as news – the Buzzfeed example to them wasn’t pretending to be news. In the US, some respondents were surprised to see such content on the New York Times site as to them it is a respected and trusted brand. One notable example that failed to engage with UK consumers was a content partnership between Unilever and the Guardian. Readers immediately picked up that it had a different tone to the content they would normally expect to see in the Guardian and described the content as bland. This example highlights the need for content to reflect a site’s editorial style and tone in order for readers to find the content engaging and credible.

It feels a little measured, un-noteworthy. It doesn't feel especially like the Guardian so I suspect someone from Unilever's ad agency [produced the content].

Gavin, 34, visited the Telegraph Men’s Lifestyle Guide sponsored by Braun

This flags up an interesting paradox. Readers appear to be more engaged with content that replicates the style and tone of the news brand, but as a result, are more likely to feel misled and deceived by the news brand. While news brands have much to gain from this new form of online advertising, the danger of further blurring of the line between advertising and editorial could harm the credibility of news brands, with little lasting impact on advertisers. Consumer attitudes show that, when it comes to native advertising, the stakes are far higher for news brands than for advertisers.

Is the content itself interesting?

Relatively few people say that sponsored content is an interesting way to hear about topics and subjects that are relevant to them. In the UK just 14% like getting information in this way, a figure that increases to over one in five (22%) in the US. It is younger consumers who are more likely to find native advertising content more interesting, although, as mentioned earlier, older respondents are less likely to visit the sites where sponsored content is more prevalent, such as Buzzfeed.

Value of sponsored content

Sponsored or branded content is an interesting way to hear about a topic or subject that is relevant to me QSpons5. In general terms, to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? (Please select one option on each row.) Base: Total sample UK = 2149, US = 2295.

Conclusions

Traditional forms of online advertising are struggling to have an impact. The more it interrupts the reading experience, the more negative consumers’ views are towards it. Therefore brands need to find new ways to communicate with audiences, and sponsored content has the potential to do this; however, the type of content needs to be a natural fit to both the site and readers’ perceptions of the site. Broadly speaking, there are two types of sponsored content that we found to be of interest to respondents. The first is something practical and/or useful, but potentially more fun (such as the type of content found on Buzzfeed). The second is something that is more serious in nature, is informative, and where there is a clear link between the content and the brand (for example, the types of thing you might find in an online version of a broadsheet newspaper). However, for broadsheets, native advertising is more of a minefield than it is for entertainment sites. Current affairs, business, finance, and politics sections are generally considered to be sacred by consumers and readers feel that these areas should be free of commercial influence and retain an independent view. Consumers are open to reading sponsored content in areas such as entertainment, travel, fashion, and lifestyle as these are considered to be more appropriate environments for sponsored content. It is clear that consumers want to see clear labelling and signposting of paid-for content. Readers don’t like to feel they are being deceived; however, if they know up-front that a brand may have influenced the content, consumers are more accepting. To help maintain levels of trust, the language used should be standardised across news sites as much as possible. Sponsored content has great potential for brands to reach audiences, particularly younger consumers. But whoever brands are trying to reach, the content has to be of value to the audience to have an impact. The content also needs to be a natural fit for the publication – anything that jars with a consumer’s perception of what should be on a site may be dismissed by readers. If these principles can be followed, then sponsored content has a chance of being embraced by online audiences, allowing brands to overcome some of the issues that readers currently have with online advertising. Juliet Tate contributed additional research to this essay.

Pathways to News: How Audiences Discover News Online

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 12:15:56 +0000

Although audiences still consume the majority of their online news from familiar and trusted brands, the way they access that content is changing. Our data show very different patterns of access across countries. In countries like the UK, Denmark, and Finland, branded websites are often the starting point for any news journey. By contrast, in Italy, Spain, Germany, or France a search engine is often the key gateway while social media are important in Australia and Urban Brazil. In Japan, the strength of search is partly down to the dominance of Yahoo as integrated news and discovery platform while popular new mobile apps like Smart News and Gunosy explain the very high scores for other aggregators.

Scroll data area to see more

Starting points for news – all countries

	UK	US	France	Germany	Denmark	Finland	Italy	Spain	Japan	Urban Brazil	Australia	Ireland
Direct to news brand	52%	36%	27%	26%	54%	63%	20%	36%	15%	46%	33%	44%
Search	32%	40%	40%	45%	29%	26%	66%	54%	54%	52%	49%	46%
Social Media	28%	35%	21%	20%	38%	28%	33%	35%	14%	48%	41%	36%
Email	10%	25%	21%	15%	24%	9%	17%	14%	15%	23%	20%	9%
Mobile notifications and alerts	10%	13%	14%	9%	9%	7%	7%	8%	7%	11%	9%	9%
Other aggregator site, newsreader, or app	4%	5%	6%	5%	9%	12%	6%	11%	27%	17%	8%	7%

Search query breakdown

But within the search category there are important nuances. We asked specifically about the different types of query and found that on average more than half (57%) relate to navigation to a particular website rather than a keyword query. The majority of search queries are effectively a direct pass through to the homepage of the brand. By contrast, social media as a gateway is either driving traffic to individual stories or displaying content that is consumed within the social network itself – without any click through to the publisher website. Until recently, the main publisher concerns have focused on search but the rise of social discovery (see the next chart) has turned the spotlight on social platforms like Facebook.

Percentage using social media to find news 2013–2015 – selected countries

Q10. Thinking about how you got news online (via computer, mobile, or any device) in the last week, which were the ways in which you came across news stories? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample 2013/2015 UK = 2078/2149, US = 2170/2295, France = 1016/1991, Germany = 1099/1969, Denmark = 1024/2019, Japan = 1004/2017.

These findings are backed up by industry data from NewsWhip, which monitors the numbers of shares of publisher-based content across multiple countries and languages.[1. http://blog.newswhip.com/index.php/2014/07/ultimate-guide-newswhips-social-publishers-rankings] After Facebook changed its algorithms to favour quality news sites at the end of 2013[2. http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/2/5168072/facebook-news-feed-algorithm-update-promotes-good-news-over-memes] they reported a significant increase in referrals to major sites.

This has left many publishers delighted at the amount of new traffic but also concerned about over reliance on Facebook and in particular about its algorithms, which are changing all the time and over which they have no control.

Social discovery and the young

A key question for news publishers is the extent to which sites like Facebook and Twitter are friends or enemies. Do they displace the need to visit a website and therefore undermine business models – or can they stimulate interest in distinctive news content and bring new users to the brand? The following charts illustrate the relative importance of brands and social media as ways of starting a news journey. In general, under 35s favour social media but in strong-brand countries like the UK and Denmark they are no less likely to start a journey directly with a brand than over 35s. For them social media are additive, while in the US and Japan they appears to be more substitutional; under 35s there are less likely to go directly to a brand.

Discovery of news by social media and brand – under 35s

Q10. Thinking about how you got news online (via computer, mobile or any device) in the last week, which were the ways in which you came across news stories? Please select all that apply. Base: Under/Over 35s UK = 486/1663, US = 538/1757, France = 353/1368, Germany = 452/1517, Denmark = 568/1451, Japan = 510/1507.

Discovery of news by social media and brand – over 35s

The other key point about social news discovery is that it reaches different demographics – and not just the young. Those who visit news sites regularly, sign up for email, or receive mobile notifications are heavily male skewed. Search is more even but social is the only discovery mechanism that appeals more to female users.

Scroll data area to see more

Gender split of those using social media for news discovery

GENDER	ALL	UK	DEN	FIN	US	GER	FRA	SPA	ITA	BRA	JAP	IRE	AUS
Male	42%	44%	41%	44%	46%	45%	46%	42%	37%	43%	49%	37%	37%
Female	58%	56%	59%	56%	54%	55%	54%	58%	63%	57%	51%	63%	63%

We also find that social discovery is a better mechanism for reaching Casual Users and those on lower incomes than going directly to a website or using email. These data suggest that social media distribution is becoming a critical mechanism for brands looking to engage with hard to reach audiences.

Optimising content for social media and search

As social media and search have become more critical to business success, publishers have been keen to understand more about what makes users click on a particular link. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media Optimisation (SMO) have become core skills in many newsrooms but there is an appetite to learn more about the key factors that drive success. To cast light on these questions, we asked a series of questions in five of our countries about the factors driving clicks in search, social media, and also newsreader apps like Flipboard and Smart News.

Factors that drive clicks within search sites

Q10a/b/c. You said that you use search/social media/newsreader apps, which one of the following statements do you agree with most? Please choose one. Base: All who used search/social media/newsreader apps to access news in the last week UK = 674/613/97, US = 925/798/132, France = 808/364/109, Italy = 1315/670/125, Ireland = 697/543/109.

Factors that drive clicks within social media sites

Factors that drive clicks within aggregator sites

Overall, we find that the key driver in search is the relevance of the headline. The brand tends to be less important, as does the author of a piece or a social recommendation within the search results. By contrast, in social media the headline is less important than a recommendation by trusted brand or someone you know. This may be because in search we tend to be looking for very specific information – whereas default behaviour in a social network is to browse a complex multi-subject news feed. Users will be more receptive to signals around quality and trust to help them make that choice. The role of the brand is if anything even more important within newsreader apps that aggregate multiple news sources. This is particularly true in strong brand countries like the UK but one exception is in the US where the headline comes through most strongly.

How gateways affect choice

Another question which is of particular interest to academics and regulators is the extent to which these new gateways encourage more or fewer sources of news to be consumed (plurality) and by extension whether might they extend or restrict the range of stories discovered (serendipity). Here we find that all three mechanisms tend to drive users to click on sources they would not normally use. Three-quarters of social media users (76%), search engine users (73%), and newsreader app users (76%) said they sometimes or frequently accessed different sources compared with their regular brands.

Percentage accessing different sources of news by gateway – five country average

Q10ai/bi/ci. When accessing news links through search/social/site or mobile app that pulls together news sources, to what extent do you find yourself accessing different sources of news, when compared with your regular brands? Base: All who used search/social media/newsreader apps to access news in the last week UK = 674/613/97, US = 925/798/132, France = 808/364/109, Italy = 1315/670/125, Ireland = 697/543/109.

Young people and News Lovers tend to click more on new sources of news from these gateways. A higher proportion of those who say they never click on new sources are over 55.

Email vs Social Media

A key finding this year is the enduring effectiveness of email as a distribution and retention mechanism for news. Around a quarter are using it to access news each week in the US (25%) and Denmark (24%), although it is much less popular in the UK (10%), Finland (9%), and Ireland (9%). To some extent email news is making a comeback, partly driven by better targeting technologies and improved user experience. Digital-born news site Quartz has built much of its rapid growth on a well targeted and beautifully curated daily email. Many traditional companies launched new emails in 2014 such as First FT and Red Box, a political briefing from The Times. In looking at email and social media in four countries (US, UK, Ireland, and France) we find that, on average, email is used more by older groups, whereas social media are more heavily used by the young. Email tends to be accessed as part of a daily habit, often at the start of the day, whereas social media are used throughout the day, with more of a peak in the late evening. Social media are used more for breaking news, entertainment, sport, and technology, while email is – relatively – more popular for business and politics.

Email and social media compared by time of day – four country average

Q10cii/di. You said you came across news via social media/email in the last week, what type of content do you tend to access this way? Please select all that apply. Q10ciii/dii. When do you typically access social media/email news? Please select all that apply. Base: All who used social media/email to access news in the last week UK = 613/239, US = 796/623, France = 364/428, Ireland = 543/139.

Email and social media compared by type – four country average

Email is still mainly accessed from the computer, partly due to the older demographics. Social media usage is increasingly driven by smartphones and tablets – again primarily because younger people are using those devices.

Accessing news by email by device – selected countries

Q10civ/diii. On what device do you most regularly access news from social media/email news? Base: All who used social media/email to access news in the last week UK = 613/239, US = 796/623, France = 364/428, Ireland = 543/139.

Accessing news by social media by device – selected countries

Notifications and alerts

If email and social media have become primary distribution strategies for media companies, the growth of the smartphone is opening up a new way to attract the attention of consumers. Over the past year, we have seen very significant increases in mobile notifications – for breaking news but also for other updates and messages. France (14%) and the US (13%) are leading this trend, with the UK also showing substantial growth.

Growth in mobile alerts and notifications – all countries

Q10. Thinking about you got news online (via computer, mobile, or any device) in the LAST WEEK, which were the ways in which you came across news stories? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country 2014-2015.

One of the benefits of getting consumers to sign up for mobile apps is that they can drive a range of notifications such as an update signal on the app icon to alerts that appear on the lockscreen of an Apple or Android phone. The arrival of smart watches is likely to further accelerate this trend.

Social Networks and their Role in News

nic — Fri, 15 May 2015 12:20:25 +0000

Once again we have tracked the most popular social networks in each country – and the most popular for news. Our unique data from 12 countries show that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Google+ are by far the most important networks for news in that order, but for younger users Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr also come into the picture.

Main social networks for news – all

Q12b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for reading, watching, sharing, or discussing news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: 2014/2015 All = 18859/23557, 18–24s = 2424.

Main social networks for news – 18–24s

Almost two-thirds of all Facebook users in our sample (63%) use it in a given week for finding, reading, discussing, or sharing news, compared with 57% last year. The proportion of 18–24s using Facebook has also grown, although this group has also started to use a range of other networks much more intensively. In the US, the biggest growing networks amongst 18–24s have been Instagram and Snapchat – now used by 34% and 32% respectively for any purpose. Although these are still primarily platforms for communicating with friends, there has been more targeting of these platforms for content and 5% of 18–24s in the US now use Snapchat for news. Snapchat Discover, a new platform for brands including CNN, Vice, and Mail Online, launched in the US amid great fanfare just before our poll was conducted. Each network has a very distinct age profile, with Facebook spread evenly but Snapchat and Instagram skewing heavily towards under 35s. In the US nearly half of Snapchat users are under 25.

Age distribution of different social networks – United States

Q12a. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose in the last week? Base: All who used Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat in the last week US = 1535/294/119.

Interestingly WhatsApp, an American start-up now owned by Facebook, has a very small user base in the US (4%). It is much more popular in Brazil (61%), Spain (67%), Italy (49%), and Germany (41%). And a significant proportion of users is looking at WhatsApp for news. In Brazil news usage has doubled to a third of our urban sample (34%).

WhatsApp usage for news – all countries

Q12b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for reading, watching, sharing, or discussing news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: All who used a source of news in each country.

General use (2015)

Spain	67%
Brazil	61%
Italy	49%
Germany	41%
Finland	32%

Brazil has not only embraced WhatsApp, but it is also the biggest user of Facebook, with over 70% of our urban sample using the network for news in a given week. Japan is the only country where Facebook is not so widely used – partly because users there prefer networks that offer anonymity online. Elsewhere we see big differences in both the level of social media usage and the extent to which the different social networks are important for news. Twitter is heavily used in Spain, Ireland, and the UK, for example, but much less important in Denmark, Finland, Germany, and Australia.

Top three social networks by country

Q12b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for reading, watching, sharing, or discussing news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

We seek news on Twitter but bump into it on Facebook

Although large numbers of people use Facebook and YouTube they are not seen as news destinations in most countries. Respondents who use these sites in the UK, US, Italy, and Australia say they mostly ‘see news while they are there for other reasons’. By contrast, Twitter is considered a useful source of news in its own right by two-thirds (62%) of respondents.

Attitudes towards social networks and news

Frequency and Interest Segmentation Q12cii/dii/fi. You say you use Twitter/Facebook/YouTube for news. Which of the following statements applies best to you? Base: All who used Twitter/Facebook/YouTube for news in the last week UK = 296/610/144, US = 233/917/353, Italy = 191/1094/495, Australia = 141/939/310.

Scroll data area to see more

	News Lovers	Daily Briefers	Casual Users
Twitter	18%	10%	6%
YouTube	23%	18%	14%
Facebook	45%	41%	38%

We note that Twitter is populated by a relatively high proportion of News Lovers (people who have a strong interest in news and access it frequently) while Facebook and YouTube have a much higher proportion of Daily Briefers and Casual Users. Our data also show the type of activity regularly carried out in the three networks. Looking at the UK specifically we see that Twitter users are much more likely to be actively checking their feed for what’s new (69%) or clicking to view a professional news story (46%). Facebook users are more likely to discuss or comment on a story and YouTube is best for searching for videos.

Types of activity in social media – UK - Twitter

Q12ci/di/ei. You say you use Twitter/Facebook/YouTube for news. How have you used it for news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: All who used Twitter/Facebook/YouTube for news in the last week UK = 296/610/144.

Types of activity in social media – UK - Facebook

Types of activity in social media – UK - YouTube

These differences help to explain the type of content that is shared and consumed in these networks. Twitter tends to work better for serious news brands like the BBC and New York Times. Facebook tends to favour more accessible content and brands that focus more on entertainment and lifestyle content such as PlayBuzz, the Huffington Post, and Buzzfeed. The next chart shows figures from NewsWhip blog’s analysis of shares and tweets of content published in January 2015.[1. NewsWhip tracks the sharing of stories across social networks, www.newswhip.com.]

Brand performance in social networks – January 2015

The news that is most read, shared, and discussed in social media is produced by professional news organisations. Journalists and news organisations together are directly followed by around a third of users in social media (32%) that we polled in the UK, US, Italy, and Australia. People in the US and Italy are most likely to follow journalists, while those in the UK and the US have the greatest tendency to follow politicians and political parties.

Following journalists and politicians on social media - UK

Q12g. When accessing news through social media like Facebook, Google+, YouTube, or Twitter, have you subscribed to or followed any of the following? Please select all that apply. Base: All who used social media for news in the last week UK = 867, US = 1249, Italy = 1521, Australia = 1244.

Following journalists and politicians on social media - US

Following journalists and politicians on social media - Italy

Following journalists and politicians on social media - Australia

In the US over a quarter of social media users (28%) have followed or subscribed to the feed of a politician or political party. That equates to roughly a fifth (19%) of the total adult population.[2. Calculation assumes 87% of US adults use the internet (Pew), 79% of internet users use social media (Pew), and 28% of news reading social media users follow politicians (RISJ). 87% * 79% * 28% = 19.2% news reading adults follow a politician.] In other countries, we find around a fifth of social media users are following politicians or parties. This group tends to be male, shares news frequently, consumes news heavily (high proportion of News Lovers), and uses a large number of mainstream news sources as well. Political sources are supplementing not replacing traditional sources.

Lessons from Finland: How the News Industry is Managing Digital Transformation and Trying to Stay Profitable

esa.reunanen — Fri, 15 May 2015 13:15:51 +0000

Compared to most other countries taking part in Reuters Institute Digital News Report, the national news media in Finland seem to have survived the digital transformation pretty well. People use digital sources for news more than in most other countries, their trust in news is more solid, and the sources used – even online – are mostly traditional Finnish media companies. The problem is not reaching people with news but keeping journalism profitable. The Finnish media environment is characterized by a strong regional press. Daily papers are mainly purchased by subscriptions, often covering both print and online editions. The two national afternoon tabloids both reach over half of the population weekly (mainly online). Tax-funded Public Broadcasting Company YLE and commercial MTV3 dominate TV news and have a wide reach via digital platforms. Finland belongs to the group of forerunners in the transformation into digital. According to our survey, the weekly online reach of news (90%) is slightly greater than the reach of traditional news sources like print, radio and TV (88%). Urban Brazil is the only other country we look at where the reach of online news is greater than that of traditional sources. Online media is also rapidly increasing its share. Almost half (46%) named it as their main news source compared with 37% in 2014.[1.The base for these percentages is "those who have used news sources in the last week". This is almost all the respondents (2015: 1500/1509; 2014: 1369/1520).] This share is also greater than in any other country in the survey. As in other countries, younger generations in Finland prefer online with older groups more likely to prefer television. However, it is striking that in Finland, television is the most popular main source of news only in the oldest age-group. In every age-group under 55 years, online is now more popular.

Main source of news by age - Finland

Q4. You say you’ve used these sources of news in the last week, which would you say is your MAIN source of news? Base: All who used a source of news in the last week Finland = 1500

In terms of devices used for accessing online news, the trend in Finland is similar to most other countries. Smartphones are rapidly increasing their popularity while the use of computers is declining. The use of smartphones for accessing news increased from 41% in 2014 to 50% in 2015, and the use of tablets increased from 23% to 26%. The use of computers declined from 80% to 75%. News media seem in many ways to be important part of the people’s daily life. Over 90% of Finns catch up with news at least daily, with more than a quarter (27%) accessing at least five times a day. In most other countries in the survey, the share of those accessing at least five times in a day remains well under 20%. This, of course, points to the popularity of using mobile devices for accessing news. What is also striking in Finland is the high level of trust in news. Of the respondents, 68% say they trust “most news most of the time” while 73% say they trust “most of the news that I use most of the time”. The difference between trust in news in general and in news one uses most of the time is much less than in both the US and Mediterranean countries. This suggests that the Finnish news media is thought to be quite homogeneous both politically and when it comes to journalistic quality. The media in general is acknowledged as trustworthy – not only those outlets that reflect one’s own political opinions or that are of particularly high quality. The trustworthiness of news may also be related to the strong position of traditional media companies – both state owned YLE and private owned news media – and their still relatively strong journalism-professional cultures that value objectivity and professional independence from both commercial and political pressures.

Newspapers are moving towards paid news, but there is not much willingness to pay

The traditional Finnish media companies have sustained their position well in online competition. Online weekly reach is up to 79% for traditional newspapers and 55% for broadcasters – only 24% for pure players. The most popular pure player is a national news aggregator Ampparit, which has a 12% share. The Finnish language and small market seem to shield national news brands somewhat against international competition. For example, the weekly reach for MSN is only 4% and for Buzzfeed only 1%. Another reason for the popularity of traditional Finnish media companies online is the amount of free content still available. The digital reach for each of the afternoon tabloids is over 50%, and for YLE news about 40%. Offering free contents makes sense for YLE which receives its revenue from a public broadcasting tax while the strong online reach of the afternoon tabloids puts them in a good position in advertising markets. Elsewhere the situation is more difficult. Revenues from both subscriptions and advertising have been declining, and the new digital services have not yet brought incomes that can compensate declining revenues from printed newspapers. Google and Facebook are picking up a significant share of online national advertising spend, although in local advertising, the regional media companies still have a relatively strong position.[2.Grönlund, Mikko (2014) Sanomalehtien liiketoiminta ja toimintaympäristö 2000-luvulla (Newspaper business in the 2000's). In Lehtisaari, Katja (ed.) Sanomalehti uudessa mediamaisemassa: Helsinki: TAT, 34–43.] The strategy adopted by most newspaper companies in Finland seems to be moving towards paid news in their online offerings. Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s best known national daily, has been using a paywall online since 2012, and now half of its subscribers pay for online content, either by bundled subscriptions or pure digital subscriptions. Some of the regional dailies have already erected paywalls – either metered or freemium. The rest are planning to do so in the near future. For those already subscribing to print, the additional cost of online is relatively small, or the printed newspaper is being made available only by bundled subscriptions. Where they exist, digital-only subscriptions are typically markedly cheaper than print subscriptions. For example, ongoing subscription for print Helsingin Sanomat for one year costs €349, bundled €397. Online subscription with all services costs €178.80, and a more restricted online subscription is also available at €118.80. Although the percentage of those paying for online news is somewhat higher in Finland (14%) than in most other countries, the outlook for new payers to come is not very promising. Only 8% of those who do not pay online news now say they would pay in the future. What is striking is that this share has diminished 3 percentage points from 2014 while the share of those already paying has stayed the same. It seems that most of those who are likely to pay for digital news already pay, and most of the others are satisfied with free digital news available. There will be new online payers who make bundled subscriptions with only small extra money to print-only subscription. It will probably be more difficult to make people to pay for only-digital subscriptions. In the case of Helsingin Sanomat, the share of digital-only subscriptions is 14%, compared to 51% for print-only and 34% for bundled subscriptions.

Paying for online news and likelihood of paying in the future - Finland 2014-2015

Scroll data area to see more

	2014	2015
Paying for news	14%	14%
Likely to pay*	11%	8%

Q7a. Have you paid ONLINE news content, or accessed a paid-for ONLINE news service in the last year? (this could be digital subscription, combined digital/print subscription, or one-off payment for an article or app.) Base: Total sample 2014/2015 Finland = 1520/1529. Q7aii. You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year... How likely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like? Base: All who had not paid for online news in the last year 2014/2015 Finland = 1272/1275. * Showing very likely to pay/somewhat likely to pay.

Cutting costs and developing videos

The problems in business have led media companies to cut costs at the same time as trying to create innovative new services to attract larger audiences and new revenues from advertising. One effort for cutting costs is a new joint venture Lännen Media to create shared non-local content for syndication across 12 regional newspapers. Another example is Alma Media’s decision to merge newsrooms of two regional newspapers in Northern Finland. During the last decade, there have been downsizing processes in most Finnish newsrooms. It terms of new services, one somewhat promising option for newspaper groups has been investment in online videos and television programming. In Finland, services run by evening tabloids (IL-TV and ISTV) and Helsingin Sanomat (HSTV) are best known. Ilta-Sanomat says that its ISTV service is accessed 4 million times in a week, and that advertisements also sell well. The popularity of news-videos has been rising more generally. In Finland, the share of those who watched news videos last week rose from 18% in 2014 to 22% in 2015. The trend was also similar in most of the other countries in our News survey. In addition to opportunities, the study also illuminates some problems related to news-videos. In spite of their increased popularity, only one fifth of respondents say that they watched news videos last week. Most of the respondents also say that they like more reading news online than watching news-videos. Reading is felt faster and more convenient, and the pre-roll advertisements irritate many. However, attitudes may be changing. Online-videos are a new medium for both users and media companies, and its formats and watching habits are still evolving. For many, news-videos may be a clip attached to a written news story that does not bring much benefit to text. On the other hand, a news-video can be an excellent showcase of what happens on the spot, and be a different way for journalists to discuss news events and provide context and analysis. Because advertisements were often said to be the reason not to watch news videos, the media companies must find out, how long advertisements the users are ready to accept.

Conclusion

News is a trusted and important part of people’s daily life in Finland – even more so than in most of the other countries in the survey. National print and broadcasting companies hold a strong position in online news competition. However, the problem is how to keep business profitable when revenues from printed papers are declining. The Finnish news industry is cutting costs, innovating new services and moving towards paid news in their online offerings. According to the survey, though, the outlook for attracting new payers is quite challenging.

Survey Questions - Reuters Institute Digital News Survey 2015

nic — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 14:57:40 +0000

Reuters 2015 UK UK407755 Which country? <1> UK <2> US <3> France <4> Germany <5> Denmark <6> Finland <7> Italy <8> Spain <9> Japan <10> Brazil <11> Australia <12> Ireland <13> Poland <14> Czech Republic <15> Turkey <16> Portugal <17> Austria <18> Netherlands [income_uk if Country ==1] What is your gross household income? <1> Under £5,000 per year <2> £5,000 to £9,999 per year <3> £10,000 to £14,999 per year <4> £15,000 to £19,999 per year <5> £20,000 to £24,999 per year <6> £25,000 to £29,999 per year <7> £30,000 to £34,999 per year <8> £35,000 to £39,999 per year <9> £40,000 to £44,999 per year <10> £45,000 to £49,999 per year <11> £50,000 to £54,999 per year <12> £55,000 to £59,999 per year <13> £60,000 to £69,999 per year <14> £70,000 to £79,999 per year <15> £80,000 to £99,999 per year <16> £100,000 to £149,999 per year <17> £150,000 and over <18> Don’t know <19> Prefer not to answer {end module demo_UK} [[Q1List]] <1> Up to five times a day <2> Between 6 and 10 times a day <3> More than 10 times a day [Q1a] How often do you access the Internet for _any purpose_ (i.e. for work/leisure etc.)? This should include access from any device (desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile) and from any location (home, work, internet café or any other location). <1> Several times a day [Q1a_freq:Q1List] {popup}Does that mean? <2> Once a day <3> 4-6 days a week <4> 2-3 days a week <5> Once a week <6> Less often than once a week <7> Don’t know [Q1b] Typically, how often do you access _news_? By news we mean national, international, regional/local news and other topical events accessed via any platform (radio, TV, newspaper or online). <1> Several times a day [Q1b_freq:Q1List] {popup}Does that mean? <2> Once a day <3> Several times a week <4> Once a week <5> 2-3 times a month <6> Once a month <7> Less often than once a month <8> Don’t know <9> Never {exit status=screenout if Q1b in [7,8,9]} {page page_intro if Country==1} Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey all about news consumption. The survey should take about 15 minutes, and upon completion your account will be credited with 50 points. {end page page_intro} [Q1c] {single} How interested, if at all, would you say you are in news? <1> Extremely interested <2> Very interested <3> Somewhat interested <4> Not very interested <5> Not at all interested <998> Don’t know [Q1d] {single} What is your highest level of education? <1> I am currently in school/full-time education <2> I did not complete secondary/high school <3> High school or baccalaureate or A-levels <4> Professional qualification <5> Bachelor’s degree or similar <6> Masters or Doctoral degree #if code 1 selected, show Q1NEW# [Q1NEW if Q1d==1] What is the highest educational level you expect to complete? <1> I will not complete secondary/high school <2> High school or baccalaureate or A-levels <3> Professional qualification <4> Bachelor’s degree or similar <5> Masters or Doctoral degree <998> Don’t know UK, US, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark [Q1F if Country in [1,2,4,5,7,8]] Some people talk about 'left', 'right' and 'centre' to describe parties and politicians. With this in mind, where would you place yourself on the following scale? <1>Very left-wing <2>Fairly left-wing <3>Slightly left-of-centre <4>Centre <5>Slightly right-of-centre <6>Fairly right-wing <7>Very right-wing <8>Don't know Australia [Q1G if Country in [11]] Which of the following best describes the area you live in? <1> Inner city <2> Urban area, but not inner city <3> Suburban area <4> Village or small town <5> Rural area <6> Don't know [Q2] {multiple max=5 order=randomize} Which of the following types of news is most important to you? Please _choose up to five_. <1> News about the $Country <2> International news <3> Local news about my town or city <4> News about my region <5> Business and financial news <6> News about the economy <7> Entertainment and celebrity news <8> Fun/Weird news <9> Health news <10> Education news <11> Arts and culture news <12> Sports news <13> News about $Country politics <14> Science and technology news <995 fixed> Other [Q2_other] {open} <999 xor fixed> None of these <998 fixed xor> Don’t know [Q2aNEW] {grid roworder=randomize} People have different reasons for following the news. To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the statements below? Please select _one option on each row_. [Q2aNEW_1] I follow the news because I want to know what is going on in the world around me [Q2aNEW_2] I follow the news because I want to understand things that might affect me [Q2aNEW_3] I follow the news as part of my daily habits [Q2aNEW_4] I follow the news because it is a good way to pass time [Q2aNEW_5] I follow the news because it means I can take part in discussions with friends and colleagues about topical issues [Q2aNEW_6] I follow the news because I feel I have a duty as a citizen to stay informed <1> Strongly disagree <2> Tend to disagree <3> Neither agree nor disagree <4> Tend to agree <5> Strongly agree Q3 COUNTRY RELEVANT EXAMPLES GIVEN, UK SHOWN [Q3] Which, if any, of the following have you used in the _last week_ as a _source of news_? Please select all that apply. #randomised but within TV (codes 1 and 2), print (codes 4 and 5) and website (codes 6-9) Q3exam1 = 'Television news bulletins or programmes such as News at Ten, C4 News, Good Morning Britain, Newsnight and Question Time' Q3exam2 = '24 hour news television channels such as Sky News or BBC News 24' Q3exam3 = 'Radio news bulletins or programmes such as Today, 5 Live Breakfast' Q3exam4 = 'Printed newspapers such as The Guardian or Daily Mail' Q3exam5 = 'Printed magazines such as the Economist or The Week' Q3exam6 = 'Websites/apps of newspapers such as theguardian.com or Mail Online' Q3exam7 = 'Websites/apps of news magazines such as The Economist or The Week' Q3exam8 = 'Websites/apps of TV and Radio companies such as BBC News Online or Sky News Online' Q3exam9 = 'Websites/apps of other news outlets such as MSN, Yahoo, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Vice or Google News' Q3exam10 = 'Social media such as Facebook or Twitter' Q3exam11 = 'Blogs' <995 fixed>Other # [Q3_other] {open}#(please specify) <999 xor fixed>None of these UK, US, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland [Q3ai if Q3.has_any([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,995])] {single order=randomize} For _speed of coverage (breaking news)_, which _one_ of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Sources as Q3 [Q3aii if Q3.has_any([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,995])] {single order=randomize} For _bringing to my attention stories I didn’t know about_, which _one_ of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Sources as Q3 [Q3aiii if Q3.has_any([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,995])] {single order=randomize} For _analysis and comment_, which _one_ of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Sources as Q3 [Q3aiv if Q3.has_any([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,995])] {single order=randomize} For _accuracy and reliability_, which _one_ of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Sources as Q3 [Q3av if Q3.has_any([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,995])] {single order=randomize} In terms of _overall trust_, which _one_ of the sources that you've used in the last week do you find best? Sources as Q3 [Q4 if Q3.has_any([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,995]) and len(Q3)>1] You say you’ve used these sources of news in the _last week_, which would you say is your MAIN source of news? Sources as Q3 UK, US, Spain, Finland [Q4b if Country in [1,2,6,8] ] {multiple} When do you typically access the news? Please select all that apply to you. <1> First thing in the morning <2> Later in the morning <3> Lunchtime <4> Afternoon <5> Early evening <6> Late evening <7> Last thing at night <998 xor fixed> Don’t know UK [Q4a if Q3.has_any([1,2]) and Country==1] {grid} Thinking about the way you watch TV news - on a television set – during which of these times do you give it your full attention/ do something else at the same time (give it part of your attention)? [Q4a_1] First thing in the morning [Q4a_2] Later in the morning [Q4a_3] Lunchtime [Q4a_4] Afternoon [Q4a_5] Early evening [Q4a_6] Late evening [Q4a_7] Last thing at night <1> Full attention <2> Part of my attention <3> Don’t watch at this time UK [Q4ai if Country==1 and (Q4a_1 in [2] or Q4a_2 in [2] or Q4a_3 in [2] or Q4a_4 in [2] or Q4a_5 in [2] or Q4a_6 in [2] or Q4a_7 in [2])] {multiple order=randomize} On those occasions when you give TV news only part of your attention, what are the other things you tend to do? Please select the ones you do most often. <1> Domestic tasks (cleaning, cooking, eating, ironing, etc.) <2> Talk to friends and/or family <3> Check social media feeds on tablet, smartphone or computer <4> Check email on tablet, smartphone or computer <5> Browse web generally on tablet, smartphone or computer <6> Play games on tablet, smartphone or computer <7> Read newspapers, magazines etc. <999 xor fixed> None of these UK, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Finland [OPT4c if Country in [1,3,4,5,6,8]] {multiple} Where were you when you looked at/ listened to the news _over the last few days_? Please select all that apply. <1> At home: communal space (living-room, kitchen, etc.) <2> At home: personal space (own room, bedroom, etc.) <3> At work (office, shop, factory, etc.) <4> At a place of study <5> Whilst travelling, commuting on public transport <6> Whilst travelling, commuting in car, by bicycle or other personal transport <7> While out and about generally <8> Other people’s homes <995 fixed> Another place [OPT4c_other] {open} <997 xor fixed> I didn’t consume news over the last few days UK, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Finland [OPT4e if OPT4c.has_any([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,995]) and Country in [1,3,4,5,6,8]] {grid-check} Please mention the key news media you used in these locations. Please select all that apply to you. [OPT4e_1 if 1 in OPT4c] At home: communal space (living-room, kitchen, etc.) [OPT4e_2 if 2 in OPT4c] At home: personal space (own room, bedroom, etc.) [OPT4e_3 if 3 in OPT4c] At work (office, shop, factory, etc.) [OPT4e_4 if 4 in OPT4c] At a place of study [OPT4e_5 if 5 in OPT4c] Whilst travelling, commuting on public transport [OPT4e_6 if 6 in OPT4c] Whilst travelling, commuting in car, by bicycle or other personal transport [OPT4e_7 if 7 in OPT4c] While out and about generally [OPT4e_8 if 8 in OPT4c] Other people’s homes [OPT4e_995 if 995 in OPT4c] Another place $OPT4c_other <1> Television <2> Radio <3> Printed newspaper <4> Internet via computer/laptop <5> Internet via mobile phone <6> Internet via tablet <999 xor fixed> None of these Q5 MASTER CODE LIST USED - EXCEL SHEET Q5A] {multiple order=randomize} Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the _last week_? Please select all that apply. _Via TV, RADIO OR PRINT ONLY_ (Traditional platforms) [Q5B] {multiple order=randomize} Which, if any, of the following have you used to access news in the _last week_? Please select all that apply. _Via online platforms_ (web, mobile, tablet, e-reader) [Q6a] Thinking about news _in general_, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “I think you can trust most news most of the time” <1> Strongly disagree <2> Tend to disagree <3> Neither agree nor disagree <4> Tend to agree <5> Strongly agree [Q6b] Thinking specifically about news sources that _you use_, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “I think I can trust most of the news that I use most of the time” <1> Strongly disagree <2> Tend to disagree <3> Neither agree nor disagree <4> Tend to agree <5> Strongly agree [Q7] {multiple} Have you bought (paid for) a _printed newspaper in the last week_? (This could be an ongoing subscription or one off payment for a physical copy). Please select all that apply. <1> Yes, via newsstand or shop <2> Yes, I have home delivery (for one or more days a week) <3> Yes, from another source <4 xor fixed> No, I have not <5 xor fixed> Don’t know [Q7a] Have you paid for ONLINE news content, or accessed a paid for ONLINE news service _in the last year_? (This could be digital subscription, combined digital/print subscription or one off payment for an article or app) <1> Yes <2> No <3> Don’t know [Q7ai if Q7a==1] {multiple} You said you have accessed paid for ONLINE news content in the last year… Which, if any, of the following ways have you used to pay for ONLINE news content in the last year? Please select all that apply. <1> I made a single _one-off payment_ to access an article, website (eg day-pass) or pdf <2> I made a single _one-off payment_ to access a news app or download an edition via an app, digital newsstand <3> I made an _ongoing payment_ (subscription) for a digital news service – eg monthly, quarterly or annual payment <4> I made an _ongoing payment_ to a digital news service as part of a wider print subscription <5> I made an _ongoing payment_ for a digital news service as part of a wider cable, broadcast, mobile or other relationship <6> I make an _ongoing payment_ to a service that gives me access to _multiple digital news services_ <7> Someone else paid for me to subscribe or access a digital news service <995 fixed> Other [Q7aii if Q7a==2] You said you have not paid for online digital content in the last year… How likely or unlikely would you be to pay IN THE FUTURE for online news from particular sources that you like? <1> Very likely <2> Somewhat likely <3> Somewhat unlikely <4> Very unlikely <5> Don’t know UK, US, Australia [OPTQ7b if Q7ai.has_any([3,4,5,6]) and Country in [1,2,11]] {multiple max=3 order=randomize} You said you have an online news subscription with at least one news provider, what are the most important factors in continuing to pay? _Please chose up to three_ <1> A brand I like for news <2> Access to special offers/subscribers club <3> Broad range of news coverage <4> Quality of a specific area (e.g. sport, arts, technology, business) <5> Quality of specific columnists, writer and journalists <6> Design and ease of use <7> Ability to access from multiple devices <995 fixed> Other UK [OPTQ7ci if Q7ai.has_any([3,4,5,6]) and Country==1] {multiple order=randomize} Which of the following news brands did you make an _on-going payment_ (subscription) to for online news over _the past year_ (e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual)? Please select all that apply. <1> Mail Online <2> The Sun online <3> Mirror online <4> Times online <5> Telegraph online <6> Express online <7> Star online <8> Guardian online <9> Independent online <10> Financial Times online <11> Metro online <12> New York Times <13> Economist <14> The Week <994 fixed> Other [OPTQ7ci_other1] {open} <995 fixed> Other [OPTQ7ci_other2] {open} UK [OPTQ7cii if Q7ai.has_any([1,2]) and Country==1] {multiple order=randomize} Which of the following brands did you make a _one off payment_ to over _the past year_ (e.g. day pass, pdf, article or one off app payment)? Please select all that apply. CODES AS OPTQ7CI UK, US, Spain, Australia #for Spain, please change to €. For US, please change to $# [OPTQ7ciii_UK if Q7a==1 and Country in [1]] How much have you paid for online news content, or for access to a paid for online news service in _the last year_? Choose the option that comes closest to the amount you have paid. If you have paid to different providers for online news, think only of the single provider you have paid the most to. <1> £2.50 per month (£30 per year) <2> £5 per month (£60 per year) <3> £10 per month (£120 per year) <4> £15 per month (£180 per year) <5> £20 per month (£240 per year) <6> £25 per month (£300 per year) <7> £30 per month (£360 per year) <8> More than £30 per month (more than £360 per year) <998 xor fixed> Don’t know UK, US, Spain, Australia [OPTQ7civ_UK if Q7a==2 and Country in [1]] What is the maximum price you would pay for a subscription to a digital-only news service – including full access to its website, apps and any digital replicas of the newspaper? <1> £0 (I won't pay for any digital news service, whatever the price) <2> £2.50 per month (£30 per year) <3> £5 per month (£60 per year) <4> £10 per month (£120 per year) <5> £15 per month (£180 per year) <6> £20 per month (£240 per year) <7> £25 per month (£300 per year) <8> £30 per month (£360 per year) <9> More than £30 per month (more than £360 per year) <998 xor fixed> Don’t know UK [POL2A if Country in [1]] How interested would you say you are in politics? <1> Extremely interested <2> Very interested <3> Somewhat interested <4> Not very interested <5> Not at all interested <6> Don't know UK [POL2B if (POL2A and not POL2A in [5]) and Country in [1]] {multiple order=randomize} Which, if any, of the following sources of information do you use to keep up with political and government issues? Please select all that apply. <1> Friends, relatives or colleagues <2> National printed newspapers and/or their online sites/apps <3> Local printed newspapers and/or their online sites/apps <4> Radio, TV broadcasters and/or online sites/apps <5> Politically focussed magazines and/or online sites/apps <6> Political parties and/or their newsletters or online sites <7> Online specialist sites or political blogs <8> Email newsletters/alerts <9> Social media such as Facebook and Twitter <998 xor fixed> Don’t know <999 fixed xor> None of these UK [POL2C if (POL2A and not POL2A in [5]) and Country in [1]] {multiple order=randomize} In which, if any, of the following ways have you used the Internet in the last year to get more involved in politics or express a political opinion? Please select all that apply. <1> Sent an email about a political candidate or issue <2> Signed an online petition <3> Posted your views on a news site <4> Posted your views on a social media site <5> Joined a campaign via a social media site <6> Used the internet to organise or find a meeting/ event to attend <7> Contributed money to a political party or political cause <8> Used the internet to volunteer for a political activity <9> Followed a politician or political party via Twitter or subscribed via Facebook page <998 xor fixed> Don’t know <999 fixed xor> None of these [Q8A] {multiple} Which, if any, of the following devices do you ever use (for any purpose)? Please select all that apply. <1> Smartphone made by Apple (iPhone) <2> Smartphone by another manufacturer (e.g. Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony, Nokia Lumia, etc.) <3> Other internet connected phone (e.g. older Blackberry, Nokia feature phone etc.) <4> Laptop or desktop computer (at work or home) <5> Tablet Computer made by Apple (e.g. iPad, iPad Air or iPad mini) <6> Other tablet computer (e.g. Samsung Galaxy, Kindle Fire HD, Google Nexus etc.) <7> Ebook reader (e.g. other Kindle device, Kobo etc.) <8> Connected TV (a TV that connects to internet via set top box, games console, other box such as Apple TV etc.) <9> Smart TV (TV that connects to the internet directly without the need for any other box) <10> Smart watch, wristband or smart glasses that connect to the internet <995 fixed> Other mobile device that connects to the internet (e.g. iPod Touch, PSP or Gameboy DSi) <999 fixed xor> None of these <998 xor fixed> Don’t know #BUTTON [Q8B if Q8A.has_any([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,995])] {multiple} Which, if any, of the following devices have you used to access news _in the last week_? Please select all that apply. CODES AS 8A [UK8b6_5] {single order=randomize} You’ve said you use the following devices to access news in the _last week_, which is your MAIN way of accessing online news? CODES SELECTED AT Q8B, IF SELECTED ONE CODE ONLY AT Q8 THAT IS TAKEN TO BE MAIN WAY UK, USA, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Ireland #show answer codes selected at Q5B plus ‘don’t know’# [Q19A:Q19List] {multiple order=randomize($Rand21) columns=2} You say you access news via a _SMARTPHONE_. When using that device what news sources have you accessed in the _last week_? UK, USA, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Ireland #USE LIST AT Q5B [Q19B:Q19List if (4 in Q8B and (Q5B and not Q5B.has_any([998,999]))) and Country in [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] ] {multiple columns=2} You say you access news via a _PC/LAPTOP_. When using that device which of the following news sources did you use to access in the last week? Please select all that apply. UK, USA, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Ireland #show answer codes selected at Q5B plus ‘don’t know’# [Q19CC:Q19List if (Q8B.has_any([5,6]) and (Q5B and not Q5B.has_any([998,999]))) and Country in [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] ] {multiple columns=2} You say you access news via a _TABLET_. When using that device which of the following news sources did you use to access in the _last week_? Please select all that apply. UK, US, Germany, Finland, Australia [Q9A if Q8B.has_any([1,2,3]) and Country in [1,2,4,6,11]] Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a _MOBILE_, which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer. <1> I mainly use news apps I downloaded to my device <2> I mainly use news websites via the standard web browser on my device <3> I use apps and mobile websites about the same <98> Not sure UK, US, Germany, Finland, Australia [Q9B if Q8B.has_any([5,6]) and Country in [1,2,4,6,11]] Thinking specifically about when you look for news on a _TABLET_, which of the following statements most applies to you? Please select one answer <1> I mainly use news apps I downloaded to my device <2> I mainly use news websites via the standard web browser on my device <3> I use apps and mobile websites about the same <4> Not sure UK, US, Germany, Australia [Q9C if Q8B.has_any([1,2,3]) and Country in [1,2,4,11]] You said you use a smartphone for news, how many NEWS apps do you have on your _smartphone_? <1> 0 <2> 1 <3> 2 <4> 3-4 <5> More than 4 <98> Don’t know UK, US, Germany, Australia [Q9D if Q8B.has_any([5,6]) and Country in [1,2,4,11]] You said you use a TABLET for news, how many NEWS apps do you have on your _Tablet_? <1> 0 <2> 1 <3> 2 <4> 3-4 <5> More than 4 <998> Don’t know UK, US, Germany, Australia #show answer codes selected at Q5B plus ‘other’ and ‘don’t know’# [Q9ei:Q19List if Q8B.has_any([1,2,3]) and (Q5B and not Q5B.has_any([998,999])) and Country in [1,2,4,11]] {multiple} You said you use one or more news apps on a _SMARTPHONE_, which of the following brands do you use _via an app_? Please select all that apply. UK, US, Germany, Australia #show answer codes selected at Q5B plus ‘other’ and ‘don’t know’# [Q9eii_multi:Q19List if Q8B.has_any([5,6]) and (Q5B and not Q5B.has_any([998,999])) and Country in [1,2,4,11]] {multiple} You said you use one or more news apps on a _TABLET_, which of the following brands do you use via an app? Please select all that apply. {page p_Q10} Now we’re going to ask you questions about the different ways in which you come across news on ANY digital device #Please RANDOMISE order but link together 2,3 and 5,6# EACH MARKET HAD RELEVANT EXAMPLES, UK SHOWN [Q10] {multiple order=randomize} Thinking about how you got news online (via computer, mobile or any device) _in the last week_, which were the ways in which you came across news stories? Please select all that apply. Q10exam1 = 'Directly accessed one or more news websites apps such as BBC News, Mail Online, Huffington Post' Q10exam2 = 'Used a search engine e.g. Google, Bing and typed in a keyword for the name of a particular website' Q10exam3 = 'Used a search engine e.g. Google, Bing and typed in a keyword about a particular news story' Q10exam4 = 'Used a website or mobile app that pulls together different news links (e.g. Flipboard, Zite, Pulse)' Q10exam5 = 'Used social media and came across news that way (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google +)' Q10exam6 = 'Got news via an email newsletter or email alert' Q10exam7 = 'Received a news alert through an app on my mobile phone/tablet or via SMS' <995 fixed> Other [Q10_other] {open} <998 fixed xor> Don’t know <997 fixed xor (if 999 in Q3)> I haven’t used online news in the last week #only show if ‘none of these’ at Q3# UK, US, France, Italy, Ireland [Q10a if Q10.has_any([2,3])] {single order=randomize} You said that you use _a search engine_ as a way of accessing news content, which one of the following statements do you agree with most? <1> I tend to click on content that comes from a site I know and trust <2> I tend to click on content that comes from a person I know and trust <3> I tend to click on headlines that are most interesting to me <998 fixed xor> Don't know UK, US, France, Italy, Ireland [Q10ai if Q10.has_any([2,3])] When accessing news links through _a search engine_, to what extent do you find yourself accessing different sources of news, when compared with your regular brands? Please choose one. <1> I frequently find myself clicking on new sources of news <2> I sometimes find myself clicking on new sources of news <3> I rarely find myself clicking on new sources of news <4> I never find myself clicking on new sources of news <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, France, Italy, Ireland [Q10b if 4 in Q10] You said that you use _a website or mobile app that pulls together different news sources_, which one of the following statements do you agree with most? Please choose one. <1> I tend to click on content that comes from a site I know and trust <2> I tend to click on content that comes from a person I know and trust <3> I tend to click on headlines that are interesting to me <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, France, Italy, Ireland [Q10bi if 4 in Q10] When accessing news links through _a site or mobile app that pulls together news sources_ , to what extent do you find yourself accessing different sources of news, when compared with your regular brands? Please choose one. <1> I frequently find myself clicking on new sources of news <2> I sometimes find myself clicking on new sources of news <3> I rarely find myself clicking on new sources of news <4> I never find myself clicking on new sources of news <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, France, Italy, Ireland [Q10c if 5 in Q10] You said that you use _social media like Facebook or Twitter_ as a way of accessing news content, which one of the following statements do you agree with most? <1> I tend to click on content that comes from a site I know and trust <2> I tend to click on content that comes from a person I know and trust <3> I tend to click on headlines that are most interesting to me <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, France, Italy, Ireland [Q10ci if 5 in Q10] When accessing news links through _social media like Facebook or Twitter_, to what extent do you find yourself accessing different sources of news, when compared with your regular brands? Please choose one. <1> I frequently find myself clicking on new sources of news <2> I sometimes find myself clicking on new sources of news <3> I rarely find myself clicking on new sources of news <4> I never find myself clicking on new sources of news <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, France, Ireland [Q10cii if 5 in Q10] {multiple order=randomize} You said you came across news via _social media_ in _the last week_, what type of content do you tend to access this way? Please select all that apply. <1> Breaking news <2> General news <3> Politics <4> Business <5> Technology <6> Sport <7> Entertainment <995 fixed> Other [Q10cii_other] {open} <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, France, Ireland [Q10ciii if 5 in Q10] {multiple} When do you typically access _social media_? Please select all that apply. <1> First thing in the morning <2> Later in the morning <3> Lunchtime <4> Afternoon <5> Early evening <6> Late evening <7> Last thing at night <998 xor fixed> Don’t know UK, US, France, Ireland [Q10civ if 5 in Q10] On what device do you most regularly access news _via social media_? <1> Computer/ laptop <2> Smartphone <3> Tablet <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, France, Ireland [Q10di if 6 in Q10] {multiple order=randomize} You said you came across news via _email_ in _the last week_, what type of email do you use? Please select all that apply. <1> Breaking news email <2> General news email <3> Politics email <4> Business email <5> Technology email <6> Sport email <7> Entertainment email <995 fixed> Other [Q10di_other] {open} <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, France, Ireland [Q10dii if 6 in Q10] {multiple} When do you typically access _email news_? Please select all that apply. <1> First thing in the morning <2> Later in the morning <3> Lunchtime <4> Afternoon <5> Early evening <6> Late evening <7> Last thing at night <998 xor fixed> Don’t know UK, US, France, Ireland [Q10diii if 6 in Q10] On what device do you most regularly access _email news_? <1> Computer/laptop <2> Smartphone <3> Tablet <998 fixed xor> Don’t know {end module mQ10other2} [Q11] {multiple order=randomize} Thinking of the way you looked at news online <(via any device)> _in the last week_, which of the following ways of consuming news did you use? Please select ALL that apply. <1> Looked at a list of news headlines (for example on the front page of a news website) <2> Read news stories or articles <3> Followed a <LIVE news page> within a website - short updates on a major news story listed in chronological order often including the best from social media) <4> Read a news blog <5> Look at a sequence or gallery of pictures about news <6> Viewed a news graphic (infographic) <7> Watched an online news video (live, clip or programme) <8> Listened to news audio online (live, clip or podcast/ programme) <9> Looked at a list (e.g. a top 10) <10 fixed> Used an “app” on my smartphone to access the news <11 fixed> Used an “app” on my tablet to access the news <995 fixed> Other [Q11_other] {open} <998 xor fixed>Don’t know <999 xor fixed>None of these UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, Ireland [OptQ11ai if Q11 and not 7 in Q11] {multiple order=randomize} You said that you don’t usually watch news videos online. Why not? Please select all that apply. <1> I find reading articles quicker and more convenient <2> Videos don’t tend to add anything that is not in the text story <3> I often can’t get them to play properly on my device <4> They take too long to load up/start playing <5> Many have pre-roll adverts which tend to put me off <6> I would rather watch on a bigger screen <7> I don’t have access to sound (e.g. at work) <8> I am concerned about the cost of access (e.g. via mobile) <995 fixed> Other [OptQ11ai_other] {open} <998 xor fixed>Don’t know We’re now going to ask you a few more questions about the use of online news video. This might include video on a news website, video accessed via a social media site, short clips from members of the public, or TV news programmes on a broadcaster’s website. UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, Ireland [OPTQ11aii if code 7 at Q11] {multiple} Which TYPES of news video have you watched online in the last month? Please select all that apply. <1> Live stream coverage of a breaking news event <2> Live stream coverage of other scheduled news event (e.g. political speech, tech launch, fashion event etc.) <3> News clip that adds drama to a text story (e.g. eyewitness testimony, raw footage of a news event) <4> News clip that provided context or analysis on a text story (e.g. journalist/politician talking to camera, or a short interview) <5> Longer news programme accessed on demand (e.g. a stream or download of politics, health, tech, film, food) <998 xor fixed>Don’t know <999 xor fixed>None of these UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, Ireland [OPTQ11D] In thinking about your online news habits, which of the following statements applies best to you? Please select one. <1> I mostly read news in text <2> I mostly read news in text but occasionally watch video news that looks interesting <3> I read text stories and watch video news about the same <4> I mostly watch video news and read text occasionally <5> I mostly watch video news <998 xor fixed> Don’t know [Q12A] {multiple order=randomize columns=2} Which, if any, of the following have you used for _any purpose_ in the last week? Please select all that apply. <1>Facebook <2>LinkedIn <3>MySpace <4>Twitter <5>YouTube <6>Google Plus <7>Instagram <8>Tumblr <9>Reddit <10>Vine <11>Digg <12>Stumbleupon <13>Pinterest <14>Flickr <15>WhatsApp <16>Line <17>Viber <18>Snapchat <33 if Country in [1]>WeChat <34 if Country in [1]>Threema <998 xor fixed>Don’t know <999 xor fixed>None of these [Q12B if Q12A and not Q12A.has_any([998,999])] {multiple order=randomize columns=2} Which, if any, of the following have you used for finding, reading, watching, sharing or discussing _news_ in _the last week_? Please select all that apply. CODES AS Q12A UK, US, Italy, Australia [Q12Ci if 4 in Q12B] {multiple order=randomize} You say you use Twitter for news. How have you used it for news _in the last week_? Please select all that apply. <1> Browsing my feed to see what’s new <2> Searching Twitter for specific news <3> Clicking to read or view a professional story, news video or picture <4> Clicking to read or view a non-professional (user generated) news video or picture <5> Retweeting or favouriting news related post <6> Discussing a story (e.g. reply or quote with comment) <7> Posting a news story, picture or video of your own <8> Clicking hashtag to see content around a news story <998 xor fixed>Don’t know <999 xor fixed>None of these UK, US, Italy, Australia [Q12Cii if 4 in Q12B] {single} You say you use Twitter for news. Which of the following statements applies best to you? <1> I think of Twitter as a useful way of getting news <2> I mostly see news when I’m on Twitter for other reasons <998 xor fixed>Don’t know UK, US, Italy, Australia [Q12Di if 1 in Q12B] {multiple order=randomize} You say you use Facebook for news. How have you used it for news in _the last week_? Please select all that apply. <1> Browsing my feed to see what’s new <2> Searching Facebook for specific news <3> Clicking to read or view a professional story, news video or picture <4> Clicking to read or view a non-professional (user generated) news video or picture <5> Sharing news stories (eg posting to feed, someone’s wall) <6> Discussing/commenting on a news story <7> Posting a news story, picture or video of your own <8> Clicking hashtag to see content around a news story <998 xor fixed>Don’t know <999 xor fixed>None of these UK, US, Italy, Australia [Q12Dii if 1 in Q12B] {single} You say you use Facebook for news. Which of the following statements applies best to you? <1> I think of Facebook as a useful way of getting news <2> I mostly see news when I’m on Facebook for other reasons <998 xor fixed>Don’t know UK, US, Italy, Australia [Q12Ei if 5 in Q12B] {multiple order=randomize} You say you use YouTube for news. How have you used in _the last week_? Please select all that apply. <1> Browsing the site to see latest news videos <2> Searching for a news video <3> Viewing a professional news video or picture <4> Viewing a non-professional (user generated) news video or picture <5> Clicking on a news link to another site <6> Sharing or recommending a news video <7> Discussing/commenting on a news video <8> Posting a video on a news related issue <998 xor fixed>Don’t know <999 xor fixed>None of these UK, US, Italy, Australia [OptQ12Fi if 5 in Q12B ] {single order=randomize} You say you use YouTube for news. Which of the following statements applies best to you? <1> I think of YouTube as a useful way of getting news <2> I mostly see news when I’m on YouTube for other reasons <998 fixed xor> Don’t know UK, US, Italy, Australia [Q12GG if Q12B and not Q12B.has_any([998,999])] {multiple order=randomize} When accessing news through social media like Facebook, Google Plus, YouTube or Twitter, have you subscribed to or followed any of the following? Please select all that apply. <1> A news organisation <2> A journalist <3> A political party <4> A politician <5> A campaigning group <999 xor fixed> None of these [Q13] {multiple order=randomize} During an _average week_ in which, if any, of the following ways do you share or participate in news coverage? Please select all that apply. <1>Share a news story via Social Network (e.g Facebook, Twitter, Reddit) <2>Share a news story via email <3>Rate, like or favourite a news story <4>Comment on a news story in a Social Network (e.g Facebook or Twitter) <5>Comment on a news story on a news website <6>Write a blog on a news or political issue <7>Post or send a news-related picture or video to a Social Network site <8>Post or send a picture or video to a news website/news organisation <9>Vote in an online poll via a news site or social network <10>Take part in a campaign or group based around a news subject <11>Talk with friends and colleagues about a news story (e.g. by email, social media, instant messenger) <12>Talk with friends and colleagues about a news story (face to face) <999 xor fixed>None of these {end page pQ13} UK [OPTQ13B] {grid roworder=randomize} How frequently do you do each of the following? [OPTQ13B_1 if 1 in Q13]Share a news story via Social Network (e.g Facebook, Twitter, Reddit) [OPTQ13B_2 if 2 in Q13]Share a news story via email [OPTQ13B_3 if 3 in Q13]Rate (or Like) a news story [OPTQ13B_4 if 4 in Q13]Comment on a news story in a Social Network (e.g Facebook or Twitter) [OPTQ13B_5 if 5 in Q13]Comment on a news story on a news website [OPTQ13B_6 if 6 in Q13]Write a blog on a news or political issue [OPTQ13B_7 if 7 in Q13]Post or send a news-related picture or video to a Social Network site [OPTQ13B_8 if 8 in Q13]Post or send a picture or video to a news website/news organisation [OPTQ13B_9 if 9 in Q13]Vote in an online poll via a news site or social network [OPTQ13B_10 if 10 in Q13]Take part in a campaign or group based around a news subject [OPTQ13B_11 if 11 in Q13]Talk with friends and colleagues about a news story (e.g. by email, social media, instant messenger) [OPTQ13B_12 if 12 in Q13]Talk with friends and colleagues about a news story (face to face) <1>Several times a day <2>Once a day <3>Several times a week <4>Once a week <5> 1-3 times a month <6>Less than once a month <7>Never <98>Don’t know {end page pOPTQ13B} SPONSORSHIP - UK and US Now we’re going to ask questions about advertising on _news websites or news apps_ (see examples below). [QSpons1] {single order=randomize} Which of the following statements best sums up your view of traditional banner advertising on news websites #RANDOMISE <1> I find advertisements distracting and will actively avoid sites where they interfere with the content too much <2> I find advertisements distracting but put up with them to get to the content I like <3> I mainly ignore adverts, so they don’t distract me too much <4> I don’t mind advertisements and sometimes find them useful <998 fixed>Don't Know [QSpons2_multi] {multiple} Do you regularly use Ad Blocking software (software you have installed on your device specifically to remove advertisements from news or other websites)? Please select all that apply. <1> Yes, on desktop/ laptop <2> Yes, on mobile <3> Yes, on tablet <4 xor> No As an alternative to traditional banner advertising, some news organisations are publishing more content that is _sponsored or paid for by advertisers_. This may take the form of an article, a quiz or a video but is normally labelled ‘sponsored’, ‘paid for’ or ‘brought to you by’… ####################UK examples In this example, Unilever paid the Guardian over £1m to create content about sustainable living. The content was created over a seven month period by Guardian journalists and the articles carried a label ‘Sponsored by Unilever’ This is an example from the New York Times, Netflix paid for a story about how the US prison system fails women inmates to promote the show Orange is the New Black. The article is labelled 'Paid Post' and the article carries branding for Netflix and Orange is the New Black. Buzzfeed is a publisher that regularly creates content for brands in the same tone and style as its normal content. This story about amazing Science Facts has been paid for by Renault who are using the content to promote a new Supermini #US examples Forbes magazine offers brands the opportunity to pay for access to its audience. In this example the CEO of Management Consultancy Gap International has written an article about successful organisations. The post is labelled ‘Forbes Brand Voice’. In this example, Buzzfeed has created a list of different ways of using Tequila on holiday. The posts are labelled as coming from ‘brand publisher’ Sauza Tequila. [QSpons3] {single} How often do you see this kind of sponsored content in online news sites these days? <1>Frequently <2>Often <3>Sometimes <4>Hardly ever <5>Never <998>Not sure [QSpons4 if QSpons3 in [1,2,3,4]] {grid roworder=randomize} How does advertising like this impact on your perceptions of the news organisation and the brand being talked about in the advert? (Please select one option on each row) [QSpons4_1]Brand in advert [QSpons4_2]News organisation <1>More positive <2>Neither more nor less positive <3>Less positive [QSpons5] {grid roworder=randomize} In general terms, to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? (Please select one option on each row) [QSpons5_1] Sponsored or branded content is an interesting way to hear about a topic or subject that is relevant to me [QSpons5_2] I don’t like sponsored content but accept that’s part of how I get my free news [QSpons5_3] I have felt disappointed or deceived after reading an article which I only discovered later was sponsored by a brand/company [QSpons5_4] I trust the news organisation to accept only sponsored content that is trustworthy <1> Strongly disagree <2> Tend to disagree <3> Neither agree nor disagree <4> Tend to agree <5> Strongly agree

Media Coverage for the 2015 Digital News Report

nic — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 12:09:38 +0000

How Turkey Uses Social Media

esra.dogramaci — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 13:05:03 +0000

Our Supplementary Digital News Report 2015 demonstrates the popularity of social media within Urban Turkey. In this essay digital strategist and Turkey specialist Esra Doğramacı and the report’s contributing author and researcher Damian Radcliffe examine some of the key issues in this space.

Setting the scene

Turkey is a country of contrasts, in both the online - and offline - world. It’s a nation where nearly 80 per cent of its population lives in modern urban environments [1. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS] like Istanbul and the capital Ankara; yet at the same time agriculture employs nearly a quarter of its 75 million inhabitants,[2. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS] and almost half of the country’s land is given over for this purpose.[3.http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS] Similarly, although home to Europe’s biggest youth population (16.6 per cent of the country is aged 15-24, compared to an EU average of 11.5 per cent),[4.http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=16055] Turkey is nonetheless projected to have an ageing population within the next decade.[5.http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2015/02/14/growing-old-gracefully-turkeys-population-shift - this trend has been long predicted. See: http://www.tusiad.org/__rsc/shared/file/firsat.pdf (in Turkish and from 1999.) ] These diametrically opposed realities are also evident within the digital arena. On the one hand, only a little over half of the population is online; but those who are connected - many of whom are young tech-savvy urbanites - tend to be enthusiastic and proficient adopters of digital technology. Their enthusiasm is manifest in the results of the Digital News Report 2015 survey. Within Urban Turkey, 88 per cent used online news in the last week. The 18 country average is 80 per cent, while just over two-thirds (67 per cent) stated that they used social media as a news source. This last figure was the highest of the six countries studied in this supplementary report, and use of social media for news is considerably higher in Turkey than the eighteen country average (44 per cent) identified through the wider digital news study. Much of the usage of social media for news may be driven by a relatively low level of trust in traditional media. In urban Turkey 45 per cent of respondents stated that they do not think that they can ‘trust most news most of the time.’ This is 11 percentage points higher than the next least trusting nation, the United States. Though these figures do not necessarily represent the views of the entire country, they do offer an insight into the political polarisation present across both the Turkish media and Turkish media consumers.

Proportion That Agree/disagree That They ‘trust Most News Most Of The Time' by Country (ordered By Agree)

Q6A. Thinking about news in general, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? ‘I think you can trust most news most of the time’ Base: Total sample in each country. Note: Figures for agree/disagree were calculated by combining the proportion that selected ‘strongly’ or ‘tend to’ agree/disagree.

What social networks do people in Turkey use?

As in many other markets, Facebook dominates social media usage for both news and other purposes. Although exact numbers vary, the analytics firm SocialBakers noted as far back as 2011[6.http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/207-turkey-is-facebook-world-country-no-4] that Turkey was already home to nearly 30 million Facebook accounts, making it the fourth largest country in the world in terms of country-specific user numbers. By late 2014 and the market research firm GlobalWebIndex reported that 26 per cent of the entire county has used the social network in the past month alone.[7.http://de.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/digital-social-mobile-in-2015/321] This was followed by Twitter at 17 per cent or 6.5 million of Turkey’s population, with the majority of Turkey’s Twitter population (87 per cent) being from Turkey’s three largest cities: Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.[8.Burak Polat and Cemile Tokgöz "Twitter User Behaviors In Turkey: A Content Analysis On Turkish Twitter Users," Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, Vol.5 No.22 September 2014 via: http://bit.ly/1LYIeSq] Although Turkey is home to over 70 million mobile subscriptions,[9.Turk Telekom Investor Relations http://www.ttinvestorrelations.com/turk-telekom-group/investing-in-turk-telekom/turkey-telecom-sector.aspx last accessed 15 October 2015] industry data captured by the GSM Association states that only 34 per cent have access to mobile broadband,[10.https://gsmaintelligence.com/markets/3329/dashboard/ (Sign-up required)] while Google’s Mobile Planet study in 2013 found that just under 30 per cent of the total population had access to a smartphone (and that 28 per cent of mobile phone users had more than one phone).[11.http://think.withgoogle.com/mobileplanet/en/downloads/] This inevitably impacts on the take-up of some mobile-driven social media services. Nonetheless, despite the limited take-up of mobile broadband, messaging apps - one of the breakout success stories in the social space in recent years - already enjoy considerable popularity among smartphone owners in Turkey. Of Turkish mobile internet users, 51 per cent of this study’s total sample in urban Turkey used WhatsApp in a typical week. Along with Facebook Messenger, further data suggests that these two chat apps are used by more than one in five of the total population each month.[12.http://de.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/digital-social-mobile-in-2015/321] Given the closed nature of these platforms, and repeated Government attempts to control more mainstream social media channels, it’s perhaps not surprising to see that WhatsApp is already a popular source for news, discussion and information sharing among some audiences in Turkey. It will be interesting to see if these numbers grow as smartphone penetration in the country continues to rise.

Proportion that use Whatsapp as a source of news by country

Q12B. Which, if any, of the following have you used for finding, reading, watching, sharing or discussing news in the last week? Please select all that apply. Base: Total sample in each country.

What people in Turkey use social media for

As the supplementary Digital News Report 2015 highlights, social media is popular as a news destination for online users in urban Turkey; with the leading platform being Facebook (used for news purposes by 69 per cent) and Twitter by a third (33 per cent) of the sample. Alongside this, other popular uses for social media include entertainment, sports, and lifestyle as well as following personalities; such as Turkish singers, television and film celebrities, sports persons, journalists and politicians. The top 10 most followed accounts on Twitter in Turkey[13.http://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/twitter/profiles/turkey/] include the comedian Cem Yılmaz (with 9.94 million followers), President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (7.1 million) and the football team Galatasaray Spor Kulübü (5.8 million). It’s a similar story on Facebook[14.http://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/facebook/pages/total/turkey/] where this cohort is joined by the football team Fenerbahçe, actress Beren Saat, the footballer Arda Turan and the TV show Arkadaşım Hoşgeldin. Interestingly, the only non-Turkish entry in the top 10 pages for both Facebook and Twitter is the Facebook page for Dr Mehmet Öz, the surgeon and TV personality. His popularity stemming from the little known fact (outside of Turkey,) that he is Turkish-American (although his social media pages appear to be solely in English).

Early efforts at control

In 2015’s Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index,[15.https://index.rsf.org] Turkey ranked 149th out of 180 countries, representing a 9 per cent drop in place from 2002[16.http://en.rsf.org/spip.php?page=classement&id_rubrique=297] when the AK (Justice and Development) (Adalet ve Kalkinma) Party came to power. At that time, it was ranked 99 of 134. In addition to tighter media ownership, a controversial internet law in 2014 allowed the blocking of entire sites, not just pages, by court order.[17.http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/02/new-internet-law-turkey-sparks-outrage-201422312144687859.html and http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/turkey-internet-law-censorship-democracy-threat-opposition] It is under this law that social networks have, on occasion, had their access revoked. However, Turkish social media users do not seem to be particularly changing their behaviours as a result of these efforts, the origins of their resilience perhaps reflecting the fact that efforts to curb discussion and press freedom in Turkey are not a new phenomenon. Since 2007, the blocking of social platforms in Turkey has occurred on seven separate occasions, all under the current ruling AK party. The reasons for blocking access to platforms have all centered around circulation of incendiary or offensive content to Turkey or to Turks. The first of these incidents occurred in 2007, using Turkey’s Article 301, which makes it illegal to insult Turkey or its institutions, including the country’s founder, Ataturk.[18.http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/youtube-banned-in-turkey-after-insults-to-ataturk/?_r=0] Videos insulting Ataturk on YouTube led to the platform being blocked until the videos were removed.[19.http://www.theage.com.au/news/Technology/Turkey-revokes-YouTube-ban/2007/03/10/1173167025391.html ] Full access was not restored until late 2010[20.http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/10/30/oukin-uk-turkey-youtube-idUKTRE69T1JE20101030] despite high profile criticism of the ban by Turkey's then president, Abdullah Gul.[21.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/11/abdullah-gul-twitter-turkey-youtube-ban] Later in 2010, in an unrelated incident, a compromising video [22.http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/11/turkey-sex-scandal-youtube-baykal.html] of Deniz Baykal, leader of the largest opposition party the CHP, also led to the temporary blocking of YouTube.[23.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/02/AR2010110204416.html] , The most recent ban of social platforms – which included YouTube, Twitter and Facebook - took place in April 2015 after pictures of a prosecutor being held at gunpoint were circulated online.[24.Twitter and Facebook were also affected by this incident: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/6/twitter-complies-with-turkeys-request-ban-lifted.html] As the BBC notes: "The images were taken … in a siege at an Istanbul courthouse when two gunmen took the prosecutor hostage. All three died during a rescue attempt."[25.http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32194913] Court orders blocking access to social media sites were lifted only upon the removal of pictures related to this incident.

2013: a turning point?

Meanwhile, the Gezi protests of 2013, have been identified by some as a watershed moment for social media in the country, as the protests acutely highlighted the differences between the mainstream media in Turkey and the potential afforded by social channels to by-pass traditional forms of control.[26.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-05/penguins-not-protests-on-turkish-tv-fuel-anger-against-media] As the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains: Multiday clashes between protesters and police became so intense that CNN International was broadcasting live from Istanbul. Meanwhile, CNN Turk was instead broadcasting a documentary about penguins…. One angry viewer moved his two televisions together: one was tuned to CNN Turk and its penguins, while the other was tuned to CNN International broadcasting amidst tear gas and clashes in Taksim. The viewer tweeted the picture out. The photo went viral, and from then on, many protesters dubbed their compliant, muted media the "penguin media."[27.Zeynep Tufekci: Social Movements and Governments in the Digital Age: evaluating a complex landscape: http://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/files/2014/12/xvii-18_Tufekci_Article.pdf] More widely, the New York University Politics Ph.D. candidates Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger reported "the role of social media in the protests has been phenomenal." Writing in a post entitled "A Breakout Role for Twitter? Extensive Use of Social Media in the Absence of Traditional Media by Turks in Turkish in Taksim Square Protests" they noted:[28.http://themonkeycage.org/2013/06/a-breakout-role-for-twitter-extensive-use-of-social-media-in-the-absence-of-traditional-media-by-turks-in-turkish-in-taksim-square-protests/] Since 4pm local time yesterday, at least 2 million tweets mentioning hashtags related to the protest, such as #direngeziparkı (950,000 tweets), #occupygezi (170,000 tweets) or #geziparki (50,000 tweets) have been sent. As we show in the plot below, the activity on Twitter was constant throughout the day (Friday, May 31). Even after midnight local time last night more than 3,000 tweets about the protest were published every minute.

2015: troubled times

Whether, in reality, Gezi will become a defining moment in social media’s role within the country remains to be seen. As it currently stands, the ability to use social networks in Turkey - for whatever purpose - remains volatile. Following a terror attack on 10 October 2015 where nearly 100 people were killed in a bombing in central Ankara, social media users in Turkey found access to Twitter and Facebook hampered. Subsequently, talk online quickly turned to discussion about how to use VPN’s (Virtual Private Networks) and other methods of circumvention. These discussions mirrored those in the early days of the 2013 Gezi park protests, where similar efforts to close social networks by the Government simply led to users by-passing these controls and finding other methods to get online. In the days following the Ankara attack, hashtags on Instagram tagging the cities Ankara, Istanbul and Diyarbakir were returned with the message that tagged posts were hidden, citing violations of community guidelines. Such is the nature of social media in Turkey on contentious occasions.

The future: "it’s complicated"

With high internet, mobile and social platform penetration, social media satisfies Turkey’s hyper-connected largely young population, yet at various times their usage antagonises ruling elites. This has resulted in (often temporary) efforts to close these platforms, even though they are not just used as news sources, but also forums to discuss and follow sport, entertainment and other normal everyday pastimes. Platforms have been blocked by court order and accounts shut down by both the Government and the networks themselves[29.Such as the Twitter account of Fuat Avni, a self-professed whisteblower who no one knows the identity of: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-28658318], sometimes resulting in angry protests (online and offline) against the ruling AKP government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It is against this backdrop that Facebook, Twitter and Google have all faced repeated calls to remove online content in Turkey. In the second half of 2014, Twitter received more requests from Turkey - through Government channels of by court order - to remove content, than from any other country; and complied with nearly half of those requests.[30.https://transparency.twitter.com/removal-requests/2014/jul-dec] Ironically, while President Erdogan’s comment[31.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/03/turkey_erdogan_calls_twitter_menace_to_society] of ‘Twitter schmitter, we’ll close them all (social platforms)’ is widely referenced to suggest an anti-social media stance, perhaps less well known is that on February 10th this year President Erdogan sent his first tweet. He now has over 7 million followers.[32.https://twitter.com/RT_Erdogan/status/564775416704278528] This example clearly embodies the continued tensions in Turkey between efforts to control social media and a need to embrace – and recognise - their popularity. One thing is for certain, social media in Turkey is not going away, but neither are the attempts to manage and control it. If a Facebook relationship status could describe the dynamic between Turkey and social media, it would simply be: 'its complicated.'

Media, Journalism and Technology Predictions 2016

nic — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 09:40:44 +0000

This year’s key developments will centre on online video, mobile apps and further moves towards distributed content. Mounting problems around online display advertising will lead to a burst of innovation around journalism business models.

More specifically...

Facebook/Google/Apple battle intensifies over the future of mobile and the discovery of content
Messaging apps continue to drive the next phase of the social revolution
Mobile browsing speeds up thanks to initiatives by platforms and publishers
Ad-blocker/publisher wars move to mobile - they rage through 2016
Fraud and fake traffic further undermine faith in online advertising
Renewed focus on paid content of different flavours (given above) including crowd funding, membership and micropayment
Explosion of 360° video, auto-play video and vertical video (get used to it!)
Growth of identified web (sign in and registration will be critical to delivering cross platform personal content and notifications)
Breakthrough year for Robo-journalism– strikes in newsrooms over job losses
Another year of spectacular cyber attacks and privacy breaches
More measurement of attention/impact, less measurement of clicks
Messaging apps go mainstream at work (eg Slack, Hipchat, FB at work)
Scheduled TV viewing on the slide as more viewing shifts to on demand
Rebirth of audio driven by internet delivery to mobile devices

Technology to watch for

Virtual Reality (VR) hype goes into overdrive; but leaves non-gamers cold
Artificial intelligence (AI) and messaging bots
Bendy and flexible phones; wireless charging finally takes off
Drones go mainstream with registration required in most countries
Smart mirrors just one example of growing visibility of the Internet of Things

Everywhere we will see the growth of analytics and data informed decision-making in technology, marketing and even publishing. In a few years’ time, it will seem extraordinary how uninformed we once were In our survey of 130 leading Editors, CEOs and Digital Leaders for this report...

76% said it was extremely important to improve the use of data in newsrooms
79% said they would be investing more in online news video this year
54% said deepening online engagement was a top priority
22% were more worried about online revenues than last year; though surprisingly 20% were less worried

(More data and comments from this survey throughout the report) Companies, apps or technologies you’ll have heard of this time next year include Symphony, Brigade, Newsflare, TheQuint, Forevery, Leap Motion, HTC Vive and the UC browser It will be another big year for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) We could see any of the following ...

Axel Springer buys more media companies
News Corp buys more tech companies
BT (or foreign company) buys ITV
Apple buys Box (or Dropbox)
Twitter buys Nuzzel
Twitter is sold
Yahoo is downsized/sold/broken up
A brand buys a publisher

1. Looking Back to 2015: A Year of Distributed Content, Autoplay Videos and Animated Gifs

The defining development of the year was the emergence of new hosted and aggregated distribution models for news. These initiatives by a number of big tech companies (see below) will impact publishers for many years to come. Snapchat Discover (1) led the charge in January by inviting publishers to create ‘native’ and mobile experiences on their platform. Facebook followed with Instant Articles (2) designed to create a faster and slicker experience– and promised publishers greater reach along with up to 100% of advertising revenues. The re-launched Apple News (3) also required media companies to publish content directly into their platform while Twitter Moments (4) is also about creating native experiences but interestingly involves reverse publishing that content within news sites to attract more people to Twitter. By contrast, Google’s hosted content play, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was launched as a beta in October and is more of a technical standard that allows publishers to speed up their mobile web pages. It is in Google’s interest to keep webpages open and accessible to search services where it makes most of its money. For publishers, these moves raise huge dilemmas. If more consumption moves to platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Snapchat it will be harder to build direct relationships with users and monetise content. But if they do nothing, it will be hard to engage mainstream audiences who are spending more time with these platforms. Quotes from the survey: our key challenge will be ...

“Whether or not the titanic battle for open vs. closed web plays to the advantage of publishers or fast-tracks their demise” “More distribution and consumption over third party channels – Google AMP, Instant Articles, Apple News – over which we have little control”

Further driving the move to distributed content was the explosion of native video in 2015. Facebook’s autoplay functionality helped it deliver 8bn videos a day globally (around 4bn in the US) by November – that’s a 100% increase in seven months with 75% delivered through mobile.[1. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/04/facebook-video-views/] US daily video views (NB. Facebook counts views @ 3s, YouTube @ 30 s) [caption id="attachment_3581" align="aligncenter" width="1186"] Source: Company data and Activate analysis.[/caption] Twitter also opened its video platform to publishers, adding autoplay in 2015, while Google announced plans to white label its video player for free to publishers, a move that will drive far more professional news content through the YouTube network. Monetisation of video remains an issue for 2016 with all eyes on Facebook. Video, social and visual content also defined coverage of the most dramatic news stories of the year including the Paris attacks. In some of the most widely seen video footage, Le Monde journalist Daniel Psenny captured the graphic scenes as crowds fled the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on his iPhone (1). Twitter user Stephane Hannache was one of many using live streaming app Periscope [2. Periscope was voted iPhone app of the year by Apple Editors] hosting more than 10,000 viewers (2). A Vine video from the Stade de France – with clearly audible explosions - was one of the first verified accounts of the attacks (3). BBC correspondent Matthew Price filmed an immersive 360 video at the Place de la République (4) using a cheap simple consumer mobile device [3.Ricoh Theta S camera with fish-eye lenses. Footage was stitched together using an app http://bit.ly/1kURznP]. It is interesting to note that much of this video is square or vertical. It was created on mobile phones and was largely consumed on them too. From Paris to Syria and beyond, 2015 saw the video enabled internet rivalling television news as the most compelling and authentic destination for live news. That’s a trend, which will increasingly put pressure on 24-hour broadcast channels in particular. More than ever before, social platforms also played a key role in co-ordinating help and spreading information. Parisians used the Twitter hashtag #PorteOuverte (open door) to offer shelter in their homes, while Facebook deployed its Safety Check feature encouraging people in Paris to check in via their personal account - for the first time outside a natural disaster. New Media Giants Consolidate as VC Money Moves On As predicted last year, the global news media companies of the 21^st century are beginning to emerge with significant further investment. NBC Universal put $200m into Buzzfeed, valuing it at $1.5bn – about twice as much as the year before. [4. Wall Street Journal August 2015 http://on.wsj.com/1Lhrwjy] Disney became the latest to invest in Vice, now valued at at more than $4bn[5. http://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-invests-another-200-million-in-vice-media-1449607561 - an earlier version of this document listed $2.5bn from a mid summer valuation]. Strategist Kevin Anderson says these two players are the major winners in this first round of new media monopoly:

“Buzzfeed and Vice have won this heat. We’ll see other players like Vox and Mic battle for third place, but ...VCs are already cashing out and moving on from media investments to the next big thing”

It may be that 2015 will mark the high water mark in terms of valuations of digital news companies. Indeed the bubble has already burst for some with the closure of Circa in June, a shock given its reputation as a poster child for mobile-first media. Circa inspired fresh approaches to news delivery but ultimately never worked out how to make money itself. [5. The site is being launched by the Sinclair Broadcast Group in the Spring but few observers give it much chance: The Verge article December 2015 http://bit.ly/1NRst6O] Pioneering tech blog Gigaom was another high profile casualty of the brutal economic realities of news economics – having blown $20m of venture capital money. Elsewhere, we saw a number of high profile acquisitions in the digital space. Flipboard bought mobile news aggregator Zite and then shut it down. [6. ReadWrite.com http://bit.ly/1K4B7rS ] Germany’s Axel Springer bought Business Insider for $343m as part of its strategy to drive growth in the English-speaking world. (It also holds stakes in Politico Europe, Blendle, Mic.com and Ozy)[7. New York Times Axel Springer reboots http://nyti.ms/1J0OVbw]. Nikkei bought the Financial Times for similar reasons in a $1.3bn deal while News Corp has been aggressively investing in digital start-ups like social video ad platform Unruly Media. Consolidation in local media saw the UK’s Trinity Mirror buy Local World in a bid for scale while many metro papers in the US are under pressure from local TV news flush with election cash and mobile apps providing local entertainment information. But the news business is as much about people as technology. 2015 was a digital merry-go-round with digital born players and tech companies snapping up old media talent – and just a few going the other way. Janine Gibson moved from the Guardian to Buzzfeed along with other key staff, Cory Haik went from the Washington Post to Mic.com and Kate Day from the DailyTelegraph to Politico Europe. Liz Heron moved from Facebook to the Huffington Post. Finally, as we pull together the strands of the year, we’re grateful to Paul Bradshaw at Birmingham City University for reminding us that many of the other big trends of 2015 had a distinctly retro feel:

GIFs have re-emerged as a mainstream form of visual communication.
Emojis – effectively emoticons on steroids – have done the same.
Email newsletters have been re-invented; key distribution channels once again.
So are podcasts – again (NPR reports downloads up 41% year on year).
Chat apps are the new social media. Remember AOL and MSN Messenger?
And platforms are becoming publishers – again. Just like Compuserve & AOL.

Last Year’s Predictions This time last year we said Ad-blocking would go mainstream (now around 20% in the UK and 40% with the young according to YouGov) and that more of us would spend more time with messaging applications. Nine of the top ten apps are now social or chat apps. Top apps by usage (global - from Mary Meeker annual trends slide 47) We predicted more high profile privacy leaks and cyber attacks. The most prominent at extramarital affair website Ashley Madison compromised intimate data for more than 30 million accounts. Even the BBC website was brought down for several hours – allegedly by an anti-IS hacking group who’d been honing their techniques. We suggested the Apple watch would sell around 20m in its first year, which looks like an over-estimate but it was another year of impressive product launches including the iPhone 6s, iPad Pro, Apple Pay, Apple Music & Beats 1. Babies and the Next Billion Last year we talked about the importance of internet.org the Facebook led initiative to bring cheap or free internet to the next billion. The birth of Mark Zuckerberg’s daughter Max seems to have focussed his mind even more on the future. He announced he’d be giving away much of his personal fortune but his campaign to provide a basic (Facebook-rich) service in India has run into bitter opposition from net-neutrality campaigners. Less successfully we predicted that social media would play a significant role in the UK election. In the event, the politics turned out to be so dull, there was little that was worth amplifying.

2. Trends and Predictions for 2016

2.1 Mobile Trends: Glanceable Content, Bendy Phones and Personal Assistants

For many the smartphone has become not just our primary access point to digital but the remote control for life itself. iOS and Android smartphones alone are now outselling PCs 5:1 and that will rise to closer to 10:1 in the next few years. With the entry price for an Android phone is now around $35, smartphones are projected to reach around 80% of the world’s population by 2020. This year we’ve seen Syrian refugees use their phones to keep in touch with families, take selfies of their journeys, and plan their next moves across Europe using Google maps and chat apps.

Our phones and power banks are more important for our journey than anything, even more important than food Wael (Refugee from Homs) [8. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=72746 ]

[caption id="attachment_3594" align="aligncenter" width="775"] Pictures via Twitter[/caption] The touchscreen smartphone is only eight years old but every year we become more addicted and dependent. A recent survey showed that in the UK we collectively glance at our screens more than a billion times a day, while almost 60% of us check our mobile phones within 15 minutes of waking up (see chart below). Here a six ways in which our dependence may develop in 2016

1. Time for an upgrade

Handsets themselves will come with lower prices, better resolution displays, faster connectivity and VR compatibility. But will it be enough to keep replacement cycles and profits up? 3D touch: Apple introduced a new range of interactions in 2015 using pressure to allow you to ‘peek’ or ‘pop’ quickly to get information at a glance. It’s a big deal but it won’t be clear how big until developers integrate it into popular apps this year. Rival manufactures will launch pressure sensitive displays this year. Foldable smartphones: After years in the labs, expect to see Samsung launch a phone with bendable plastic that folds like a book to reveal a larger screen. Even if this model doesn’t stick, phones will start to get more curves in the years to come. Waterproof smartphones: There are strong rumours that you’ll be able to take your iPhone 7 underwater or drop it down the toilet without tears. Wireless charging: is finally showing signs of progress. It now comes as standard with latest Samsung smartphones. By the end of the year almost every phone manufacturer will include wireless charging as standard with coffee shops and bars competing for your custom with the necessary juicing stations Tablets hit back: Sales fell in 2015 but will bounce back strongly on the back of a new generation of 2 for1 devices that double for work and play. Lighter and more powerful pro-tablets are proving a popular option in the enterprise as workers become more mobile. Data speeds will continue to incease thanks to greater 4G roll out and upgrades to LTE-advanced and new faster Wifi standards. New services like Voice over LTE (VoLTE) are being rolled out in 2015 that will provide higher quality, more reliable calls for consumers – and lower costs for operators.

2. Virtual assistants and Zero UI

Until now, only a minority of us (20%) have been using personal assistants like Siri, Cortana, Duer (Baidu) and Google Now but this could be about to change. Facebook is entering the market with M – a tool that will sit inside its popular Messenger app – could push AI personal assistants fully into the mainstream. Facebook M has been beta testing with a few thousand users in California [caption id="attachment_3586" align="aligncenter" width="654"] Picture credit: Facebook[/caption] M has been pitched as an easy way to find local restaurants, buy shoes (see above), access news and information but also to take on more complex tasks. This is partly because there are humans behind the scenes to take over when M gets stuck[9. M is partly powered by a 10-person startup Wit.ai that Facebook acquired back in January. http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/26/9605526/facebook-m-hands-on-personal-assistant-ai], though eventually it is hoped that the software will learn from the humans. Partly because of its ambition, M will take years to scale and roll out globally. AI is already proving a hit in China where Microsoft’s Xiaoice chatbot mines the internet for human conversations to enable more realistic conversations. Millions are already interacting via text using services like Weibo and the next version will include a Siri-type voice. Deep learning and artificial intelligence looks like it will be the new frontline in the battle between Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook. For publishers the main implication of AI is that they’ll have to get used to making content work not just for multiple screens but for no screens (so called Zero UI). That’s because over time more of us will talk to applications rather than touch them.

3. Push Notifications and glanceable content

With so much competition and so little real estate, the key challenge for mobile is how to attract attention. Only a small proportion of people go directly and regularly to news apps or branded mobile websites, so the role of intermediaries like Apple, Google and Facebook is becoming ever more important as a way of reaching consumers. This is where push notifications come in, giving publishers the ability to reach out directly. Consumer use of news notifications has doubled in many countries with wearable devices like smart watches likely to accelerate the trend. Growth in news notifications 2014-15 [caption id="attachment_3590" align="aligncenter" width="1201"] Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015[/caption] The New York Times has set up a team of 11 people to specifically focus on creation and scheduling of notifications and push alerts without overly annoying and interrupting users.[10. http://digiday.com/publishers/inside-new-york-times-new-push-notifications-team/]

We used to be standing on a hill and shouting messages at people, [but now] there’s a growing number of users who only engage with us when we send a push Andrew Phelps, Product Director of Messaging and Push, NYT

In 2016 publishers like the NYT will experiment with more personalised alerts (time of day, language and reading history as well as using explicit preferences such as a favourite author). We will also see more publishers appoint executives to oversee this area.

There is a generation who is not reading anything longer than a notification... Now we have journalists who are writing just notifications. The headline writers are the next generation of the successful news creator Otto Toth Chief Technology Officer at The Huffington Post[11. NYC media lab Future of Notifications event June 2015: https://medium.com/@justinhendrix/nyc-media-lab-notes-efc6d2b6cc54]

But even here publishers face disaggregation by the likes of Facebook Notify (currently US only[12. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/11/introducing-notify-a-notifications-app-from-facebook/]) which aggregates multiple information providers within a new app right on the lock screen - and from algorithmically driven providers like Nuzzel and SmartNews. Notifications represent both a challenge and an opportunity. The format makes it harder to monetise content and provide distinctiveness but will ultimately be critical in helping publishers drive loyalty and repeat visits to websites and apps.

4. Wearables and watches

Smartwatch adoption will gather pace in 2016 with a vast range of products aimed at every market sector. First year sales of the Apple watch have been modest but 10m offers enough encouragement to the industry that it is on the right track. There’s evidence that many consumers are waiting for use cases to mature. A recent poll suggested 25% of iOS users were considering purchasing a smartwatch in the next year[13. http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-watch-2-features-rumours-release-date-march-april-2016-3606039/]. Other providers have also been extending their range with Samsung moving into the luxury market in a partnership with TAG (below). Many of these second generation watches are looking increasingly ‘traditional’. Here we see technology itself is becoming almost invisible - an important trend in itself. The other change is these new devices will start to be able to connect directly to the internet in 2016 rather than being tied to a phone, making applications quicker and generally increasing utility. The Apple 2 Watch will be released in the spring or early summer and include tetherless features such as inbuilt GPS along with a bigger battery. Watches will also be able to interact directly with beacons (Apple’s iBeacon and Google’s Eddystone) to deliver highly targeted advertisements or supermarket offers

5. Mobile payments and the growth of m-commerce

Last year only 1.6% of total retail sales in the US took place on smartphones (eMarketer). But that is set to change with platform providers, retailers and marketers all having a vested interest in pushing the change. Convenience, speed and security benefits will drive adoption of digital wallets like Apple Pay and Android Pay with more retailers accepting proximity payments this year – making the process even easier. Proximity payments should reduce friction further This in itself may not be enough to persuade consumers to change deeply ingrained habits. This will only happen when coupons and loyalty schemes make it worth their while. For publishers these trends towards frictionless payment should make it easier to entice consumers into subscriptions, membership and even micropayment – but the bigger opportunity could be in bringing together content and e-commerce (so called COMtent) a strategy being pursued by the Daily Telegraph in the UK and Gawker in the US which is reported to have made $10m in 2014 with more to come.[14. http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-gawker-brings-in-millions-selling-headphones-chargers-and-flashlights-1451579813]

6. Speeding up the mobile web

Facebook set the hare running in 2015 by claiming that news stories shared in its mobile app take an average of eight seconds to load – the slowest of all content types. Tech blogs detailed the enormous weight of many web news pages partly because several megabytes of advertising are downloaded with each story and The New York Times showed that more than half of all the data on popular news sites came from sources unrelated to articles[15. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-of-mobile-ads.html?_r=2]– costing users valuable data as well as time. As consumers reach for their ad-blockers, Facebook and Apple see the answer as publishing content within their apps. By contrast, Google is pushing for new standards (AMP) to speed up the mobile web. Its business model depends on content being openly found via its search crawlers but it also wants a better web for consumers:

Anything less than instant simply shows a degradation, a decline in engagement Richard Gingrass, Head of News, Google

This year expect Google to take AMP out of beta and make speed a bigger factor in its search algorithm – as well as persuading publishers to produce more content based on this standard for social networks. But publishers may be reluctant to take on another format especially as much of that content will then be hosted on Google servers. Instead they may try to fix the problem themselves using techniques such as lazy load to stop images being downloaded until a user scrolls down the page[16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_loading]. They’ll also look to scale back the amount of advertising on each page and may copy ‘instant article’ features like zoom on pictures and videos that play automatically as you scroll.

2.2 Online Video Trends: Vertical, Immersive, Mobile and Social

The online video revolution is beginning to hit its stride driven by faster and more reliable connectivity and an explosion of new content. But the biggest growth in consumption will come on mobile devices with greater 4G roll out, upgrades to LTE-advanced bringing 5G-like services and new Wifi standards giving connections of up to 1.3G/s. Video is expected to grow 14x within five years and account for 70% of mobile network traffic. Mobile data growth 2015-2021 [caption id="attachment_3634" align="aligncenter" width="848"] Source: Ericsson Mobility Report 2015[/caption] Facebook’s focus on video and the growing interest from advertisers is also pushing publishers to consider expanding video output. In our survey of 130 digital leaders the vast majority said video would be a key area of focus in 2016.

What are your company’s plans for online video this year?

Source: Reuters Institute Digital Leaders Survey 2016, n=118 (excluding 12 don’t knows/did not answer)

Amongst many industry initiatives

The BBC is closing its interactive Red Button TV service and will be focussing on a new mobile video initiative known internally as Newstream. This will build on the work of the BBC Shorts and BBC Trending teams.
The Guardian is creating a product and engineering group around video for the first time and is a phase 1 partner for Google’s Digital News Initiative plans around video (white-label YouTube player).
The Washington Post has put TV and video at the heart of its new newsroom with four live-shot locations.
News Corp has bought Unruly to drive more socially relevant video for its brands and for advertisers.
Bild and Die Welt are among German publishers stepping up video production
The Huffington Post is expanding its video operations through content partnerships with companies like NBC; and developing Outspeak, its platform for user-generated video journalism.
Buzzfeed is investing in a 250 strong LA based video production unit called Buzzfeed Motion Pictures to experiment with short (and long form) content. Employees test new formats such as vertical and commentary-less videos in rapid fashion using data to learn which go viral and why.[17. Hat-tip Kevin Hinde - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buzzfeed-studios-20150809-story.html]

Quotes from the survey

Producing great, digital, visual, mobile-oriented video and animation is becoming cheaper and can be integrated easier into newsroom workflows. 2016 will be the year when visual content becomes really scalable. Anita Zielina, Editor-in-Chief New Products, NZZ

But how to do this is not always clear

Video is a difficult area for former print groups. None of us is doing it well, we do not have in-house expertise (generally) and it is vastly expensive. We will proceed with caution in this area

Prediction: Pioneers like NowThis and Vocativ that have proved they understand how to make compelling social news video will be acquired in 2016 possibly by traditional publishers looking to learn these skills. The Reuters Institute will be publishing a detailed report into online news video in 2016. Five other key developments to watch in online video:

1. Facebook pushes further into video

Expect to see Facebook launching a new tab just for video content (right) and better search and discovery features. You’ll also be able to float videos to allow you to watch while multitasking and there’ll be a save video for later feature. The new video section will make it easier to integrate advertising into Facebook’s ecosystem - important if it is to encourage publishers to deliver more native video. Facebook has also been testing an enhanced ‘suggested videos’ feature, which could also offer the best opportunities for ads[18. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/10/testing-new-video-experiences/]. Watch too for data and user generated tie-ups with big sports and music events to deliver a supplementary experience involving video (see IPL cricket experiments in 2015).[19. http://media.fb.com/2015/05/26/indian-premier-league-2015-on-facebook/] Facebook could be a bidder for sports and music video rights in the future.

2. Vertical video

According to trend watcher Mary Meeker, almost a third of video viewing time (29%) in the US is now on a vertical screen compared with 5% a few years ago (see chart). Time spent on screens by orientation (Hours/Day) USA 2010-15 Meeker points out that on tall screens, vertical videos simply look and work better than those shot “correctly.” YouTube reports a 50% increase in vertical uploads in 2015 while Facebook now allows for full screen playback for vertical videos. They are also the lingua franca of messaging apps like Snapchat, whose users watch six billion mostly vertical videos every day – performing, according to the company, up to 9 times better than horizontal ones. Professionals, on the other hand, see vertical videos as the work of the devil and have been trying to educate journalists and ordinary users to shoot horizontally, but they’ll be facing an uphill battle. Publishers like the BBC, Mashable and Mail Online have all been experimenting with the format and we can expect to see much more professional content produced in portrait mode. Watch too for more experiments in responsive video production like the New York Times example below– allowing you to get the best of both worlds.

3. 360º Videos, VR and immersive storytelling

We’re set to be bombarded with 360º videos particularly around entertainment content this year. Facebook entered the market in September with an exclusive chase sequence to promote the latest Star Wars film where users could change perspective with the flick of a mouse or a tilt of their phone[20. Facebook Star Wars example http://on.fb.me/1LG5WH8]. Facebook has a particular interest in pushing virtual reality following its purchase of headset maker Oculus Rift. It is expected that when the Rift headset is finally released in 2016, it will support Facebook 360s producing a far more immersive experience than just interacting on screen. Meanwhile Google is promoting its own 360 approach on YouTube and with Google Cardboard handsets that integrate with existing Android phones. At Christmas it teamed up with Aaardman for an animated VR story called Special Delivery[21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=53&v=XiDRZfeL_hc]. In news, 360s have been deployed more prosaically to give audiences a better understanding of the devastation in Syria[23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTTzKwLPqFw] (below) and of refugee camps in various parts of the world. The New York Times initiative to create a series of VR films and distribute 1 million Google Cardboard headsets to loyal subscribers has already created mainstream interest and we can bet on ambitious VR projects around the Olympics and US election this year[24. Damian Radcliffe Professor in Journalism, University of Oregon]. Even so commentators think it may take time to engage audiences particularly around news.

VR and immersive storytelling have a fair amount of friction. Will a link to a VR piece entice people to strap on their Rifts or Google Cardboard viewers? I wonder if VR is the news industry’s 3D, something that gets us excited but won’t catch fire with our audiences Kevin Anderson, Digital Strategist and a former Gannett Executive Editor

4. Scaling video on a shoestring ...

Not all publishers have the time and resources to invest in teams or expensive equipment, so expect to see a host of inventive ways to keep costs down in 2016 while keeping volumes up.

Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin produces a range of inventive short videos for its Facebook page, which often are little more than photographs and words stitched together using free iMovie software. The consistent tone and strong messages ensure that the ‘videos’ regularly attract over 100,000 views.
Wibbitz is software that automatically produces videos by analysing the text of a story and matching it with a mix of agency stills and video footage. The soundtrack can also be automated, though some publishers prefer to add their own human voiceover.
NowThis, which is a leader in short-form video, deploys a workflow optimisation system called Switchboard, which recommends how to optimally construct a story on a plane crash or politics story – based on previous data. It is just one way in which NowThis producers can generate more video and scale faster.
BBC World Service is piloting computer generated voice-overs and subtitles in multiple different languages for short online video pieces using automatic translation and synthetic voice technology[25. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/bbc-virtual-voiceover-translations].

5. Live and social video

Faster networks, better cameras, and easy-to-use apps opened up the market for live streaming apps in 2015. But it was the integration with Twitter and the ability to summon an audience instantly through notifications that enabled Periscope to see off the competition (Meerkat and the rest). Going forward, all breaking news events will be covered with LIVE video - from multiple angles and in high definition. The decision on what to show is no longer in the hands of journalists. 24-hour news channels will ultimately need to rethink their role and responsibilities. The issue of consent – how to handle real time eyewitness media from live video streams like Periscope– is also "set to be a new ethical battlefield", according to Damian Radcliffe at the University of Oregon. Facebook Mentions could be next year’s big deal in live video. Using a square format to encourage comments below the video on a smartphone, Facebook Live is focussed on encouraging celebrities, politicians, journalists and other verified users to post live breaking news or behind the scenes footage with on-demand versions that stay available (unlike Periscope). Journalists were only given access to Mentions [26. http://www.wired.com/2015/09/journalists-can-now-broadcast-live-facebook/]in September so the impact will be felt this year, not least because work posts can now go just to followers without spamming friends and family.

2.3 The Disruption of Television

The video enabled internet is not just affecting traditional online businesses but is beginning to disrupt television itself. The amount of broadcast television watched is falling in many countries (down almost 5% in the UK last year according to Ofcom), with news and current affairs programmes amongst the worst affected. Despite this, though, we’re watching more television content than ever, on more screens and in more locations with the rapid growth of Video on Demand (VOD) and over the top services (OTT). In the UK, two-thirds (66%) of people are now using an online service such as BBC iPlayer or Netflix to watch TV or films within the past week[27. Ofcom International Communications Market Report 2015 http://bit.ly/1RAwFY6]. OTT and IPTV providers are also gaining ground in Europe squeezing margins for existing pay-TV operators. Meanwhile, in the US around 50m households now subscribe to an over the top service. Consumers are starting to embrace “cord-cutting”: cancelling their cable TV service or getting rid of channels they don’t watch (see chart). Young people are referred to as ‘cord-nevers’, a group unlikely to ever subscribe to a traditional TV bundle. ESPN’s woes provided an early sign of the coming disruption[28. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/06/the-sports-bubble-is-about-to-pop.html] laying off 300 jobs in the wake of falling cable revenues, increased sports rights costs and a loss of advertising to digital. Digital subscription gains ground; Cable on the slide Households with Pay TV vs Subscription OTT US 2010-15E (millions)

Sources: Leichtman Research Group, US Census Group, Activate analysis

While cord-cutting on a mass scale may take a few more years, the lines are blurring fast between online and television. We’re in for a year of convergence and more battles between existing operators, tech companies and content creators:

1. Big year for Netflix:

Netflix boss Reed Hastings say television sets in the future “will look like a large iPad” with an array of apps. He wants his company to be No1 app on every screen[29. http://qz.com/402036/netflixs-reed-hastings-predicts-the-future-of-tv-over-the-next-20-years/]. By the end of 2016, Netflix aims to launch in every country with a strategy of producing and owning the global rights to more original content. The company intends to invest over $6b in original content in 2016 - more than the entire licence fee funding of the BBC[30. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-has-star-studded-original-content-up-its-sleeve-2015-08-26]. .The market for paid for video on demand services (SVOD) is expected to double in the next few years with much of the growth coming from China and India. That would give the company revenues of around $12.2 billion by 2020, enough to invest more in region-specific content, as well as big global blockbusters. Rise of Netflix and SVOD forecasts (million) [caption id="attachment_3588" align="aligncenter" width="1319"] Source: Digital TV Research[/caption] 2. Apple TV heads new OTT charge 2016 will finally see Apple launch a streaming Television service in the US after years of difficult negotiations with networks and affiliates[31. http://www.macworld.com/article/2948380/streaming-services/apple-is-reportedly-close-to-securing-broadcast-networks-for-online-tv-service.html]. With the traditional cable bundle starting to fracture, Apple’s hand has been strengthened in securing live broadcast rights and potentially one major sports deal alongside its existing SVOD offer. Cable and satellite operators will also launch or improve their streaming services in 2016 – an insurance policy against an app based future. In the US, winners could include Sling TV (from Dish) and Go90 (from Verizon) which are open to customers from other providers. In the UK Now TV (from Sky) remains the market leader along with apps from the main broadcasters. Watch too for more experimenting with pricing – selling individual sports games and dramas. As more people access programming a la carte via apps, live news broadcasts could become increasingly invisible. Expect investment in new video services like NewsON in the United States a free one stop shop for discovering local news[32. https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/why-abc-news-launched-livestreaming-initiative-gostream/s2/a563495/]

3. HDMI dongles that connect TVs together

We’ve got used to dongles and boxes that bring OTT content to the primary TV set or allow TVs to play content from your smartphone or tablet (Amazon Fire/Apple TV/ChromeCast) but now expect pay TV providers to reverse-engineer the process. We could see them offering dongles that extend their service seamlessly to other TVs around the house. It’s a logical way of protecting against more cord cutting by delivering extra value for the existing package.

4. New video ad metrics and cross device selling

Given video’s growing importance in terms of content and advertising revenue, we will see calls for consistency around viewability metrics in 2016 around VOD (Video On Demand) to allow comparability between online and television. Definition of video views remains problematic [caption id="attachment_3611" align="aligncenter" width="1252"] Source: Various[/caption] The key metric for a video ‘view’ varies from 3 seconds for Facebook to 30 seconds for YouTube while the IAB classes a viewable advertisement at just 2 seconds of continuous play[33. Media Rating Council viewable ad guidelines http://bit.ly/1GmivH7]. This makes it hard to compare the relative effectiveness of the different platforms. It also doesn’t match what the industry has come to expect with television where most ads are watched right to the end. This year will also see the start of cross device advertising. Logged in VOD services, and better tracking technology will allow advertisers to target individual users as television starts to behave more like the web. For example it will be possible to show sequential ads to the same person over time, unlocking new creative advertising possibilities.

5. Public Service media under threat

The explosion of new media channels and the move to online is putting public broadcasters under pressure as never before. With audience share declining it is harder than ever to maintain support for universal taxation or licence fees. The BBC will come through its charter renewal but not before a further assault from the UK’s newspaper sector over the dominant role of its online news site. Another milestone in 2016 – the licence fee link with the television set will end, closing a loophole that made it possible to watch on-demand television on laptops or smartphones without paying but television services will still face significant cuts including the potential axing of the BBC News channel[34. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/11712597/BBC-staff-fear-closure-of-news-channel-as-Lord-Hall-announces-job-cuts.html]. How the BBC Licence Fee Gets Spent Cuts will need to come from the TV budget but political pressure will be online Meanwhile all eyes will be on BBC Three’s attempts to re-invent itself as an online service following the closure of its TV channel. It started the year by unveiling a new logo – designed to look like an app - and will focus on creating video programming specifically for digital and social distribution as well as producing a daily stream of material aimed at engaging a younger audience. Even so, the BBC is braced to lose 80% of the 16-24 audience that it currently attracts through BBC Three[35. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33328907].

2.4 Podcasting and Audio Boom

While video continues to lead the way, audio is undergoing a revival driven by connected smartphones and its multitasking friendly format. In the US, Barack Obama made his podcast debut on WTF With Marc Maron and Serial announced an exclusive distribution deal for its second series through Pandora. The move from download to streaming consumption is changing the economics of podcasting, opening up the possibility of higher revenues through targeted advertising and dynamic ad insertion. Companies like Acast and Panoply will be rolling those solutions out this year. Currently only around 17% of Americans listen to podcasts and that partly because of a longstanding discovery problem with over 30,000 regular programmes made each week. Tools like Clammr could make it easier to share snippets from longer podcasts through social media, while NPR National Public Radio has launched Earbud.fm, a curated podcast recommendation website and app. Meanwhile Spotify will be incorporating podcasting in 2016, potentially opening quality speech audio to a much wider audience.

2.5 Social Media and Messaging Apps – What Next?

Social media and messaging apps became more central to more people in 2015. Facebook reached a billion users a day for the first time, Instagram broke through 400 million users and despite its difficulties, Twitter still reaches around 350 million active users each month. Meanwhile users have been migrating fast towards messaging apps because in many countries they offer a no cost or low cost alternative to SMS. Now these new digital giants are working out how they can capitalise on these enormous user bases to take on Facebook with new services and functionality. Rapid growth of messaging and hybrid networks 2011-2015 The key focus in 2016 for both messaging apps and social networks will be to get us to spend more time within their apps. That means insourcing more content and reducing friction with other services so we neither want, nor need, to leave. Apart from the continued focus on video and the growth of live streaming (already covered above), here’s what else we can expect ...

1. Rise of long-form social content

Instead of linking to articles and blogs, social platforms will encourage publishers and marketers to publish natively within their platforms. Some Instant Article functionality will also be incorporated within a revamped Facebook Notes as the network looks to reward content that engages readers for longer. Under pressure, Twitter will increase its 140-character limit and encourage postings of up to 10,000 characters changing the nature of the platform and putting it in direct competition with Facebook, LinkedIn and Medium. But this is just the start of a trend that will see more content created, distributed and monetised through social platforms.

The individual website won’t matter ...It will be about getting it [news] from centralized websites. Evan Williams, Founder Medium (speaking at I-Squared Publisher Summit)

In 2016, strategist Jonathan Marks says we’ll see more people subscribe to long-form investigative journalism through sites like Medium and a market will develop for those who curate the content on those platforms into coherent collections such as https://medium.com/backchannel.

2. Growth of social e-commerce and new in app service

Buy buttons on sponsored posts have been around for a while but the range of frictionless options to spend money will grow markedly this year. Pinterest will be looking to build on its success with buyable pins (1),Twitter is experimenting with in platform sales (2) while Facebook has expanded options for non-profits (3) – allowing donations and campaign pages to be run without ever leaving the platform. Asian networks like WeChat and Line (see below) have gone even further integrating payment services, taxi booking, news and even music services. By the end of 2016, most social media brands will have launched more services or done a better job of integrating existing services like Uber and Spotify. The bottom line is that we’re likely to be spending more time and more money with social and messaging platforms in 2016.

3. Chat apps make presence felt in breaking news

Over the past year more eyewitness pictures, videos and comments have emerged through platforms like WhatsApp, Line, WeChat and Telegram - rather than just Twitter or email. Some of these apps will enable APIs this year which will make it easier for news organisations to distribute content something that has been hard until now.

In this respect, perhaps the most interesting to watch will be Snapchat’s approach to news. It’s been trialling approaches to breaking news with Live Stories and last year’s much praised coverage of the San Bernardino massacre.

A number of news organisations have been experimenting with its Snapchat Discover section, including the Wall St Journal, the first business publication. The journal has a five-person team dedicated to creating Snapchat content, publishing eight items a day. From the Survey

Reaching new audiences on platforms like Snapchat with 100 million daily engaged users – that’s a huge opportunity Sarah Marshall, Wall St Journal

Snapchat has moved fast since its beginnings as a pioneer in the ephemeral-image-sharing genre, to a slightly-less-ephemeral storytelling app, to a host of branded content ‘channels’, to a publisher in its own right based on curation of geofenced UGC. As Paul Bradshaw points out: “Where Twitter’s innovations sometimes feel like a platform on the back foot, Snapchat feels like it’s a step ahead of where everyone assumes it is”. Having said that Paul is not alone in wondering if the Snapchat bubble will burst in 2015: “so far it has got by without any hard metrics for publishers. That can’t last.” 2016 could be a make or break year with others predicting Snapchat will go public this year[36. http://www.techinsider.io/why-snapchat-is-the-one-to-watch-in-2016-at-the-expense-of-twitter-2015-12]

4. More secure chat apps

With government snooping and concerns about personal privacy on the rise, we can expect to see greater adoption of encrypted and secure networks [37. With thanks to Trushar Barot – see conclusion of Tow Center’s Guide to chat apps https://towcenter.gitbooks.io/guide-to-chat-apps/content/conclusion/whats_on_the.html] Telegram has become popular in the Middle East with ordinary people but also with groups like ISIS, which use it to communicate and disseminate propaganda, Telegram has ‘secret chat functionality’ that uses end-to-end encryption, self-destructing messages and leaves no trace on servers. Firechat is another app that became popular during the Hong Kong protests in 2014 and it uses the Bluetooth connectivity and radio aerials on phones and smartphones to create a “mesh” network of people in the same area. It has plans to develop the platform this year and has introduced private messaging. Yik Yak and Jott are also growing fast with university and school age children in the US as they both specialise in anonymous and secure messaging.

5. More emotional sharing options

Twitter replaced its 'favourite' symbol with a heart in 2015 just as Facebook was laying plans for a more varied set of emotional responses to content that are being tested first in Spain and Ireland.

"What [people] really want is the ability to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment." Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook

Hearts and likes are often seen as inappropriate for news stories that engender a complex set of emotions – such as natural disasters. These new options provide more nuanced ways of sharing as well as providing useful feedback signals for news organisations and brands about how content is going down with audiences. Other possible signals around content in 2016 could be more buttons to help verify truthfulness and accuracy, given the extent of hoax pictures and posts in recent news events. Expect at least one traditional news organisation to experiment with emojis and integrate them into the app experience.

6. Social at work

This could be the year the workplace truly begins to harness the power of social for internal purposes. For years, intranets and knowledge management software has failed to join the dots within complex organisations while email has been clogged up with social conversation. Now simple cloud based services are changing culture and productivity within the enterprise. Tools like Slack and Hipchat are leading the charge helping teams share and organise information, allowing people to come together in groups in a non-hierarchical way. From the survey:

This tool (Slack) has completely changed how my teams interact with each other, and has had a similar effect in the newsroom – completely though organic adoption rather than any specific concerted effort

In 2016 the recently launched Facebook at Work will bring these approaches to mainstream audiences such as workers at top UK banking giant RBS[38. http://uk.businessinsider.com/why-rbs-is-using-facebook-at-work-2015-11]. The interface is almost identical to the home version although personal and professional accounts are kept separate and you ‘follow’ rather than ‘friend’ colleagues.

2.6 Online Advertising: The Year of the Ad-Apocalypse?

With over half of all advertising spend going online this year in many countries (UK), there’ll be intense focus on where that money is going and how effectively it is being spent. Marketers and publishers will be trying to take advantage of advances in audience targeting and big data capabilities while agencies and brands will look to up the quality and creativity of their messaging. But consumers are in boisterous and resistant mood. They are increasingly sensitive about their privacy and are primed with powerful ad blockers like AdBlock Plus and bug tracking tools like Ghostery. A YouGov survey in Nov 2015 showed 20% ad blocking in the UK, but double that (40%) for 18-24s[39. https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/01/going-native-consumers-advertising-and-news/]. So far this has mostly been confined to desktop but in 2016 we’ll see this move to the mobile mainstream following Apple’s decision to open up the iOS platform to ad and content blockers. Global Growth of Ad-blocking 2010-2015 [caption id="attachment_3573" align="aligncenter" width="1062"] Source: Adobe/Page Fair Ad Blocking Report 2015[/caption] Perhaps the biggest threat of all comes from Israel-based mobile ad blocker Shine, which is working at the network level to stop all advertisements. This ‘ad apocalypse’ is already happening in Jamaica [40. http://www.techinsider.io/digicel-becomes-first-mobile-carrier-to-sign-up-shine-ad-blocker-2015-9]where one small carrier, Digicel has signed up and is blocking all display, video and in app ads. It is offering Google, Yahoo and Facebook a revenue share deal on ads it lets through. If bigger mobile carriers go down this route, the game changes significantly. But ad-tech is facing a host of other problems too including Ad fraud and viewabilty. The extent of ad fraud only really came to light in the last 18-months with a series of well-researched studies [41. http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-click-fraud/] suggesting that total fraud in the US amounted to around $6.3bn (20% of total advertising spend). The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) showed that software bots - not people - viewed 11% of display and 25% of video ads. Advertisers are particularly concerned about the implications for reaching millennials. This is the group most likely to use ad blocking, least likely to own a television and most likely watch programmes (ad free) through Netflix or BBC iPlayer on their laptops or phones.

We’re at risk of bringing up an entire generation in a world without advertising. Jon Block VP of Platform and Product at Videology

This is both a problem and an opportunity; it is recreating scarcity that could allow publishers who can successfully deliver viewable ads to millennials to charge higher premiums. The volatility in this area makes predictions particularly hard but here’s an attempt:

Ad blocking wars: Expect more publishers to follow the example of Axel Springer which forced users of the Bild website to turn off ad blockers or pay a monthly fee to continue using the site. It says over two thirds complied and usage is now in single digits. The Washington Post has also started redirecting readers to a subscription page or asks them to sign up for newsletters. But the ad-blocking companies will strike back trying to intercept these messages and turn them off.

More legal and regulatory moves: As the economic impact becomes clearer, publishers will try to get regulators and legislators to take action. They will argue that ad blocking is undermining the existence of professional journalism and if courts won’t close them down the law must be changed. In response, the blockers will argue that advertisers and publishers are invading privacy, spamming mobile users and draining mobile data.

Ad blocking goes mobile: So far, awareness of ad blocking on smartphones is low but with consumers increasingly sensitive about privacy and data charges the rates could match desktop by the end of the year. This will come from mobile apps like Crystal and from new ad blocking browsers like UC browser, which is sweeping through countries in India and the Far East where high data charges are a big issue.

Facebook, Google and Apple will remain immune: The big tech companies will find a way to buy off or neutralise ad blocking within their apps and through mobile initiatives like AMP, Instant Articles and Apple News. In turn, this will drive the trend to publishing via distributed platforms with a limited set of advertising slots and formats – giving yet more control to Google and Facebook.

Ad-tech fixes to get round the ad-blockers: We’ll see more advertising moving to video, which tends to be harder to block because it involves fewer calls to third parties. Publishers will also change the way they serve conventional display ads using server-to-server calls rather than front-end code.

Advertising quality improves: Brands and agencies will be pushed to create advertising and marketing messages that engage rather than interrupt consumers. Good recent examples include two puppyhood ads for Purina carried by Buzzfeed.

The problems of ad-tech are severe and will take many years to solve. But out of the chaos we’ll start to see better ads and approaches that successfully generate revenue at the same time as respecting consumer user experience.

2.7 Publishing and Journalism

In our Reuters Institute digital leaders’ survey, respondents were not as downbeat as might be expected about their business prospects in 2016. A number of those without solid digital revenues or who relied on digital advertising were more worried than last year (22%) but some with paid content or mixed business models were largely less worried (20%) or equally worried (50%) compared with last year.

To what extent are you worried about your company’s digital revenues?

Reuters Institute Digital Leaders Survey 2016 n=119 (11 did not answer this question)

To some extent this data reflects the steady progress many publishers have made in generating digital revenues, but it also indicates a lack of urgency still felt in many European countries (like Austria and Switzerland) where consumer behaviour is changing more slowly and print revenues remain strong. Even so, a number of respondents expressed concern about the new dynamics of mobile – in making it more difficult to make money than even desktop - and helping tech platforms get even stronger:

Mobile audiences grow at pace but the dynamics of mobile advertising are different to what we've experienced before. What growth there is in the market is being won by Google and Facebook. (anon)

Across our respondents there was a strong consensus on the need to diversify revenue streams to replace declining advertising revenue and to contingency plan against increased ad block usage. A number of respondents talked specifically about moving the focus away from page views and display ads in 2016. In that regard, we can expect to see:

1. More crowd-funding and membership schemes:

The Spanish news site El Espanol raised a staggering €3.1 million ($3.4 million) through crowd-funding in less than two months. Other European start-ups have raised over €1m including De Correspondent in the Netherlands and Germany’s Krautreporter. National Public Radio in the US and Wikipedia have demonstrated the power of regular funding drives and expect to see the Guardian look to scale its membership scheme globally using similar techniques mixed with premium content offers. 2. Subscription innovation and micropayments: Blendle, the self-styled ‘iTunes for journalism’ will launch in the US in early 2016. It has backing from the New York Times and Axel Springer amongst others and has already signed up 550,000 subscribers in the Netherlands and Germany for a service where consumers pay a fraction of a euro per article - and can get refunds if they are disappointed with the content. Given the failure of low cost subscription services like NYT Now, paid content providers see these services as a potential source of additional income from users who would never sign up for a full subscription to just one outlet. Elsewhere watch for innovation on subscription such as the Boston Globe’s 99c a day approach [42. http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/newsonomics-can-you-get-readers-to-pay-a-dollar-a-day-for-digital-news/] and the growth of price discrimination.

3. The rebirth of COMtent for a mobile age

Mixing content and commerce can be an important revenue source for publishers focused on preserving editorial integrity. More seamless users journeys and frictionless payment are opening up new possibilities that were never possible in print or even via a computer. Get the look fashion features, gift guides and product reviews can be reborn in a mobile context where users can be sent vouchers or advised on nearby locations for the best deal. Beyond Clicks and Views and Towards Engagement Over half of our publishers said increasing levels of engagement (54%) would be top priority in 2016, although in most cases this was often balanced with the need to drive greater reach. From the survey:

We saw record of numbers of readers coming to us in 2015. In 2016, our biggest opportunity is to turn that interest into a more deeply engaged audience Julia Beizer, Director of Product Washington Post

Top strategic priorities for 2016

Reuters Institute Digital Leaders Survey 2016 n=123

The Year of Audience Engagement The focus on engagement is partly related to the increasing need to drive quality traffic but the move to distributed content has also focussed minds on how to engage users in third party platforms like Facebook and Google[43. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/audience-engagement-roll-your-eyes-embrace-strong-future-higgerson]. For all these reasons most big publishers are investing in better analytics and understanding of data and have been setting up new teams centred on audience engagement. The BBC and the Financial Times were amongst publishers joining this trend in 2015 and will be hitting their stride in 2016.

[This] will be the year that we begin to understand what success really looks like, and realize that it takes as many different forms as there are different audiences on different platforms. Renée Kaplan, head of audience engagement at the FT[44. http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/12/secrets-of-a-successful-relationship/]

This new complexity is recognised in our survey where over three quarters (76%) of respondents said that it would be critical to improve the use and understanding of data in the newsroom this year. How important will it be to improve the use data in the newsroom in 2016? [caption id="attachment_3576" align="alignleft" width="371"] Reuters Institute Digital Leaders Survey 2016 n=123[/caption] Around two thirds of publishers who responded to our survey (65%) had deployed Chartbeat in their newsrooms to provide real time feedback. 15% were using NewsWhip, a specialist tool for understanding how content is performing in social media, and almost half (45%) had also built their own home-grown systems to help understand how content was being used. Beyond new business models, data and video (covered above) what other journalism trends can we expect in 2016? 1. Renewed importance of publisher apps Despite the rise of distributed content, most revenue will come from repeat visits from loyal customers. In a mobile age this increasingly means apps for four key reasons.

Apps will largely be protected from ad blocking. It is in Apple’s interests to ensure the health of the app economy vs the open web.
App content is now visible (it can be indexed by search since the iOS9 release) and automatically linked with web content. Publishers can ensure regular users always get a consistent experience wherever they come from.
Speed and performance will remain critical on mobile devices. Native apps will always beat the open web.
Apps provide always on identification and unlock the power of notifications to drive more repeat visits.

2. Importance of partnerships and scale

Distributed content, global platforms and mobile personalisation demand more scale and involve more complexity than can be provided by any individual publisher. This explains the partnership strategy of the Huffington Post (now teamed with local providers in more than a dozen countries) along with the international expansion of the Buzzfeed, Business Insider and even the New York Times. The pace of change means that new skills can’t be grown quickly enough internally – hence Axel Springer’s investment strategy in companies like NowThis to help provide short form video and Nikkei’s purchase of the Financial Times for English language reach. Publishers are also beginning to realise that they will need to work together more (e.g. Pangaea advertising alliance [45. www.pangaeaalliance.com]) as well as with tech giants like Facebook and Google. They may never be best friends but the last year has shown that the big US companies are prepared to listen more – for example with Facebook rethinking the monetisation of instant articles, Snapchat enabling deep linking of stories and Google through its Digital News Initiative. All sides in their own way have an interest in ensuring high quality content continues to be worth producing. On the other hand, the proliferation of platforms is straining publishers’ limited resources, so they’ll need to be choosy about exactly where they place their bets.

3. Focus on utility and distinctiveness

The growth of visual journalism has been good for attracting attention but not always for driving value (and hence revenue). This year, expect to see a growth in tools that focus on solving problems and answering questions along with more unique content. This might involve answering reader search queries such as: ‘How tall is David Cameron?’ as the Guardian did during the UK general election or creating data and editorial tools that help people make decisions around what to eat, where to go to university or how to spend time more profitably. For paid content sites much of this will focus on ways of making proprietary data more useful and accessible to subscribers but we’ll also see a renewed focus on creating more distinctive content in order to stand out from the crowd. Even digital born companies like Buzzfeed are investing heavily in original journalism, realising that it isn’t enough to “just crib and reshare in an echo chamber”[46. http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/12/journalism-on-the-comeback-trail/]. Linked to these new objectives, we’ll also see new ways of trying to measure utility or value rather just views or even engaged time. NPR is focussing on completion rates for its visual stories and is developing a carebot to look at value [47. http://blog.apps.npr.org/2015/11/19/sequential-visual-stories.html]. Others are going further trying to understand impact of stories and coverage over time.

4. Robo-Journalism

Until now, most innovations have centred on the distribution not the creation of content but advances in pattern recognition and natural language generation are changing that. Software from companies like Automated Insights and Narrative Science are already being used to create automated earnings reports for The Associated Press and sports reports for companies like Yahoo!. In tests of simple stories, readers couldn’t tell the difference between those generated by an algorithm and by journalists[48. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/28/computer-writing-journalism-artificial-intelligence]. Twitter bots are already churning out thousands of 140 character updates on stories of public interest such as seismic activity in California (below) and the Washington Post has been experimenting with bots in engaging young users with quizzes and games on the chat app like Kik[49. https://towcenter.gitbooks.io/guide-to-chat-apps/content/key_players_and/kik_messaging_app.htmlSuggestion from James Haycock MD Adaptive Lab]. Journalism based on data collected by sensors, cameras and drones also has the potential to reinvent local journalism in terms of weather, traffic and local events sourced from social media. It may not be long before we see the emergence of automated content farms that rewrite popular trending copy from multiple sources and we’ll also see more cyborg journalists in newsrooms; helpful robots built into CMSs that automatically bring in facts, references and links to support stories[50. http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/21/wall-street-backed-symphony-wants-to-revolutionize-financial-services-communication/]

2.8 Start-Ups to Watch

Here are ten companies we may be hearing more about in the next year. 1. Symphony: is a social network for Wall Street with a mission to revolutionise the way bankers and financial specialists communicate and share information. Think Slack with extra security. In the enterprise, these personalised systems also help distribute key financial news and Wall St Journal Chief Innovation Officer Ed Roussel believes Symphony’s “network of arteries will eventually be driving the lifeblood of Wall Street”. It has large financial backing and a waiting list of content providers wanting to integrate with their platform. All they need do is improve the usability of the product to start having a serious impact[50. http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/21/wall-street-backed-symphony-wants-to-revolutionize-financial-services-communication/] 2. Brigade: Started by Napster cofounder Sean Parker, Brigade is a US platform that encourages civic action and empowers users to seek change. Users are prompted to answer questions that help match their views with political candidates and advocacy groups. They can also try to persuade others to change their positions on issues – for which they get scored. The 2016 US election will be the first big test for the platform which also offers parties and political organisations a dashboard of who is supporting their issues and what is trending in the news. 3. Vervid: This app is all about experimentation with vertical video – creating compositions that make sense for screens that are held upright 94% of the time. Vervid also features profile images that ‘burst’ into life as video thumbnails. 4. Newsflare: is an online video news community and marketplace for user generated video content. It supplies video to over 200 news organisations and rewards contributors with recognition, privileges and financial rewards. It aims to cover news that is too remote or too local for many traditional news organisations. In 2016 it is expanding into China. 5. Gimlet: is a fast growing podcast company built on the success of a show called startup, which documented founder Alex Blumberg’s (ex This American Life) attempts to set up his own podcasting network. Gimlet Media (as it became) went on to raise $1.5 million in funding, $200,000 of which came from a crowdfunding and launch as series of high quality podcasts that are defining the medium. 6. The Quint: Is an Indian mobile first news site in English and Hindi founded by entrepreneur Raghav Bahl the man behind media group Network 18. It’s looking to bring a fresh modern tone to coverage of serious and lighter issues. The site is built on a new digital publishing platform called The Quintype, which not only publishes stories but uses predictive analytics for scheduling articles, builds in social media management and contains an integrated ad engine. 7. Ola (also India): This taxi-hailing app is a reminder that US companies like Uber will face stiff competition in many Asian markets. Ola is expanding to cover around 200 cities on the back of rising mobile connectivity in India. It is the third-most valuable venture-backed company in India with a valuation of $2.4bn. 8. Leap Motion: is a controller that provides a new way to interact with a computer or mobile device. You can point, grab, pinch or punch your way to navigate through the digital world. 9. Forevery: One of a host of apps incorporating image recognition technology to help you search for people, place or things in your mobile picture library. No tagging is needed as the app can also be trained to recognise members of your family or specific objects. (see also Google photos). 10, Blippar: Is an image recognition and augmented reality mobile app that aims to change the way we search for things and interact with the world around us. It identifies and categories items in the camera’s field of vision offering links and opportunities to interact. And watch too for Platfora (extracting value from big data), Infinario (for publishing analytics), Relsci (a platform for mapping relationships with people in the news), Immersive.ly (for VR news production), and the reinvention of Upworthy.

2.8 Five Technologies that May Shake Our World

1. Virtual reality

After all the hype, this is the year when consumers will start to get their hands on new headsets and experience fully immersive content. The HTC Vive will join Sony's PlayStation VR and Facebook's Oculus Rift headset on the market in the next few months amid huge publicity. But it will be cheaper systems like Google's Cardboard VR headset, where you slot in an Android smartphone,that will provide most people with their first virtual reality experience. Initially the main focus will be games and adventure experiences such as Everest VR, which will be part of the Hive release. Created by Icelandic studio Solfar, it uses a technique called photogrammetry to stitch together over 300,000 high photos to hint at a new genre of experiences, somewhere between filmmaking and gaming. Longer term, there are potential applications in education, medicine and news (discussed earlier). Virtual reality will be a new multi-billion dollar industry with opportunities for many players from content makers to headset manufactures. Yet again Facebook and Google are set to be the big winners - controlling the full spectrum of assets needed for success: hardware, software, content, talent, distribution networks and advertising.

2. Augmented reality

While VR is about immersive experience, mixed reality is about adding information to what we see in the real world. The Microsoft HoloLensis a smart glassesheadset that is also a self-contained Windows 10 computer. It uses advanced sensors, a 3D display and spatial sound to allow for augmented reality applications. Users interact using their eyes, voice or hands. Manufactures like Samsung have expressed interest in building products on top of the HoloLens. Other pioneers like Atheer have refocused efforts on the millions of workers who need to keep their hands free but may also need access to information or data (see medical example below). Google Glass is also being redeveloped for the enterprise market. One other big mover in 2016 is expected to be Google backed Magic Leap, which has produced a series of impressive videos showing consumer use cases relating to entertainment and the office (above right). Magic Leap has raised over $1.4b in funding and now says it is moving out of R&D into production.

3. Next generation drones

Consumer sales are expected to reach four million this year and 20 million by 2020 - with most drones equipped with high definition cameras. In the US, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is requiring users of unmanned aerial devices to register units by the middle of February, a move which suggests that the serious business use of drones is getting nearer. Full commercial services are probably still a few years away as a number of legal and technical hurdles remain to be overcome. These include concerns about personal privacy, safety as well as the potential use of drones for terrorism. At least two near misses have been reported by commercial pilots landing at UK airports - while footage of a falling drone narrowly missing an Austrian skier was widely shared over the internet[51. http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/23/champion-skier-marcel-hirscher-has-near-miss-as-drone-falls-out-of-sky]. Manufacturers will be demonstrating new flight safety features involving geo-fencing to ensure drones stay away from designated areas. Software from companies like DroneDeply will also ensure drones avoid obstacles in the skies as well as when landing. Amazon is continuing to improve and test its prototype delivery fleet – Amazon Prime Air. In a company video, Jeremy Clarkson showcased the latest features of its drone, which will eventually deliver packages in less than half an hour to a designated drop zone outside your house. Expect more retailers to announce drone delivery programmes in 2016. Meanwhile news outlets including the Washington Post and CNN are taking part in a research programme with Virginia Tech on a site that has been officially approved by the FAA[52. http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/16/media/media-coalition-news-drones/]. They’ll be experimenting with new uses for drones filming breaking news, gaining new perspectives and verifying information. And expect Twitter to move into tweet controlled drones, following a patent application in December for a UAV that takes photos and videos that can be shared on user accounts[53. http://www.popsci.com/twitter-just-patented-tweet-piloted-drones].

4. Internet of things

The number of physical devices connected to the internet continues to rise exponentially. That means new screens like wearable technology or the smart screens that can display information from the internet – but also more devices with sensors built in that allow services to be optimised and improved in real time. Smart mirror display: Virtual fitting rooms, style advice and weather information Smart mirrors like the one above come with 3D camera technology that turn them into a virtual fitting room helping people see how they look in clothes, shoes or jewellery – before buying. Even lightbulbs are getting a makeover. Phillips Hue connected lighting allows you to change colours or moods to match your mood or to programme lights to come on or off using your smartphone. The implications for business and public services are potentially even more powerful. More and more devices from driverless cars to traffic lights to thermostats come with sensors built in that allow services to be controlled and optimised remotely in real time. With these new capabilities will come new dilemmas and debates about the extent to which we are losing the ability to think for ourselves and about the security implications of having all this data being sucked out of our homes and delivered to outside companies or individuals.

5. Virtual currencies and the Blockchain revolution

Bitcoin’s rollercoaster ride suggests we need a deeper level of trust before ordinary consumers are willing to commit their money to currencies that are not backed by banks or ultimately a nation state. The technology behind Bitcoin is cryptographic system called Blockchain, which can verify transactions without the need for a trusted third party. The technology is still in its infancy but this year we’ll start to see Blockchain used for much more than just money Blockverify is a start-up that provides traceability for high-value items like diamonds. It would allow you to prove your diamond ring is ethical for example[54. http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/27/using-the-blockchain-to-the-fight-crime-and-save-lives/]. Deloitte is experimenting with distributed digital ledgers using blockchain, PeerTracks and Bittunes are shaking up digital music, while Verisart is working on ways to improve how art is tracked and verified[55. http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/07/verisart-plans-to-use-the-blockchain-to-verify-the-authencity-of-artworks/]. There are clear possibilities for using the same process to manage news videos, pictures and other intellectual property in a shared and distributed world. Crypto-currencies and the systems that underlie them have huge potential to disrupt long-standing industries but will ultimately reduce transaction costs and improve security for all of us.

About the Author

Nic Newman is a Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and has been lead author of the annual Digital News Report since 2012. He is also a consultant on digital media, working actively with news companies on product, audience, and business strategies for digital transition. He has produced a predictions paper for the last ten years, though this is the first such paper to be published by the Institute. Nic was a founding member of the BBC News Website, leading international coverage as World Editor (1997–2001). As Head of Product Development he led digital teams, developing websites, mobile, and interactive TV applications for all BBC Journalism sites.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for the input of more than 130 digital leaders from more than 25 countries that responded to a survey around the key challenges and opportunities in the year ahead. Respondents came from some of the world’s leading traditional media companies as well as new digital born organisations. Survey input and answers helped guide some of the themes in this report quotes and data have been used throughout. Some quotes do not carry names or organisations, at the request of those contributors. The author is particularly grateful to a number of other experts who were interviewed for this report, responded by email or offered other support or guidance: Kevin Anderson (ex Gannett executive), George Brock and Jane Singer (City University), Paul Bradshaw (Birmingham City University), Richard Sambrook (Cardiff University), Jon Block (Videology), James Haycock (Adaptive Labs), Damian Radcliffe (University of Oregon), Andy Kaltenbrunner (Medienhaus Wien), Jonathan Marks (CEO Critical Distance), Bertrand Pecquerie (CEO Global Editors Network), Trushar Barot (BBC), Kevin Hinde (Macmillan), Neil Sharman (consultant). Also thanks to the team at the Reuters Institute for input and support including David Levy, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Federica Cherubini, Annika Sehl, Alessio Cornia, Richard Fletcher and Antonis Kalogeropoulos – as well as Alex Reid, Rebecca Edwards and Hannah Marsh. As with many predictions reports there is a significant element of speculation, particularly around specifics and the paper should be read with this in mind. Having said that, any mistakes – factual or otherwise – should be considered entirely the responsibility of the author who can be held accountable at the same time next year.

Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism with the support of Google and the Digital News Initiative.

Postscript, Further Reading List

Once again, thanks to all those who have contributed to this year’s predictions and to those who completed our digital leaders’ survey. We’d be delighted to hear from you if you have comments or suggestions for next year at reuters.institute@politics.ox.ac.uk These are a few of the detailed articles, essays and presentations that have helped inspire us ... George Brock: The Age of Polymorphous media Nieman Lab: Predictions for Journalism 2016 Journalism.co.uk: Technology trends journalists should watch Media Briefing: The most likely media and tech developments in 2016 Ben Thompson: Stratechery Year in Review Michael Wolf: Tech and Media Predictions for 2016 Ericcson: Consumer Media Trends for 2016 Deloitte: Mobile consumer 2015 Digiday: Year in preview Jason Mander: Six for Sixteen Mary Meeker/KPCB: Internet trends 2015 Ofcom: International Communications report 2015 Ofcom: News consumption in the UK 2015 (Dec) Tow Centre: Guide to Chat apps. What’s on the horizon

Survey Methodology

130 people took part in a closed survey in December 2015. Participants were selected because they held senior positions (editorial, technical and commercial) in traditional or digital born publishing companies and were responsible for aspects of digital strategy. Job titles included Editor in Chief, CEO, Head of Digital, Chief Product Officer, Director of Video etc. Most participants were from organisations with a print background but around 15% came from public service or commercial broadcasters. Over 25 countries are represented in the survey including the US, Brazil and Japan but the majority came from European countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Finland and Spain. Participants filled out an online survey with specific questions around strategic digital intent in 2016. Around 95% answered most questions although the response rates vary between different questions. Additional open-ended questions were asked around key challenges and technologies and trends to watch. Around 50% contributed comments and ideas in this section.

Editorial Analytics: How News Media Are Developing and Using Audience Data and Metrics

federica.cherubini — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 00:01:21 +0000

Executive Summary

News organisations all over the world have in recent years increased their use of analytics – systematic analysis of quantitative data on various aspects of audience behaviour aimed at growing audiences, increasing engagement, and improving newsroom workflows. In this Reuters Institute Report, we review how a range of different newsrooms across Europe and North America use analytics. On the basis of more than 30 interviews, we find the following:

Leading digital news organisations are developing distinct forms of editorial analytics tailored to help them pursue their particular goals. These forms of editorial analytics differ from more rudimentary and generic approaches (1) in being aligned with the editorial priorities and organisational imperatives (whether commercial, non-profit, or public service) of specific news organisations, (2) in informing both short-term day-to-day decisions and longer-term strategic development, and (3) in continually evolving to keep pace with a changing media environment.
Globally oriented US- and UK-based news organisations remain ahead of most others in their development and use of analytics, but market leaders in most countries are developing editorial analytics suited to their specific priorities and situations. Market leaders across continental Europe frequently have more in common with leading US and UK organisations than with their domestic competitors. Many news organisations across all the countries covered here continue to lag behind best practice.
Because best-practice editorial analytics are tailored to the priorities and goals of a given organisation as well as the context in which it competes, there is no one right way to do analytics or one set of tools that will give an organisation everything it needs. Instead, news organisations need to think about how they can develop their analytics capability by making sure they combine (1) the right set of tools, (2) an organisational structure that incorporates the expertise to use them, and (3) a newsroom culture that embraces data-informed decision-making. Falling short in any one of these areas undermines an organisation’s analytics capability.
The most sophisticated audience teams are keenly aware that analytics are not perfect. the data never tell the full story, and quantitative analysis always has to be supplemented by editorial expertise and other forms of qualitative judgement. Even the best editorial analytics continue to be constrained by the difficulties involved in defining and measuring many of the things that news organisations aim to achieve and is beset by a whole range of data-quality and data-access issues, exacerbated by rapid changes in the media environment.
Journalists today not only need analytics to navigate an ever-more competitive battle for attention. Many journalists also want analytics, as an earlier period of scepticism seems to have given way to interest in how data and metrics can help newsrooms reach their target audiences and do better journalism. that is encouraging, because analytics and data metrics will continue to evolve, and if journalists are not part of that process, the tools and techniques developed will continue to reflect and empower commercial and technological priorities more than editorial priorities.

1. The Development of Editorial Analytics

News organisations today are competing for attention in an ever-more competitive and constantly changing media environment. No one can take their audience for granted. the battle for attention is a central challenge for journalism because its public role is premised on connecting with an audience – as is the business model of private news media and the legitimacy of public service media. In this Reuters Institute Report, we analyse how news organisations across Europe and the United States are developing their use of analytics – systematic analysis of quantitative data on audience behaviour – as part of that battle for attention. We show how analytics, in the past perhaps primarily associated with brands like BuzzFeed, gawker, and the Huffington Post, are increasingly central to how news organisations like the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the BBc do journalism today, and are being taken in new directions by both large news organisations like the Axel Springer-owned German newspaper Die Welt and smaller digital start-ups like Quartz and Ze.tt. At the centre of this development are people in the newsroom with new job titles like ‘audience editor’, ‘growth editor’, ‘audience development editor’, or ‘audience engagement editor’. they are developing and using analytics for editorial purposes that were in the past more narrowly tied to predominantly commercial objectives, using tools and techniques previously rarely used by journalists. We look at how they work with colleagues as part of audience development teams and how they work with rank-and-file news journalists across their newsroom. We see how old metrics like pageviews and unique browsers are increasingly accompanied by new measures of social interactions, engaged time, and loyalty, and how new tools like chartbeat, Parse.ly, and NewsWhip, which aim to help specifically editorial decision-making, supplement more generic tools like Omniture, google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and the like. We examine how short-term optimisation of websites on the basis of article placement and testing of headlines and photos is increasingly combined with a broader effort to extend the shelf-life and distributed reach of quality content and with longer term analysis aimed at developing loyal and engaged audiences and doing smarter, more timely, and more effective journalism. We show how leading organisations are developing distinct forms of what we call editorial analytics. Editorial analytics aim to help journalists and news organisations become more datainformed, not to replace editorial judgement with the tyranny of numbers. They are distinct from more rudimentary and generic approaches in being

aligned with the editorial priorities and organisational imperatives (whether commercial, non-profit, or public service) of specific news organisations;
used to inform both short-term day-to-day decisions and longer-term strategic development (including product development and work planning); and
continually evolving to keep pace with a changing media environment.

It is important to underline that the fact that the most developed approaches – whether in larger organisations like the Guardian or smaller ones like Quartz – are tailored means that there is no one best way to do analytics, just as there is no one ‘god metric’ for journalism. Good analytics use a wide variety of different approaches and sources of data to help with day-to-day short-term optimisation and longer term planning. All effective use of analytics depends on defining and measuring performance against the specific goals being pursued. Editorial analytics are underpinned by technological tools, organisational structures, and cultural components that together define a news organisation’s analytics capability. Those interested in developing better analytics will have to consider how each of these components can supplement each other in light of the goals of a specific organisation. All three components are necessary parts of this, and none of them can substitute directly for one another. Technology and tools without an organisational structure that ensures they are used well will not deliver their full return. A well staffed analytics team with a clear place in the organisational structure but poor tools and little cultural cachet with the wider newsroom will not realise its potential. A pro-data culture in the newsroom will not result in more data-informed decision-making if the right tools are not available and the organisation does not have the talent to analyse the data. To use analytics effectively, an organisation needs to know what it wants to achieve, and develop a combination of tools, organisational structure, and newsroom culture that enables a more data-informed pursuit of these goals. Editorial analytics represent a significant improvement in news organisations’ capacity to understand the media environment in which they operate and an important shift from a time in which newsrooms had far less analytic capability than other parts of their organisation (the commercial side, the strategy unit, the media research department, the IT department, and the product development team). But, as the most sophisticated audience development editors and data analysts are the first to underline, editorial analytics are not perfect. The data never tell the full story, and quantitative analysis always has to be supplemented by editorial expertise and other forms of qualitative judgement. Analytics are constrained by the difficulties involved in defining and measuring many of the things that news organisations aim to achieve (whether editorial impact, conversion of users to subscribers, or public service goals like making citizens more informed). It is beset by a whole range of data-quality and data-access issues. this means that the effective use of analytics for journalistic purposes involves not only (1) making the step from rudimentary or generic analytics to tailored editorial analytics and (2) the development of analytic capability through technological tools, organisational structure, and newsroom culture. It also involves (3) a keen awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of even the best available analytics. Current approaches are better at dealing with an older internet of desktop web use, homepage traffic, and referrals from search and social than with more recent trends like mobile web use, app/browser proliferation, and distributed content consumed across multiple platforms and devices. When we discuss specific examples, our main emphasis will be on news organisations widely regarded as examples of best practice. But it is important to underline that many news organisations, including some of the most respected in the world, have been slow to embrace analytics, at least in the newsroom. In 2014, the widely discussed New York Times Innovation Report noted that We are falling behind [in] the art and science of getting our journalism to readers. We have always cared about the reach and impact of our work, but we haven’t done enough to crack that code in the digital era. [1. http://www.scribd.com/doc/224332847/Nyt-Innovation-Report-2014] The New York Times has since invested heavily in analytics and its audience development team. Many other news organisations, both in the United States and Europe, continue to lag behind: they use a few generic tools, fail to tailor them to their editorial priorities and organisational goals, and thus have a poor understanding of their audience and limited analytics capability. But things are changing. The combination of new opportunities to measure audience behaviour and new challenges in terms of connecting with audiences has led more and more news media organisations to embrace and develop new forms of analytics. As the BBC’s Director of News and Current Affairs, James Harding, wrote in his 2015 report on the future of news, the challenge of effectively using data about how content is being consumed will be ‘central’ for journalism moving forward. [2. http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/29_01_15future_of_news.pdf] A broad range of industry leaders agree – 76% of respondents in a recent Reuters Institute survey of news editors, CEOs, and digital leaders from across 25 countries said improving the way in which newsrooms use data to better understand and target audiences is going to be very important for their organisation in 2016 (Newman 2016). We hope this report will be useful in this process. It aims to provide both an overview of the state-of-the-art in newsroom use of analytics for those relatively new to the area as well as an analysis of some of the central challenges ahead for those who already have an advanced understanding of analytics. It is based on over 30 interviews specifically about analytics and audience development, conducted between October 2015 and January 2016, primarily with audience development editors and newsroom analysts. In addition, we draw on background interviews with editors, managers, and strategists that discussed data and metrics as parts of wider conversations. The interviews cover a range of different kinds of news media, including private legacy media (both national and local/regional newspapers), public service media, digital news media, and third-party metrics vendors. We have covered a variety of countries, the main ones being France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the UK, and the US. We have deliberately looked beyond English-language market leaders to better understand how news media more generally are developing and using audience data and metrics. The aim here is not to provide an in-depth set of two or three case studies or an exhaustive inventory of every approach out there, but to provide an overview of some examples of best practice and some of the most important differences we have observed. A full list of interviewees is provided at the end of the report. The report is structured in three broad sections. chapter 2 examines a range of cases across different countries. Our emphasis is on discussing several different examples of best practice in some detail while also providing an overview over the wider landscape and how analytics are being developed and used in different contexts. Here we develop the distinction between rudimentary, generic, and editorial analytics. Chapter 3 deals with the interaction between technological tools, organisational structure, and newsroom culture and the notion of analytics capability. Chapter 4 covers the main challenges faced by analytics today, including problems of definition, measurement, and data.

2. How are News Media Developing and Using Audience Data and Metrics?

The idea of integrating analytics into daily editorial work and longer term strategic planning has been central to US-based digital news start-ups like Gawker, the Huffington Post, and BuzzFeed for years. these companies have from the start been proud of their ability to use a more data-informed and evidence-based approach to digital publishing than many older media, and have drawn extensively on analytics developed in the technology sector, marketing, e-commerce, and advertising (Küng 2015; Petre 2015). Faced with these aggressive new players as well the increasing importance of digital intermediaries like search engines and social media as drivers of traffic, US legacy news media like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR (National Public Radio) have themselves built teams to help their newsrooms leverage analytics more effectively in the battle for audiences’ attention. New start-ups like Quartz, vox.com, and Mic.com are similarly committed to analytics in the newsroom. The same holds true for leading UK-based brands competing for a global English language audience. the Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, and others are increasingly developing their own tailored approaches to find the right tools, organisational structures, and cultures of data to underpin their specific editorial and organisational priorities. Similarly, market leaders across much of continental Europe – so far faced with much less direct competition from start-ups focused on news because of language barriers – are developing and using analytics to improve their audience reach and engagement. Across all these markets – including the US and the UK – many news organisations still have a very rudimentary approach to analytics. this is especially true for smaller legacy news organisations like local and regional newspapers and for some public service broadcasters. But it also applies to some bigger private media. In what follows, we will focus on a detailed examination of what a selection of organisations often highlighted by other interviewees as examples of best practice are doing (the Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, and Huffington Post). We then discuss what sets best-practice examples of editorial analytics apart from more generic and rudimentary analytics and provide a wider overview over some overall trends across the countries in continental Europe where we conducted interviews.

2.1. The Guardian’s Ophan, a Path-Breaking Bespoke Software

The Guardian’s approach to analytics is anchored around its in-house real-time analytics tool Ophan. Ophan was born in 2012 as the result of an internal hack day and the expertise of Audience Editor Chris Moran (who has an editorial background) and Director of Architecture Graham Tackley (who comes from a technology background). Ophan offers minute-by-minute data on individual articles with a high level of granularity. It is browser based, easily accessible on mobile, and can be accessed with a Guardian email address and a password. In December 2015, the Guardian reported that more than a thousand employees had used the tool in the previous month. [3. https://medium.com/@guardiancomms/behind-the-scenes-ophan-how-the-guardian-democratised-data-36cde3967062#.wqk08qbep] Since its first incarnation, the tool has continued to grow and be developed around the audience team’s needs and on the basis of input from other parts of the newsroom and developers working at the Guardian. Indeed, one of the main advantages of Ophan highlighted by Moran is that it serves as a learning tool, something that is user-friendly for journalists and that communicates data in a very clear way. Ophan shows not only traditional metrics like pageviews, social shares, and attention-time for each article published in the last two weeks (drawn from various back-end sources). It also shows whether they have been pushed via the Guardian’s social media channels (including the exact post or tweet with which they have been promoted) or if they have been promoted on the homepage. [caption id="attachment_3786" align="aligncenter" width="1766"] Figure 2.1. A screenshot from Ophan, the Guardian’s editorial dashboard. Data can be filtered by time, section, device, country, and referrer. Notice how the dashboard gives data on discovery. In this case, 35% of users found this article via the Guardian, 20% via Facebook, only 0.5% came via Google, and a high percentage (39%) came from unknown referrals (this can include e.g. links send by email).[/caption] The data can be broken down by different segments, including time, section, device, browser, country, referrer, loyalty, and attention time. It shows the bounce rate, [4. ‘Bounce rate’ and a range of other terms are explained in Box 4.1 below.] If the user is logged in, and parts of the user’s journey, including where he/she has come from and where they have gone to next. [5. https://medium.com/@guardiancomms/behind-the-scenes-ophan-how-the-guardian-democratised-data-36cde3967062#.wqk08qbep] Ophan is part of how Moran and his colleagues seek to build a culture of data in the Guardian newsroom, focused on understanding users’ behaviour and on helping individual journalists and editors make data-informed decisions. For a start, everyone in Moran’s team – four people in the UK – has an editorial background. There are currently no data-scientists on the team (though there are elsewhere in the organisation). Moran stresses the value of having people on the audience team who don’t necessarily speak in the language of data, and have to work a bit to understand it. [6. chris Moran of the Guardian, interviewed by Federica cherubini, 19 Nov. 2015.] This makes the conversation between them and the rest of the newsroom easier. Part of the audience team’s job is to support subeditors with writing and tweaking headlines – they are constantly in touch via messaging chat – and making sure that all articles get the right promotion on the distribution channels. As Mary Hamilton, the Guardian’s executive editor for audience, has explained: Everybody can see the results that they’re having … so if they make a change to a headline, or if they add a link or if they add something on the front, they can now actually see the results that that’s having in real time. They can test out a gut instinct and see what happens, rather than just flying purely on that instinct. [7. http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/01/constantly-tweaking-how-the-guardian-continues-to-develop-its-in-houseanalytics-system] (Hamilton oversees all aspects of the Guardian’s online interaction with audiences, including Moran’s audience team but also more widely moderation, reach, and optimisation, as well as social media and community journalism.) As Chris Moran sees it, the real objective of the audience team is to make data understandable and actionable for everyone in the newsroom. The Guardian’s approach to analytics involves everyone considering data as part of their evaluation of every piece of content, not just a focus on the homepage, on overall site traffic, or the most-read articles. As there is no one single approach that works for every part of the Guardian’s editorial operation, across all markets, and for every piece of content or topic, Moran underlines it is important that journalists develop an approach in which they try something and then use the data, as well as their editorial judgement, to evaluate the outcome. Examples of how analytics inform decision-making includes day-to-day tweaking of headlines, pictures, placement, and promotion across social media as well as changes to workflow, like time of publication. As Moran says, ‘the single best piece of advice you can give is “launch it when your audience are awake”. It sounds ridiculous, but you would be amazed by the number of news organisations, including us still, which launch things at midnight, as a hangover from a legacy/print experience.’ Other interviewees highlight the Guardian as an inspiration for an approach to analytics that combines (1) Ophan as a user-friendly tool accessible to all (and a wider range of more complex tools available behind it), (2) an audience team organisationally anchored in the newsroom and able to help their colleagues, and (3) a ‘culture of data’ where individual journalists and editors beyond the audience team make use of analytics as part of their editorial decisions and where everyone is at least in principle open to experimentation and evaluation.

2.2. The Financial Times’ Rules of Engagement

In March 2015, the Financial Times hired Renée Kaplan, former chief content officer at Havas WorldWide and previously Editorial Director for France 24 and producer at CNN, for a newly created role as Head of Audience Engagement. Since then, Kaplan has been putting together a team and developing a strategy for moving the Financial Times from ‘digital first’ to what she calls ‘audience first’. In Kaplan’s view audience engagement is about building a relationship with readers: ‘Audience engagement is about getting our journalism out in front of more audiences, and more of the right audiences.’ [8. Discussed during an event at the BBc in Nov. 2015.] The stress on ‘right’ audiences underlines the link between the Financial Times’ target (elite) audience and its subscription-based business model which means its goals are somewhat different from the Guardian’s aim of building a large global audience around free advertising-funded content. The Financial Times’ audience engagement strategy has as its basic aim growing the reach and impact of FT journalism, driving quality traffic to the website, and growing engagement on and offsite. This traffic, in turn, can potentially be converted into FT subscribers. the aim is to achieve this by transforming the newsroom and the reporters into audience-first journalists, changing the way journalism is produced and distributed to integrate engagement objectives into the commissioning and production process. A clear early example of this is the decision – before Kaplan’s arrival – to change the workflow at the FT from being dictated by older print habits, where stories were filed late in the evening, to being designed around audience behaviour, where stories are filed at times of peak traffic to the FT website and app, in the morning, around lunch, and early in the evening (discussed in Newman et al. 2015). To do this Kaplan is working to ensure collaboration across different parts of the FT, and is bringing new skills into the newsroom. Her team is about ten people and still growing. The roles are quite diverse, including both journalist and non-journalist roles. They include a social media team, with editors in London and New york; engagement editors; a data analyst; a marketing manager, who co-ordinates with the other commercial parts of the FT organisation to grow the impact of the promotional efforts; an SEO expert; and an engagement strategist, who helps structure all the projects with relevant metrics; a digital editor focused on producing bespoke content specifically for social. The team helps co-ordinate strategies across the organisation, aligning the shared objectives of the newsroom with the commercial parts of the business. The shared goal is to grow the impact of FT journalism and the title’s ability to engage its target audience, and the team underpins the newsroom’s general recent move to invest a bit less in producing content, and a great deal more in expanding its editorially led efforts to ensure that FT content finds an audience across multiple channels and platforms including the print paper, the website, the app, newsletters, and social media. To facilitate the understanding and the awareness in the newsroom of metrics and performances, the organisation is developing a new bespoke dashboard, called Lantern, a name picked for a tool that is meant to be ‘illuminating’ and user-friendly for journalists. It translates performance into measures that are meaningful to journalists and editors, moving away from the dominance of pageviews, and towards newer integrated metrics of engagement that take into account things like time spent, recirculation, volume of articles read per visit, and number of comments. The Financial Times has been highlighted as a leading example of analytics in the newsroom for years already, and yet Kaplan and her colleagues are very explicit about the challenges ahead. These include defining engagement metrics for different content types, finding ways of measuring softer elements such as the quality of experience and brand perception, as well as understanding behaviour on third-party platforms. Speaking at an event in Paris in December 2015, Kaplan underlined the challenges associated with understanding the different audiences the same brand may draw across different platforms, for example, across a website, a mobile app, and social platforms like Facebook and twitter. Each channel may require both a different editorial approach and a different approach to analytics. As with the Guardian, the Financial Times is working to combine (1) a user-friendly dashboard for journalists with more complex back-end analytics, (2) an audience engagement team based in the newsroom itself, and (3) a culture of data where everyone has access to data and can use it to make editorial decisions. It is also clear that the particular objectives defined at the FT, and the approach to analytics that Kaplan and her colleagues are developing, are tailored to the title’s particular editorial priorities as well as a business model based on subscriptions rather than advertising.

2.3. Scaling Up: Audience Engagement at BBC News

The BBC is another example of a high-profile UK-based news organisation that has recently made serious efforts to build an audience development team and give data and analytics a more central role in the online newsroom. The multidisciplinary team, established within the last year and headed by Elinor Shields, includes people from different backgrounds. Serving a large newsroom and the entire BBc World Service across 28 different language services, the team – of five people – is trying to support a complex and vast news operation. As Shields and Technical Lead Jeremy Tarling explained, the BBC aims to combine very practical and tactical approaches to day-to-day audience optimisation with a more strategic goal of putting data-led decision-making into the heart of an editorial culture of a very large media organisation deeply rooted in broadcast journalism. Through training and coaching, the team aims to drive culture change and empower BBC journalists to be able to look at the insights that come from dashboards and data, and take actions based on that. On a daily basis this is done by assisting the editorial team, whether by sharing insights during the morning editorial meeting, or via their inhouse tools for audience engagement, or through a playbook of actions and benchmarking that helps journalists understand the meaning of data and evaluate performance. Alongside this, the team focuses on growth experiments and deep dives dedicated to examining specific challenges over an extended period of time. Off the back of that they make editorial and workflow recommendations to senior editors and managers. Last, but not least, the team is developing tools and dashboards to support the newsroom in this process of change. (At this stage, the BBC does not have a bespoke dashboard for journalists like Ophan or Lantern, but is working on one. Members of the analytics team use chartbeat and a range of other third-party and bespoke tools and share data with colleagues around specific issues. Chartbeat data are also displayed on a screen in the newsroom.) Elinor Shields says: The idea is that the first wave is around culture change, so giving [journalists] the tools to understand what to do, and giving them incentives to want to do it. And then, the second stage is around helping to drive performance through those growth experiments and from deeper insights. [9. Elinor Shields, BBc News, interviewed by Federica Cherubini, 18 Nov. 2015.] Especially for a news organisation with the scale, complexity, and public service obligations of the BBC, empowering journalists to be able to act on the data, rather than just delivering them a bunch of numbers on a dashboard, is a crucial and challenging step. Working in an organisation that aims to reach a wide variety of different audiences across many platforms, issues, and countries, Shields and her colleagues are very conscious of the importance of providing targeted insights and tools rather than generic recommendations for the whole organisation. The audience engagement team at the BBC is multidisciplinary, like that at the FT. Shields explains that data-scientists bring analytical skills to the very wide range of activities of the BBC to help with analysis and benchmarks. Other technical specialists work on visualisations and dashboards for journalists to make these more user-friendly and actionable. Having people with an editorial background as part of the team is crucial as they can translate the data and analysis into more actionable insights on the basis of their editorial expertise and understanding of the BBC News organisation. ‘In my experience, data-scientists are only as good as the people who are working alongside them, in as much as a data-scientist needs to know what questions to ask of the data’, Tarling says. [10. Jeremy Tarling, BBc News, interviewed by Federica Cherubini, 18 Nov. 2015.] The BBC is still working on developing more tools for easy access to data for journalists across the BBC Newsroom, but the audience engagement team is an investment in a wide range of different forms of analytics expertise organisationally anchored in the newsroom itself, and the team is working to change the overall culture of BBC News Online to be more data-informed. The BBC team is still looking at inspiration from other players, including both private legacy media as well as digital media companies, but has a more developed approach to analytics than any of the other public service broadcasters we have researched for this report.

2.4. The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post has been a pioneer in integrating audience data in editorial decision-making from the start. It is also an important example of how leading practitioners of editorial analytics are working continuously to develop and refine their approach. Analytics that worked well in 2010 are no longer necessarily fit for purpose in 2015. Jack Riley is Director of Commercial and Audience Development at the Huffington Post UK and leads a team of data experts and product analysts who sit between editorial, product, and commercial, helping to optimise the daily output. Riley’s role is indicative of the integration between editorial, commercial, and technological forms of expertise common to many innovative digital news organisations today (Küng 2015). At the Huffington Post UK every journalist in the newsroom has access to the analytics through a personalised Omniture dashboard, which includes all kind of metrics, from the more traditional ones like visits, pageviews, and unique visitors, to more complicated ones, like which pages gets over, or below, a certain threshold, referrals from specific sources, video data, and how many articles each journalist has written. [caption id="attachment_3791" align="aligncenter" width="1551"] Figure 2.2. Slide from the presentation by Jimmy Maymann, President, Content and Consumer Brands, AOL and former CEO, Huffington Post, at the Reuters Institute Memorial Lecture 2015 (23 Nov. 2015). As with the Guardian and the Financial times, the Huffington Post is working very consciously to tailor its publication schedule around audience behaviour and to promote content also after first publication.[/caption] Riley says: What I think we’re finding at the moment as most effective is a combination of real-time data – which is interesting on a daily level – and periodic deeper dives into specific subjects. [11. Jack Riley, Huffington Post, interviewed by Federica Cherubini, 9 Nov. 2015.] Riley underlines that topic-based, in-depth analysis helps in connecting with the journalists who are often interested in comparing the performance of different subjects they write about. In his view, an ideal analytical approach involves a combination of thinking around the data done by the journalists themselves, plus more complex insights delivered by the audience team. These are different combinations of editorial and analytic expertise. Data, Riley highlighted, play an important role in the newsroom, both in terms of daily coverage and long-term planning. ‘If there is something that does well, you’re reminded of it every time you see it coming up in real-time. So you know it’s worth investing time in a longer project.’ The Huffington Post uses an array of different tools. Alongside a customised version of Chartbeat, it employs tools that focus on things like click and module tracking and A/B testing (real-time split testing where an article is posted in two or more different versions with different headlines, pictures, etc., and performance is compared across a random sample of visitors for a period of time, with the best performing version then used). It also employs a personalised recommendation service called Gravity, bought by AOL in 2014, which provides analytics on recirculation, and interestgraphs for individual users. All of these tools help the Huffington Post pursue editorial priorities and organisational imperatives (an advertising-based business model) that are different from those of, for example, the Financial Times or the BBC. Targets and benchmarking play an important role at the Huffington Post. Monthly and daily targets are arranged at a vertical, device, and referral level; and the Omniture dashboard shows the performance of different days against the target, and how journalists are performing relative to their overall target. Targets help in providing orientation, Riley explained, as otherwise it’s difficult to know if things are working or not. However, they are applied in a pretty relaxed way, as it’s not that important if a journalist misses a target as long as they are able to understand why. As he says, ‘Sometimes, it’s also the target that could be wrong.’ Riley continues: In my experience it is better to have something and then be smart in how you actually apply it, than not to have anything and then struggle to benchmark things.

2.5. Editorial, Generic, and Rudimentary Analytics

So far, we have discussed four cases in some detail that other interviewees have frequently highlighted as examples of best practice of newsroom use of analytics. These cases are all very different, tailored to various degrees to specific goals and shaped by different legacies. But they also have three things in common that distinguish what we call editorial analytics from more generic and rudimentary forms of analytics. The three things are

an alignment between analytics and the editorial priorities and organisational imperatives (whether commercial, non-profit, or public service) of specific news organisations;
analytics used to inform both short-term day-to-day decisions and longer term strategic development; and
analytics continually evolving to keep pace with a changing media environment.

If we place editorial analytics at one end of a continuum (see Figure 2.3), we have at the other end rudimentary analytics (common especially amongst smaller legacy media and continental European public service broadcasters) involving advertising-oriented metrics and off-the-shelf tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights but little in terms of a clear organisational structure or a culture of data, no systematic link to decision-making, and few attempts to update analytics to an evolving environment. In the middle, generic analytics (the status of the majority of the organisations we have talked to) involve a wider range of off-the-shelf tools, some of whom are specifically developed for news (like Chartbeat, Parse.ly, and/or NewsWhip), but have a weak organisational anchor and little newsroom culture around analytics; data are used more for shortterm optimisation than to underpin longer term editorial and organisational priorities. [caption id="attachment_3793" align="aligncenter" width="2605"] Figure 2.3. A continuum of forms of analytics used in newsrooms.[/caption]

2.6 How is Continental Europe Doing?

All the organisations discussed above are from the UK and the US. They are frequently mentioned by our other interviewees as examples of best practice and can serve to illustrate a range of different kinds of editorial analytics. that does not mean that only UK and US news organisations have developed beyond rudimentary and generic analytics. Across the four other countries covered by the bulk of our interviews – France, Germany, Italy, and Poland – digital market leaders frequently have similarly tailored approaches, though they often still see themselves as falling behind international best practice, and frequently still look to the UK and the US for inspiration. Leading players like Die Welt in Germany and ONet in Poland have more in common with market leaders in English-speaking countries than they have with some of their domestic competitors. Start-ups like Ze.tt (from germany), De correspondent (in the Netherlands), and Denník N (from Slovakia) have all been thinking from day one about how analytics can underpin their editorial mission, help them connect with their audience, and develop their business model. Ze.tt is a new spin-off project from the publisher of the German newspaper Die Zeit and its digital arm Zeit Online. It launched in beta in July 2015 and is aimed at a younger audience. It is just one of many examples of how unthinkable it is to launch a new news project today without having analytics at the core of the editorial operation. Project lead Sebastian Horn explained how Ze.tt uses analytics mainly for two areas: for the website and for social platforms. ‘We follow them both very closely’, Horn said. ‘We run tests and we try to figure out what works particularly well; we do A/B testing. We’re literally just starting out so we’re experimenting.’ [12. Sebastian Horn, Ze.tt, interviewed by Federica Cherubini, 12 Nov. 2015.] He continues: Because we’re such a small team everyone has access to everything, but I try to make sure that people know how to interpret them correctly. It doesn’t help if you have tons of data coming in, if you don’t know what you’re looking at, what that means or what success is for your newsroom. For a newly born website like Ze.tt is very important not only to grow audience scale and reach, but also to track if they are building a loyal audience. Horn explains that part of doing this involves being very selective about which data are made available to journalists and constantly evaluating what helps them and what does not. Part of the reason why Ze.tt was created was to experiment so we’re also going to experiment with different data tools. We’re going to give them a try and see if they give us useful information. However, we don’t want to overwhelm ourselves with too much. We don’t want to cover our walls with monitors that show random graphs. They will have to be meaningful numbers that people look at and help them make decisions. De Correspondent is an online-only journalism platform, launched in the Netherlands in 2013, that broke all the crowd-funding records by managing to raise over €1 million by getting ‘15,000 people to pledge €60 for a one-year subscription to a news site that didn’t yet exist’.[13. http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/04/a-dutch-crowdfunded-news-site-has-raised-1-3-million-and-hopes-for-a-digital-native-journalism/] With now over 40,000 paid subscribers, [14. 40,000 members for a Dutch-language medium in the Netherlands, a country with a population of 17 million, is comparable to having 750,000 subscribers in the US, https://medium.com/de-correspondent/dutch-journalismplatform- the-correspondent-reaches-milestone-of-40-000-paying-members-a203251c2de2#.rh4duaycq] De Correspondent is entirely funded by members and it’s completely ad-free. ‘the most important metric we look at is the number of new members’, publisher and co-founder Ernst-Jan Pfauth explained. [15. Ernst-Jan Pfauth, De correspondent, interviewed by Federica Cherubini, 8 Dec. 2015.] At De Correspondent they look at pageviews more from fascination, than as an actionable metric. Numbers like the amount of people signing up for the free newsletter and the conversion rate to subscriptions play a far more central role. The data are important to sustain the viability of the business model but also as a validation of editorial intuitions. ‘We always use the data to validate ideas we come up with, but never the other way around’, Pfauth said. But market leaders and start-ups aside, it is clear that many continental European news organisations are still lagging behind when it comes to analytics. Off-the-shelf tools are quite widespread, most importantly web analytics tools like Omniture and Google Analytics, social media tools like Facebook Insight, and newer tools developed for editorial purposes, like Chartbeat, Parse.ly, and NewsWhip. (Other tools in use include LinkPulse, Webtrekk, At Internet, and EzyInsights.) But what kinds of data and tools are used, how the work is organised, and how clearly and consistently it is linked to primary editorial and organisational objectives vary significantly. There is no point in identifying individual organisations as falling short of best practice. Most do, also in the US and the UK (see e.g. Hindman 2015). Many newsrooms have data and analytics, without having any clear organisational structure or newsroom culture for using them, or even clearly articulated strategic objectives for their use. this is what Stijn Debrouwere has called ‘cargo cult analytics’, a very rudimentary approach where news organisations have adopted some off-theshelf tools for providing audience data, but have done little to develop a systematic approach to making use of them. [16. http://debrouwere.org/2013/08/26/cargo-cult-analytics] As Debrouwere writes: There’s nothing like a dashboard full of data and graphs and trend lines to make us feel like grownups. Like people who know what they’re doing. So even though we’re not getting any real use out of it, it’s addictive and we can’t stop doing it. Several interviewees highlight the problem themselves (anonymised): To be honest with you, audience development was a very new term for me. … It’s something that happened organically. It wasn’t the top management who decided that we should use specific tools, or we should have specific parts of the newsroom dedicated to this. It’s more like people coming to the company within the flow. An interviewee from a major continental European newspaper admits: We have Chartbeat and it is used mainly by those who work on the homepage, with video content, or on the visual desk. We have a big monitor in the newsroom that shows the editorial dashboard and we have it on a screen during the morning meeting. But in reality we use it in a very basic, superficial way, and absolutely not to its full potential. One interviewee from a major continental public service broadcaster says: We have an analytics department here. But they are in an old world. They are counting TV viewers and radio listeners. … Journalists get a newsletter and a monthly review of what happened on Facebook and Twitter. That’s it. On the basis of our interviews, we would suggest that these variations in how analytics are used are more organisational than they are national. In most countries, digital market leaders and new start-ups use a wide range of analytics to support and continually develop their editorial and organisational goals. Legacy media, especially smaller newspapers and public service media, often lag behind international best practice. Leading English-language organisations are ahead in part because of the pressures and opportunities that come with competing for a global audience, in part because innovations in tools and techniques disseminate faster in English-language work environments – at a very basic level, the bulk of the terminology and much of the technology that underpins analytics is in English, and developed and marketed in the US and the UK first. In terms of the evolution of how data and metrics are used in newsrooms, our interviews suggest that, with a few significant exceptions, most continental European newsrooms have adopted editorial analytics in a more incremental and bottom-up manner as various online editors pick up new skills in the course of doing their jobs and less as a result of a strategic decision taken at the top of the organisation. A role, let alone a whole team, fully dedicated to audience development, is not common across continental Europe. Audience development is done, but frequently on the side by people with many other responsibilities. this rarely leads to best practice. Many seem stuck at the level of rudimentary or generic analytics (which is the case in most US and UK newsrooms too). With the partial exception of the german media conglomerate Axel Springer, highlighted by many vendors as a sophisticated operation, we have not come across cases on the continent like the New York Times, the BBC, or the Financial Times where a major, legacy media organisation has clearly recognised it was falling behind in terms of best practice compared to competitors and international standards, and set about to address the problem.

3. Tools, Organisation, and Culture: Developing Analytics Capability

As noted from the outset, analytics are about technology and data, but not only about technology and data. What sets best-practice examples of editorial analytics apart from more generic and rudimentary approaches is that these organisations have developed combinations of tools, organisational structure, and newsroom culture that supplement each other in ways tailored to the particular news organisation’s specific goals. News outlets interested in assessing their own analytics capability can think of tools, organisation, and culture as dimensions of a capability assessment triangle (similar to the tool sometimes used to assess employees, see figure 3.1). [caption id="attachment_3799" align="aligncenter" width="1390"] Figure 3.1. Analytics capability assessment triangle.[/caption] Tools concerns whether an organisation uses the best-available technological means, includin sources of data, software, and interfaces, whether in-house tailored tools or generic off-the-shelf products. Organisation concerns whether the newsroom has a clearly structured approach to using analytics, where specific individuals (in larger organisations dedicated teams) are responsible for helping the whole newsroom and have the expertise to do so. Culture concerns whether the newsroom as a whole, including both senior editors and rank-and-file journalists, is routinely and willingly using analytics and data as part of their editorial decision-making. the area covered by the triangle represents an organisation’s overall analytic capability. the benchmarks for each dimension will evolve over time as a changing media environment calls for new tools, new forms of expertise, and new ways of linking analytics with everyday and longer term editorial decision-making. The triangle draws attention to how all three components are distinct and necessary parts of developing analytics capability in the newsroom. tools, organisation, and culture cannot substitute directly for each other and only work together. A newsroom can have the best-available tools and a strong analytics team with a clear position in the newsroom organisation, but without a culture of data use, it will fail to realise its full potential. Similarly, a newsroom can have good tools and a culture of data, but no in-house analytics expertise, and will thus struggle to do in-depth analysis and use analytics systematically, especially for longer term planning. The three types of analytics discussed above, editorial, generic, and rudimentary, can be illustrated using the triangle (Figure 3.2). [caption id="attachment_3801" align="aligncenter" width="1617"] Figure 3.2. Analytics capability of organisations with editorial, generic, and rudimentary analytics and different levels of development in terms of tools, organisation, and culture.[/caption] What sets best-practice examples of editorial analytics apart from others is as much about their organisation and their newsroom culture as about their tools. A tailored tool like Ophan gives the Guardian an advantage over competitors. But generic tools – both general ones like ComScore and newsroom-oriented ones like Chartbeat – are becoming more powerful. The question is thus not only what tools, but also what kind of organisation and culture a newsroom needs to make the best use of analytics. News organisations aiming to improve their analytics capability ignore these issues at their peril. As more user-friendly tools developed expressly for editorial use, like Chartbeat, Parse.ly, and NewsWhip, become more common and more powerful, people can be the hardest part of developing analytics capability. In this section, we go through each of these three dimensions of tools, organisation, and culture.

3.1 Tools

The first and most evident sign of the rise of analytics in newsrooms around the world is the spread of tools to track audiences. the image of big screens on walls showing real-time figures of pageviews, unique users, and average time spent on site is increasingly common. In a recent survey of editors, news media CEOs, and digital leaders primarily from Europe the most mentioned tools used by newsrooms are Chartbeat, NewsWhip, and Parse.ly. Interestingly though, a high number – 45% – indicated they use a home-grown system, mostly in addition to other tools. [caption id="attachment_3802" align="aligncenter" width="1592"] Figure 3.3. Use of analytics in newsrooms. (Source: Reuters Institute Digital Leaders Survey 2016; n=123).[/caption] Off-the-shelf tools include Omniture (Adobe Analytics), ComScore DAX (Digital Analytics), and Google Analytics, as well as more local vendors, tools that serve far wider constituencies well beyond the news industry in e-commerce and corporate communications. They, like newer tools such as Facebook Insight and twitter Analytics, are examples of generic tools that many newsrooms appropriate for editorial purposes. Newer additions are chartbeat, Parse.ly, and NewsWhip, all developed at least in part with editorial priorities and news media’s organisational imperatives in mind. (there are many others, like EzyInsights, which is gaining traction in Germany and the Nordic countries as an alternative to NewsWhip.) We will briefly outline just three of the most well-known off-the-shelf tools developed for use in newsrooms: chartbeat, Parse.ly and NewsWhip.

CHARTBEAT

Chartbeat is most known for its real-time analytics that focus on audience attention. Its dashboard informs the way the homepage is structured, helping to sharpen headlines and the formats of articles. Based on the numbers, homepage editors can modify the structure of the page in realtime, leveraging the learning from the real-time reactions of readers by optimising the user experience. Chartbeat has recently introduced opportunities for various forms of A/B testing. When rolled out across large volumes of content this can make a significant difference to overall traffic, especially on sites with many visitors. [caption id="attachment_3803" align="aligncenter" width="1840"] Figure 3.4. Chartbeat dashboard showing real-time traffic data from gizmodo.com (screenshot taken on 20 Jan. 2016). Notice e.g. the inclusion of a recirculation rate for how many users go from one piece of content on the site to another rather than just leave.[/caption]

PARSE.LY

Similarly, Parse.ly tracks real-time data, as well as data from published articles to help identify topics audiences have responded well to in the past. The dashboard also allows newsrooms to track and better understand users’ behaviour and discover the journey they make through the content, where readers are coming from, and where they’re headed next, through what device, and when they are reading it. Parse.ly’s tools are developed for editorial, product teams, data analysts, and sponsored content. [caption id="attachment_3804" align="aligncenter" width="1826"] Figure 3.5. Parse.ly dashboard showing the average traffic by day of week and time of day. Like Chartbeat, the figures are aggregated but can be split by device.[/caption]

NEWSWHIP

NewsWhip tracks social media signals, through indicators like tweets, shares, and comments. It offers tools like ‘Spike’ and ‘Analytics’. Spike is a content discovery dashboard used by breaking newsrooms to stay on top of the trending content. It is commonly used by social media editors, breaking news, and trending stories desks. It is a real-time tool that allows newsrooms to hone in on what their audience is talking about on social media over different time periods and use this to think about their own output. [caption id="attachment_3805" align="aligncenter" width="1949"] Figure 3.6. NewsWhip: a view of a predefined panel of news publishers, showing their most popular stories on social media over the last 12 hours (screenshot taken on 19 Jan. 2016). NewsWhip can help newsrooms understand what people are reading on social media.[/caption] Most news organisations use several of these tools or others like them, as well as wider generic analytics tools like Omniture, Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Twitter Analytics. Many also supplement them with their own home-grown analytics tools. As mentioned earlier, the Guardian’s Ophan is regularly cited as an inspiration, but other organisations are developing their own tailored dashboards and tools. From continental Europe an interesting example of a tailor-built in-house tool comes from the German newspaper Die Welt, owned by the Axel Springer media group. As part of the move towards more data-informed decision-making in the newsroom, Die Welt has developed a tool to calculate and communicate an ‘article score’ for all articles published. The system is designed to help journalists and editors in a simple and user-friendly way by aggregating data from different analytics tools including Chartbeat. It provides a single score for how each article published has performed. The score goes from 0 to 30 points and can be broken down in five constituent elements: page impressions, time spent on the article, video views, social shares, and bouncing rate. The traffic element can give an article between 0 and 10 points, the four other elements between 0 and 5 points each. The different elements are chosen to reflect Die Welt’s overall priorities, for example, not only high traffic, but also engagement and various forms of multimedia and social use. [caption id="attachment_3806" align="aligncenter" width="1849"] Figure 3.7. Die Welt’s article score: a comparison between scores of different articles, identified by topic. High performance is marked green, low performance marked red.[/caption] The article score is Die Welt’s attempt at creating a system that gives people in the newsroom simple and clear indications of how their articles are performing while promoting quality content rather than simply click-bait. the scores are featured in a daily email sent by the editor-in-chief to the whole newsroom. The system is designed to help journalists understand how their content performed and where there is room for improvement. ‘What went right or wrong with my article? Did I include a video that nobody watched, did they find the article useful and interesting enough to share it?’: the article score helps journalists find answers to all these questions, Kritsanarat Khunkham, managing editor at Die Welt, explains. [17. Kritsanarat Khunkham, Die Welt, interviewed by Federica cherubini, 12 Nov. 2015.] The development of the article score is part of a strategic process that focuses on making sure that Die Welt produces quality content that readers will find compelling enough not simply to click on and glance at, but actually to spend time with, perhaps share, maybe even pay for. It is a clear example of how Die Welt – and Springer more widely – is developing forms of editorial analytics that are aligned with the specific editorial goals (quality content) and business model (metered paywall) of a specific organisation. A tabloid like Bild (also a Springer title), with a greater emphasis on advertising, high volumes of traffic, and a freemium pay model rather than metered paywall, calls for a different approach. Developing tools to underpin an organisation’s analytics capability is about making sure that the newsroom has the right combination in place – including both simpler and more user-friendly tools like the Guardian’s Ophan and Die Welt’s article score aimed at helping the newsroom at large as well as more specialised tools, often both in-house and general tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and editorial tools like Chartbeat, Parse.ly, and NewsWhip, for more in-depth and detailed analysis.

3.2. Organisation

In all the best-practice cases discussed above – the Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, and Huffington Post – analytics are rooted in the newsroom (even if the teams involved often include people with non-journalistic backgrounds and draw on resources from other parts of the organisation). It is worth discussing two other examples of how analytics are actually organised to show how both large (the Wall Street Journal) and smaller (Quartz) organisations are integrating specialised expertise in their editorial operations for both day-to-day decision-making and longer term planning. Carla Zanoni has the title Executive Emerging Media Editor and heads up the Wall Street Journal’s audience team, which operates globally out of New York, Hong Kong, and London. Her approach shows how analytics can support both day-to-day work and longer term editorial strategy. Zanoni’s team is organised around four different legs: audience engagement, audience development, newsroom analytics, and emerging platforms. All have different responsibilities, but are similar in that they are based on a combination of editorial expertise and quantitative data analysis. The audience engagement part of the team is made up of a group of audience engagement editors (who used to be called social media editors). [18. Carla Zanoni, Wall Street Journal, interviewed by Federica Cherubini, 16 Dec. 2015.] The team is looking at using different tools throughout the newsroom to inform how the Wall Street Journal engages with its audience, whether this happens on social media or on messaging apps or through blogs and more traditional stories. The audience development part of the team has a more strategic role, focusing on thinking through where different opportunities to reach the audience might lie. Some of the daily role is involved in partnerships and something I call ‘digital hygiene’: just thinking through SEO [search engine optimisation] and story-flow and making sure that we’re publishing stories at the right time, capturing the best audience that is suited for that story. The newsroom analytics part of the team is the newest addition, and includes data-scientists as well as people with an editorial background. they look at how stories and different sections are performing, and test hypotheses about what might improve performance. In the past a lot of these kinds of experiments and hypotheses went untested; now we’re actually looking at [figuring out if] our beliefs [are] rooted in facts or if they are just a kind of newsroom myth. Zanoni describes the fourth part of the team, emerging platforms, as more of a ‘creating desk’, concretely working on producing content for new, emerging platforms, whether that is an internal platform, a new app the WSJ is launching, or a third-party platform. She stressed how the four legs are deeply interconnected and are built to share learning across the team. Everyone on the audience team has a journalistic background and they work with the other journalists in the newsroom from the story-concept and inception, to promotion, and to resurface it after it has been published. So far the conversation around data and analytics has predominantly involved editors, but it is moving towards including reporters in the discussion. The audience team plays an important role in making sure that everyone in the newsroom understands the data and learns how to build a narrative from the numbers, instead of just handing reporters a bunch of metrics and statistics. Zanoni stresses that: It’s really important to give them the right context, so that they can create that narrative, and through building that narrative, once we’re all on the same page, we then all know that there are certain levers that we can pull and there are levers that we would like to be able to pull. More recent and much smaller start-ups are also working systematically with analytics as part of their editorial operation. One example is Quartz, where the audience team and especially the so called ‘growth editors’ have been integral to the project from the beginning. Part of the answer to the question behind the launch of Quartz – what would The Economist look like if it had been founded in 2012? – is that it would involve data-informed editorial decision-making. Marta Cooper, Deputy Growth Editor at Quartz in London, explains: Our role is to help Quartz expand its audience through an editorially focused growth strategy, by which I mean we’re not a separate audience development team but we work in tandem with the editorial team. We support the news team in multiple regions to make sure the stories they write find an audience using editorial strategies: this involves running the Quartz social media accounts, workshopping resonant headlines and angles of stories with reporters, and tracking emerging stories across social media platforms. [19. Marta Cooper, email exchange, 14 Dec. 2015.] Cooper is part of a four-people growth team that includes a director of growth and two other deputy editors, one of whom focuses on the US and Asia and one who focuses on partnerships. In a global editorial staff of about 80 people, this is a significant commitment from Quartz. For a newsroom with 500 journalists, a proportional commitment would be 25 people on the audience development team, more than twice the size of Kaplan’s team at the Financial Times. At Quartz, Cooper explains, all journalists have access to the analytics platforms, specially Parse.ly, Chartbeat, and Omniture, plus insights from Facebook and Twitter. We receive daily emails with a snapshot of global traffic and that of our specific regions for both the previous day and month. There’s a number of metrics we’ll take into consideration, including unique visitors and pageviews, but we’re also aware of social shares and other data as well. Growth editors are specialists with insights in analytics who work very closely with individual reporters. Cooper explains: Success comes in different forms besides us reaching our traffic goals. For instance, if a reporter and I spend time going through their story and why they find it compelling and we eventually come up with a strong headline. That to me is a successful process. The Wall Street Journal and Quartz are both organisations that, like other examples of bestpractice editorial analytics, have teams in place that help with both short-term day-to-day decision-making and longer term editorial strategy development. In both cases, their approach is tailored to the business model in question, subscription and an emphasis on engagement for the Wall Street Journal, native advertising and a search for greater reach via platforms at Quartz. Many other newsrooms have a far less clearly defined approach to analytics. In many cases, analytics are organised in ways that reflect inherited workflows and the incremental accumulation of new tools and techniques over time more than any thought-through approach. Real-time analysis may be carried out by a homepage editor, social media insights are monitored by a social research department and not in the newsroom. Search engine optimisation is sometimes streamlined across the whole online newsroom, sometimes the province of a SEO editor, sometimes an afterthought. Developing an organisational structure to support analytics capability is about ensuring that someone in the newsroom – in some case individuals, in most cases teams – has primary responsibility for data, that these people have access to the information and tools they need, that they have the expertise needed to make use of them, and that their relations to the rest of the newsroom are clear.

3.3. Culture

Having all journalists understand the strengths and weaknesses of data and how they can inform editorial decision-making is a crucial part of an organisation’s overall analytics capability. If you just give people a bunch of numbers, they are likely either to ignore them or to use them to justify conclusions they would have arrived at without the data. The Guardian’s audience editor Chris Moran says: First of all, give [journalists] lots and lots of data but choose it carefully. It’s not just about the amount of data that you deliver; it’s also about the culture that you build around that data. People have to understand what you’re talking about: you have to have an open, honest and transparent conversation about quality and promotion at the same time. [20. Speaking in Paris at the Sciences Po’ Journalism School conference in Dec. 2015.] Many of the audience editors interviewed for this report highlighted the development of a culture of data in the newsroom as one of the most important parts of their job. Based on our interviews, it seems the general response from journalists to analytics has in most cases shifted from resistance to curiosity and interest. this is in contrast to earlier research, which suggested many newsrooms have resisted the introduction of analytics (see e.g. christin 2014; Petre 2015; Zamith 2015). (It is worth mentioning that the interviews have been conducted predominantly amongst those in newsrooms who are active promoters of the use of data and who work primarily with online/digital journalists rather than print or broadcast newsrooms.) What emerges from our interviews is not resistance, but the challenge of helping journalists achieve a real understanding of what the data mean and how to act on this. The primary issue is explaining what they are looking at, why those metrics are important, and how this affects their work. Elinor Shields, Head of Audience Engagement, BBC News, says: I think now the issue is much more about demystifying data and giving people ways of understanding how it will change what they do in a practical way and how it can add value to what we do. Her colleague Jeremy Tarling explains further that the crucial point is acting on the data, not just providing people with dashboards. When a dashboard shows a journalist that the average engaged time on an article was only 5 seconds, what does that mean and what can he/she do about it? WSJ’s Carla Zanoni echoes this sentiment: They [the journalists] are so hungry for data. I worried when I came [to the Wall Street Journal] that my role would have been more evangelical in some way, but that could not have been further from the truth. They are extremely hungry for data, they want tools to be able to measure in real-time whether they are doing the right thing. If anything, I think that the biggest hurdle has been making sure that we are able to provide them with the kind of context and actions for them to be able to do something with the data. In many newsrooms, a monitoring of performances and achievements is indeed happening, often in the form of periodical or even daily emails, but these numbers rarely inform editorial decision making. They are numbers without meaning and without consequences. Short-term day-to-day optimisation of articles on the homepage and posts on social media are not uncommon, but there is less longer-term strategic use of data to shape editorial priorities and underpin organisational objectives. When this occurs, it often stays within the team handling the job (often not in the newsroom) and is not spread across departments and the whole newsroom. The kind of ‘democratisation of data’ associated with open and user-friendly dashboards like Ophan or clearly communicated metrics like Die Welt’s article score are rarely found in organisations with a more generic or rudimentary approach to analytics. Clémence Lemaistre, Editor-in-chief for Digital content at the French paper Les Echos, explains: There is a strong awareness on the online desks of the importance of looking at the data. This doesn’t always mean they are doing it perfectly, but they are not recalcitrant. It’s much more a question of understanding rather than obstruction. [21. Clémence Lemaistre, Les Echos, interviewed by Federica Cherubini, 25 Nov. 2015.] Huffington Post UK’s Jack Riley admits it is sometimes easy for journalists to fall back onto the dichotomy that sees audience targets directly opposed to the journalistic value, where the most popular things are those that have the least journalistic value. ‘I don’t think that’s a useful way of thinking about it. If you’re writing something you’re really proud of … and no one reads it, [it means that] that is actually not having any impact at all.’ It’s important, Riley says, to reconcile the two concepts and make sure that the content journalists are most proud of also reaches the widest possible audience. The overarching ambition of all the best-practice cases discussed in this report is to supplement editorial judgement with quantitative analysis of relevant audience data. the goal – to use a mantra repeated in many of our interviews – is to be data-informed, not to be data-driven. [22. this is in clear contrast to an earlier period where analytics were clearly cast as standing in contrast to journalistic professionalism (see e.g. Anderson 2011). Editorial analytics are about making analytics part of journalistic professionalism.] The Guardian’s audience editor Chris Moran puts it very clearly: We describe ourselves as data-informed not data-led, and that’s critical to me. I’m obsessed with data in the newsroom, but it shouldn’t be the only thing that is making the decisions: editorial instinct should do that. So in terms of what [journalists] are going to be writing about, broadly speaking, that is going to be dictated just by the news agenda and by the natural instinct of the newsroom. More importantly perhaps, the data can lead us to understand the kind of journalism that people might want, particularly on different platforms. [23. Speaking in Paris at the Sciences Po’ Journalism School conference in Dec. 2015.] For this to work, journalists and editors – and not only dedicated audience teams – need to understand the meaning of the data that they are given and how to act upon it, as Marta Cooper from Quartz underlines: [Audience data] is a central feature of our newsrooms. There is sufficient training for staff on how to make the most out of the analytics tools we use, so it’s easy for them to become part of a journalist’s daily workflow. Developing a ‘culture of data’ in the newsroom to underpin analytics capability is about making sure that journalists and editors who are not part of the audience team are given access to data that are relevant to them, know why – and agree that – these data are relevant for them, and know how to act on it. If data are available but ignored or mostly used to validate decisions already made for other reasons, the culture does not underpin editorial analytics. If data are taken seriously as one of several factors informing decision-making, evaluations of performance, and the development of workflows and new editorial products, the culture does underpin editorial analytics.

4. Metrics, Metrics Everywhere

As is clear from the above, newsrooms have access to and use more and more different kinds of audience data. But some things are harder to define and measure than others, some kinds of data are harder to access than others, and all forms of analytics have to confront problems of data availability, incompatibility between different kinds of metrics, and the limitations involved in using quantitative indicators to understand the messy and diverse realities of how people engage with journalism, why, and what it means. Even the most data-driven technology companies like Facebook and Google are keenly aware that the data never tell the full story and that decisions ultimately always involve qualitative assessments and human judgement. [24. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/cover_story/2016/01/how_facebook_s_news_feed_algorithm_works.html] So too with editorial analytics.

4.1. What do you Want to Measure?

Much depends on what you are interested in measuring, how you measure it, and how good your metrics are. there is, as BuzzFeed founder and data enthusiast Jonah Peretti said in an interview with Felix Salmon, no ‘god metric’ for journalism. [25. https://medium.com/matter/buzzfeeds-jonah-peretti-goes-long-e98cf13160e7#.rnpao5qbv] A news industry that used to obsess over print circulation and broadcast ratings has circled through a quick succession of preferred digital metrics, from clicks, pageviews, and unique users to engaged time. Most news organisations today work with a range of metrics, including both older ones like pageviews and unique users and newer ones like shares. [caption id="attachment_3810" align="aligncenter" width="451"] Box 4.1. A list of some of the most important metrics[/caption] Very simply, the metrics used (unique browsers, time spent) and the underlying phenomenon inferred from them (reach, engagement) define what you see. Analytics teams are looking at audience data and trying to infer people’s behaviour, attitudes, experiences from it. As media researchers like to say: there are no audiences, only ways of seeing people as audiences. [26. the original phrase is from Raymond Williams (1958: 300), who wrote ‘there are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.’] A unique browser is not necessarily the same as a person using content. Time spent on a site is not necessarily the same as an engaged user. They are proxies. The question is then which proxies are most useful and for what. currently, pageviews and unique browsers are falling out of favour, and attention or engagement is seen as the future. One of the most public champions of engagement as a key metric for news has been Tony Haile, CEO and founder of the analytics company chartbeat. In an article in Time magazine in March 2014 he wrote: If you’re an average reader, I’ve got your attention for 15 seconds, so here goes: We are getting a lot wrong about the web these days. We confuse what people have clicked on for what they’ve read. We mistake sharing for reading. We race towards new trends like native advertising without fixing what was wrong with the old ones and make the same mistakes all over again. … The media world is currently in a frenzy about click fraud, they should be even more worried about the large percentage of the audience who aren’t reading what they think they’re reading. [27. http://time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-web-is-wrong] An example of how news organisations have grown increasingly interested in Haile’s idea of an ‘attention web’ is the New York Times. In 2014, they ranked their top articles of 2014 by the number of unique visitors. [28. http://www.nytco.com/the-new-york-timess-most-visited-content-of-2014-2] In 2015, they ranked the top articles by the total combined time readers had spent looking at them. [29. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/09/upshot/top-stories.html]

4.2. Strengths and Weaknesses of Different Metrics

Most of our interviewees push back against the idea that there is one metric on which news organisations should focus. The dominant view is that different metrics have different strengths and weaknesses and are suited to different purposes. It all depends on what you want to understand. One way to think about some currently popular metrics like pageviews and attention is to consider how they map on to a continuum between things that can be relatively precisely defined and measured (like reach) and things that are much harder to define and measure (like impact). (See Figure 4.1.) Even the seemingly simplest metrics, like reach, while more clearly defined and measured today than engagement, loyalty, or impact, is still plagued by inconsistencies. In August 2014, the Huffington Post celebrated reaching 115 million global unique visitors as measured by ComScore while also reporting that their internal number was 368 million global uniques. [30. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/100-million-thank-yous-to-huffposters-around-theworld_b_5822998.html] (Sometimes the things that are currently harder to define and measure are more important, both for editorial and organisational purposes.) [caption id="attachment_3811" align="aligncenter" width="1762"] Figure 4.1. A range of metrics mapped in terms of relative clarity of definitions and measures.[/caption] Different metrics can thus serve different purposes, but some things are currently harder to measure than others. Some will likely always resist quantification. Some sources of data, like sessions, are used in attempts to understand quite different things, like reach versus engagement. Some sources of data, like social media interactions, can be measured very precisely, but can be hard to link to core interests like reach, engagement, loyalty, and impact (what does a ‘like’ or a comment mean?) (graves and Kelly 2010; Ofcom 2014). Current metrics remain much better at capturing traces of (parts of) what people do with digital news content than why or what it means. All the metrics share a set of further challenges, of which the people we interviewed for this report are keenly aware.

In most cases, it is very hard to link users to specific demographics (unless a site requires registration and can verify information entered by registered users).
It is hard to integrate metrics not only across different digital channels (website, app, thirdparty platforms), but also with offline media (print, broadcast, etc.).
the most easily accessible data are precisely audience data, meaning that most news organisations have little information about a) people who do not use their content, including b) competing news organisations’ audience and c) people’s behaviour on platforms like Facebook, twitter, and Snapchat through which they may well encounter an organisation’s journalism.

Chris Moran from the Guardian says: I think the next big challenge for everybody is: How on Earth do you pull this stuff in? So one of the big conversations we’re faced with right now [with platforms like Facebook and Apple News] is ‘Give us the data.’ [31. Interview by Federica cherubini, 19 Nov. 2015.] Sebastian Horn from Ze.tt echoes this: Generally speaking, the big challenge will be how do we measure reach and impact on social and not just on the website. Every platform will give you data and the first question is how can we trust that data, what does that mean for you and how do you compare the data between platforms. Is an impression on Twitter the same as an impression of a Facebook post? How do you compare a Snapchat video with a three minutes YouTube clip? How do you aggregate this, how do you create a ranking, how do you put a monetising number against these values?

4.3. Good Compared to What?

The difficulties of defining goals precisely, measuring them in reliable ways, and capturing or accessing relevant data also mean that benchmarking is difficult. Many news organisations struggle to define what good looks like – especially at the level of individual journalists or pieces of content. this is particularly the case when comparing content often used in very different ways: a video, audio, a quiz, a multimedia piece, graphics, a live blog, or an investigation in traditional article format. All will perform differently depending on what measure you look at. How do you compare the value of their numbers? Numbers need context, underlines Nick Petrie, Deputy Head of Digital of The Times of London and Sunday Times. [32. Nick Petrie, The Times and Sunday Times, interviewed by Federica Cherubini, 29 Oct. 2015.] Just having a number of how many people access a piece of content, without the overall reference of how many people access the whole content section, for example, gives you little insight into how well your article did. ‘If you just give [journalists] a number and say, “Oh, 300 people have read it every day this week.” It’s like, “Well, is it good or bad?”‘, Petrie says. Jeremy Tarling from the BBC makes the same point: ‘It’s not just about providing people with dashboards. It’s the next step, isn’t it? “So, this dashboard’s telling me that my average engage time was only 20 seconds on this article. What do I do?”’ Throughout, the most developed metrics are those that serve as currencies for most digital advertising – clicks, pageviews, and unique users. those that sit between commercial and editorial considerations – like engagement and loyalty – are also relatively developed. those that currently are primarily of editorial interest – like impact – are poorly developed.

4.4. The Link between Analytics, Editorial Priorities, and Organisational Imperatives

The use of analytics in newsrooms is normally aligned with the business model of a given news organisation. Advertising-supported free sites, subscription-based sites with metered or hard paywalls, social media centred organisations emphasising sponsored content, and public service media organisations with more or less secure public funding all use metrics in different ways (Usher 2013). This is an example of how editorial, technological, and commercial/managerial forms of expertise are intertwined in digital news media (Küng 2015). this is a point made very explicitly and unapologetically by many of our interviewees. As Sebastian Horn from the German start-up Ze.tt puts it: Ideally there would be a link between the numbers that are important for the newsroom and those that are important for the business side. If we upload a video directly on Facebook, the important number for the newsroom is how many people we reach. We might have no way to monetise that on Facebook, but we’ve reached a huge audience and from the content side that is very important. But then a business person might tell you ‘what are you doing?!’ I think, generally speaking, that for the industry this is the time when we figure out what the relationship with these platforms looks like and what’s the deal. And how do we reconcile the success of the editorial goal of reaching huge numbers through the platforms with the commercial success of monetising it? Similarly, Renée Kaplan from the Financial Times argues that news organisations need to align their editorial priorities and organisational imperatives like running a sustainable business: The engagement team sits squarely in the newsroom so our objectives aren’t commercial. Nonetheless my job, and every job in the newsroom and the job of every one of our 600 correspondents around the world, depends on the viability of the business model. At the end of the day people have to want to pay for the content otherwise we all go away. So everyone is interested in making sure we reach the greatest number of people who are likely to be affected by our journalism and likely, ultimately, to want to pay for it. Chris Moran from the Guardian echoes the same sentiment. We produce quality journalism. I want that journalism to be widely read and I am not apologetic about that because journalism exists in the context of its audience and because it’s our best way to get new loyal readers as well. [33. Speaking in Paris at the Sciences Po’ Journalism School conference in Dec. 2015.]

4.5. How do you Measure Impact?

The question is whether metrics for impact will be developed as more and more advertisers grow disenchanted with clicks, pageviews, and unique users, which are increasingly seen not only as imprecise proxies for what advertisers want to achieve (move product, burnish their brand), but also as vulnerable to increasingly large-scale fraud and noise from non-human traffic that can be mistaken for actual users. One industry estimate is that as much as 22% of all web traffic is made up of ‘impersonator bots’ designed to look like human users. [34. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-we-still-cant-agree-on-web-metrics/] This has led to greater advertiser interest in alternative metrics, like attention, engagement, or impact. How this will develop is yet to be seen. Historically, as the experience of audited circulation, broadcast ratings, and earlier generations of web metrics suggest, multiple stakeholders including advertisers, media organisations, and regulators normally get involved in the protracted development of shared, agreed-upon ‘audience information systems’. (Journalists have tended to be less involved in these processes, and their considerations less reflected in the metrics developed: Napoli 2011). But so far, work on effective metrics for the impact of journalism is led by non-profits, philanthropists, and public media in the United States. (European public service media have so far been surprisingly absent from this development.) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are founding the ‘Media Impact Center’ at the University of Southern California to create new ways to measure the impact of media. The Knight Foundation has also given $35,000 to NPR (National Public Radio) in order to build Carebot, a tool that aims to measure whether people really cared about content they used. The tool seeks to build on existing metrics like page completion and sharing but also to develop new ones for audience assessment of quality. NPR visual Editor and Project Lead Brian Boyer has explained to the Poynter Institute that Carebot will emphasise a series of metrics that include social engagement (likes, shares, comments), time spent on site, and completion rate, and will aggregate numbers from a variety of sources, including chartbeat, google Analytics, and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. [35. http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/382681/npr-is-building-an-analytics-bot-that-emphasizes-caring-over-clicks] Other US-based non-profits, like the Investigative Reporting Workshop and ProPublica, are also working on metrics for impact. [36. http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/03/how-can-journalists-measure-the-impact-of-their-work-notes-toward-a-model-ofmeasurement] Basically, contemporary forms of analytics are very good at understanding the main ways in which people used digital media in 2010. Homepage traffic, referrals from social and search, and ways to increase pageviews through A/B testing and article placement are well developed. Even the most advanced approaches to editorial analytics, however, still face many challenges when it comes to understanding more recent trends, like use across multiple devices, offsite consumption of content on third-party platforms, and conversion of users into loyal users, and potentially subscribers or members. It also remains hard to link digital data directly with wider consequences like people becoming more informed, engaged, etc. (Audience data remain better at documenting what people do than why or what it means.) Editorial analytics in their different forms represent a clear step forward, from a journalistic viewpoint, from rudimentary and generic analytics, which are often almost exclusively driven by short-term and often commercial considerations. But it is also clear that, even in their most advanced best-practice examples, contemporary editorial analytics continue to face many challenges. One set of challenges concerns news organisations themselves: how do you define your primary goals, and how do you ensure you build analytics capability by combining the right tools, organisation, and culture to make sure you can measure how you perform, act on that information, and develop your operation over time? Another set of challenges concerns analytical questions around definition, measurement, and data quality. News organisations need to think about how they can leverage the strengths of analytics for both short-term and long-term operations while remaining aware of their shortcomings. In our interviews, it is striking that people from organisations frequently held up as examples of best practice are also often amongst those who are most modest about what current forms of data can accomplish.

5. Editorial Analytics: The Journey Ahead

Most newsrooms have adopted the use of analytics in recent years and journalists who in the past may have resisted the introduction of metrics increasingly request information about how people use their content. Data-informed decision-making previously associated with sites like BuzzFeed, Gawker, and the Huffington Post is increasingly central to editorial processes at organisations like the Guardian, the New York Times, and Die Welt as well as leading public service media like the BBC and various start-ups like Quartz and Ze.tt. There are significant differences in how analytics are used in different news organisations. Many have incrementally adopted a range of rudimentary and off-the-shelf forms of analytics that are often used in an ad-hoc manner to help increase day-to-day traffic and reach, but have done little to develop analytics clearly aligned with editorial priorities and organisational goals, to reorganise workflows, or to ensure relevant and comprehensible data are available and used throughout the newsroom. Broadly speaking, leading media organisations in the US and the UK still seem ahead in the development and use of editorial analytics, but market leaders in continental European countries like Germany and Poland are developing their own practices and pulling ahead of domestic competitors. the whole publishing industry is still behind leading technology companies in terms of their use of analytics, and could also learn from leading advertising, marketing, and e-commerce companies. When it comes to specifically editorial analytics, digital-only start-ups as well as a small number of relatively innovative private legacy news media are generally leading the development, with smaller private legacy media and many public service media lagging behind. The sophisticated editorial analytics employed by small start-ups across Europe and North America underline that size and resources are not as decisive a factor as a pro-digital culture, strategic leadership, and a willingness to invest in analytics to help understand and engage the audience in a very competitive marketplace of attention. To make the move from rudimentary or generic analytics to the kind of editorial analytics practised by market leaders, news media need to 1. define their editorial priorities and organisational goals, 2. identify the data and metrics most useful for pursuing these effectively, and 3. develop tools, organisational structures, and newsroom cultures that make analytics actionable both short-term and long-term. Editorial analytics are powerful but not perfect. Some things are difficult to measure. Some measures have weaknesses and flaws. Some measures are incompatible or contradictory. The data do not speak for themselves. And tools and techniques as well as sources of data have constantly to evolve to keep track with a changing environment. Best-practice editorial analytics are today still primarily concerned with short-term optimisation of onsite traffic and offsite distribution via search engines and social media. Analytics are only beginning to be used for longer term planning including the development of new products, audiences, and newsroom workflows. Because different news media have different editorial priorities and organisational goals, there is no one right way to do editorial analytics. this also means that analytics are not plug-and-play. Developing effective editorial analytics requires investments in technological tools, organisational reform, and cultural change. This does not need to be expensive (in particular in comparison to the resources already invested in content production, and the risks associated with flying blind), and the returns on investment are in many cases significant. But it does involve change, and change can be difficult. Editorial analytics are an evolving phenomenon. It is not about identifying a few standard tricks to increase audience reach or engagement, but about developing a process where quantitative evidence supplements more qualitative editorial expertise and enables continuous evaluation of performance and experiments to improve workflows and results. Because editorial analytics work best when aligned with clearly defined ends, changes in, for example, editorial priorities (a decision to develop a new area of coverage or reach a new target audience) or organisational goals (a change in business model from advertising-supported to pay or membership-based) should be accompanied by reformed analytics so that goals and ends remain aligned. An organisation aiming to maximise reach and advertising revenues is different from one seeking to engage a niche of loyal readers and convert them to subscribers (or members). Both are different from a public service media organisation with a guaranteed revenue stream. Similarly, because editorial analytics are fundamentally about helping journalists understand and effectively navigate a changing media environment, new media trends (the rise of distributed content on social media and through messaging apps, the rise of the mobile web, and of online video) require a continuous evolution of new metrics and forms of analysis and changes in the tools, organisation, and culture of analytics. Everyone we have interviewed for this research, including those at organisations often seen as examples of best practice, is keenly aware that we are only at the beginning of the development. The journey ahead for editorial analytics involves 1. addressing a set of organisational challenges around the mainstreaming of analytics in newsroom tools, organisation, and culture, which requires leadership, investment, and restructuring; 2. better data, especially better data linking use to individuals across devices, browsers/apps, and across distributed environments including offline media as well as social media and messaging apps; and 3. an effort to clearly define and precisely measure priorities like impact. It is important that journalists are part of this development. Analytics will continue to evolve. As Billy Bosworth, CEO of the software company DataStax has said, ‘ten years from now, when we look back … we will be stunned at how uninformed we used to be when we made decisions.’ But it is crucial to underline that what we will be more informed about in the future depends critically on who gets involved in developing analytics and metrics. If journalists are not part of this continued evolution, newsrooms will have a poorer understanding of the audience they need to reach and at a competitive disadvantage relative to more sophisticated rivals. It will also mean that the development of data, metrics, and analytics will continue to be entirely shaped by advertising, commercial, and technological priorities with little consideration of journalism, and leave publishing at a huge disadvantage in the wider competition for attention with other, non-news choices like social media, gaming, and the like. As one interviewee, who preferred to be anonymous to speak frankly, put it very bluntly: You’ve got to be [data-informed]. You can’t say, ‘Are we?’ Because some news organisations are not going to survive. They’re either, in ten years’ time, five years’ time, they’re either going to be greatly reduced or some of them will have ceased to exist. So no news organisation, big or small can arrogantly think that they can keep on going without looking into their data. … If you’re not looking at the data, you’re blind. We agree. the promise of editorial analytics is great. the risk of not engaging with it even greater.

List of interviewees

References

Anderson, c. 2011. ‘Between creative and Quantified Audiences: Web Metrics and Changing Patterns of Newswork in Local US Newsrooms’, Journalism, 12: 550–66. Christin, A. 2014. ‘Clicks or Pulitzers? Web Journalists and their Work in the United States and France’, Ph.D., Princeton University. Graves, L., and Kelly, J. 2010. Confusion Online: Faulty Metrics and the Future of Digital Journalism. New York: Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia Journalism School. Hindman, M. 2015. Stickier News: What Newspapers Don’t Know about Web Traffic has Hurt Them Badly: But There is a Better Way. Cambridge, MA: Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University. Küng, L. 2015. Innovators in Digital News. London: I. B. Tauris. Napoli, P. M. 2011. Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences. New York: Columbia University Press. Newman, N. 2016. Media, Journalism and Technology Predictions 2016. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Newman, N., Levy, D. A. L., and Nielsen, R. K. 2015. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Ofcom. 2014. Measuring Online News Consumption and Supply. London: Ofcom (prepared by Oliver and Ohlbaum, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and the Oxford Internet Institute). Petre, c. 2015. The Traffic Factories: Metrics at Chartbeat, Gawker Media, and the New York Times. New York: Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia Journalism School. Usher, N. 2013. ‘Al Jazeera English Online: Understanding Web Metrics and News Production When a Quantified Audience Is Not a Commodified Audience’, Digital Journalism, 1: 335–51. Williams, R. 1958. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. London: Chatto & Windus. Zamith, R. 2015. ‘Editorial Judgment in an Age of Data: How Audience Analytics and Metrics are Influencing the Placement of News Products’, Ph.D., University of Minnesota.

Public Service News and Digital Media

annika.sehle — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 19:48:33 +0000

Executive Summary

In this report, we examine how public service media in six European countries (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom) are delivering news in an increasingly digital media environment. The analysis is based on interviews conducted between December 2015 and February 2016, primarily with senior managers and editors as well as on survey data from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report. We show the following:

Public service media organisations have high reach for news offline (via television and radio) in all six countries, but only in Finland and the United Kingdom do they have high reach for news online.
In all countries but Finland and the United Kingdom, significantly more people get news online from social media than from public service media.
Our interviewees highlight three particularly important issues facing public service news provision online today, namely:

how to change organisations developed around analogue broadcasting media to effectively deliver public service news in an increasingly digital media environment;
how to use mobile platforms more effectively as smartphones become more and more central to how people access news;
how to use social media more effectively as more and more news use is driven by referrals and in some cases consumed off-site on platforms like Facebook.

Public service media organisations in all six countries have faced, and continue to face, serious challenges to their ability to effectively deliver public service news online. These include internal challenges around legacy organisations’ ability to adapt to a rapidly changing media environment and the constant evolution of new digital technologies, but also external economic and/or political challenges.
Across the three areas of organisational change, mobile delivery, and use of social media platforms, the British BBC and the Finnish Yle are generally seen as being ahead of most other public service media organisations. (Though they too are still heavily invested in their traditional broadcasting operations and need to continue to change to keep pace with the environment.)
We identify four external conditions and two internal conditions that these two relatively high-performing organisations have in common. The four external conditions are: (1) they operate in technologically advanced media markets; (2) they are well-funded compared to many other public service media organisations; (3) they are integrated and centrally organised public service media organisations working across all platforms; (4) they have a degree of insulation from direct political influence and greater certainty through multi-year agreements on public service remit, funding, etc. The two internal conditions are a pro-digital culture where new media are seen as opportunities rather than as threats and senior editorial leaders who have clearly and publicly underlined the need to continually change the organisation to adapt to a changing media environment.
The need for public service news provision to evolve will only increase as our media environments continue to change and digital media become more and more important. Addressing the external conditions for the evolution of public service media is a matter for public discussion and political decision-making. Developing the internal conditions, however, is the responsibility of public service media themselves, and a precondition for their continued relevance in a rapidly changing media environment.

This report is the first of a series of annual reports that will focus specifically on how European public service media are adapting to the rise of digital media, a series of reports that will over time cover more countries and more issues than those discussed here.

Introduction

All public service media in Europe aim to produce high-quality content, make it available across widely used devices and platforms, and reach all audiences. How they do it, however, varies – especially when it comes to digital media. In this report, we focus on how public service media in six European countries are dealing with three issues concerning public service news provision today:

how to change organisations developed around analogue broadcasting media to effectively deliver public service news in an increasingly digital media environment;
how to use mobile platforms more effectively as smartphones become more and more central to how people access news; and
how to use social media more effectively as more and more news use is driven by referrals and in some cases consumed off-site on platforms like Facebook.

The countries we cover in the report are Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom. Together, they represent a range of different European media systems, levels of technological development, and public service media traditions. [1. For the purposes of this report, public service media are understood as media produced by major publicly funded and state-owned media organisations, often historically referred to as public service broadcasters (PSBs) due to their origins in radio and television broadcasting. Different countries define public service media differently. e.g. in Germany, the Intestate Treaty on Broadcasting and Telemedia defines PSBs by naming the stations and gives them a number of public remits. In France, Italy or Poland PSBs are simply defined as broadcasters in public ownership. In the UK public service broadcasting also includes privately owned and commercially run channels since they also have certain public service obligations. Throughout the report we use ‘public service media’ instead of ‘public service broadcasting’ because these organisations all operate across different platforms, beyond radio and television (see arriaza ibarra et al. 2015: 3–4)] The focus of the report is on the intersection between technological change and public service news provision. It is important to underline that public service media confront these challenges and opportunities while also facing economic and political challenges in some countries. The move towards an ever-more digital media environment has been accompanied by debates around the role and remit of public service media as well as discussions of how public service is best delivered today. [2. See e.g. Arriaza Ibarra et al. 2015; Brevini 2013; Donders and Moe 2011; Humphreys 2010; Iosifidis 2010.] Economically, funding for public service media has decreased in recent years in several countries, including France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, in part due to wider austerity measures and in part due to reductions in funding directed specifically at public service media. These pressures can be illustrated by recent cuts at the BBC in the UK and reduced funding for the Italian RAI and Polskie Radio. Politically, a range of private media and some political parties are questioning the current scale and scope of public service media and calling for more narrowly defined roles and remits. These pressures include the ongoing legal battle between the German ARD and a range of newspaper publishers over what German public service media are allowed to do online and via apps for smartphones and tablets. [3. These discussions play out in a wider context where the European Commission has long encouraged member states to refine the definition of public service media to reflect new needs and responsibilities in the digital age and develop public value tests to evaluate the impact of planned publicly funded media services before their introduction (for an overview see Donders and Moe 2011)] Simultaneously, governments in some European countries are putting public service media under more pressure and in some cases drastically reducing public service media’s independence from the state (EBU 2013; Arriaza Ibarra et al. 2015: 2). In January 2016, for example, the Polish president Andrzej Duda signed into law a bill handing the government control of public service media in Poland. Under the new law, senior figures in both Telewizja Polska (TVP) and Polskie Radio (PR) will be appointed and dismissed by the treasury minister rather than by the National Broadcasting Council, as was previously the case. [4. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/07/poland-president-signs-bill-putting-state-media-under-government-control] The report is based on interviews conducted between December 2015 and February 2016 with 36 people, primarily senior managers and editors at public service media organisations, as well as people with expert knowledge about the media in each country (see list of interviewees in the appendix). The interviews largely focused on how the respective public service media organisations are adapting to the rise of digital media, but also included discussions of wider economic and political challenges confronting public service media in the countries covered. Our primary focus is on how public service media organisations in the six countries handle the challenges and opportunities represented by the rapid rise of digital media. We show that public service media organisations are adapting to the new environment at different speeds, and that some are falling behind because they are changing more slowly than the environment in which they operate and the public that they serve. Across the six countries covered, the British BBC and the Finnish Yle both reach large audiences with their online news and both have continually carried out substantial organisational reforms to adapt to an environment that continues to change quickly. The remaining public service media organisations have more limited reach with their online news and their organisations continue to be largely structured around traditional broadcast platforms. The differences in performance and pace of change can be attributed in part to external economic (levels of funding) and political (remit of digital public service provision) factors. But it is clear that internal organisational barriers also constrain the ability of some public service media organisations to seize opportunities and tackle challenges online (EBU 2014; Malinowski 2014). In contrast to private media adapting to technological change, public service media generally face fewer economic challenges (as the need to develop new revenue models is less urgent), more political challenges (as they are bound by regulation and existing audiences’ expectations), and a somewhat different set of organisational challenges (as a more secure funding situation both enables experimentation and reduces the immediate need to adapt). Despite a preference for the term ‘public service media’ over the more traditional ‘public service broadcasters’, and a frequent insistence on their ambition to deliver public service across all platforms, even leading public service media organisations widely seen as digital innovators are still heavily invested in and shaped by their broadcasting legacy. In January 2016, James Harding, the BBC’s Director of News and Current Affairs, said that BBC News still invests more than 50% of its budget in linear television, about 40% in radio, and 7% in online media. (By comparison, in 2015, 41% of UK respondents in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report named television their main source of news, 10% radio, and 38% online media (Newman et al. 2015)). As Harding said: ‘We can’t afford to do everything. [This is] about setting our priorities. The choices we make now will determine the future.’ [5. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/medianews/article4660737.ece] This report is about how the BBC and other public service media organisations across Europe are facing the opportunities and challenges presented by digital media, in their different national economic and political contexts, and about the choices they make now about the future of public service news provision. It is the first of a series of annual reports that will focus specifically on how European public service media are adapting to the rise of digital media; a series of reports that will over time cover more countries and more issues than those discussed here. The report is structured as follows. First, we review public service news performance across offline and online platforms and provide a brief overview of the organisation and funding of public service media across the countries covered. Second, we provide a series of country profiles for those readers interested in more context on each case. (These can be skipped.) After this we turn to analysing how different public service media organisations are handling the challenges and opportunities presented by the rise of digital media. In the third part of the report, we focus on organisational change and innovation, in the fourth part on mobile news, in the fifth part on social media. Throughout, we provide brief case studies of interesting initiatives from various public service media organisations covered.

Public Service News Performance: Offline and Online

Public service media have enjoyed a strong position in many European countries for decades, but their position as online news providers is in many cases less strong. On the one hand, public service media continue to compete with a range of private media domestically. Compared to these, public service media often appear strong. On the other hand, they also face competition from a growing number of new players including both digital journalism players like BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, and Vice, video-on-demand services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, as well as large digital intermediaries including search engines (Google), video hosting sites (YouTube), and social networking sites (Facebook). Viewed against these, public service media appear less strong. Our interviewees across all countries highlight many advantages public service media organisations have as they adapt to an increasingly digital media environment. These include their well-established reputations and high-profile brands, their large and loyal offline audiences, and the fact that their funding models mean that they do not need to focus on monetisation as a central part of their digital strategy. (With Poland and Italy as partial exceptions as public service media there rely in part on significant commercial revenues.) The people we spoke to, however, also highlight a number of challenges in terms of effectively delivering public service news today. Three stand out as particularly central, and all are backed up by data from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report and many other studies. [6. The annual Digital News Report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) analyses how news is being consumed in a range of countries across the world. It is based on an online questionnaire conducted by YouGov. The data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data to represent the total population of each country. The sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet. As this survey deals with news consumption, anyone who said that they had not consumed any news in the past month was filtered out. The main report is available as Newman et al. (2015) and a supplementary report by Fletcher et al. (2015). In addition, the underlying data are available on digitalnewsreport.org] The first challenge is trying to provide news for everyone, including hard-to-reach younger people. Across the countries covered here, public service media have high reach for offline news, very different reach online, and vary widely in their ability to reach especially younger people, with the BBC reaching about 68% of 18–24 year olds with news across offline and online platforms on a weekly basis in the UK, compared to 24% for ZDF in Germany. The second challenge is moving from a digital strategy centred on desktop internet and personal computers to one focused on mobile devices. Across the countries covered here, between 27% (UK) and 14% (Poland) of online news users say that smartphones are the main device used for news consumption. Amongst younger people, the percentage is far higher, and the figure has been rising rapidly in recent years. The third challenge is developing effective ways of delivering public service news via third-party platforms including search engines, social media, video-hosting sites, and messaging apps. Across the countries covered here, between 56% (Poland) and 23% (Germany) of online news users say they consume, share or discuss news via Facebook. Only in the UK do significantly more people use public service media for news online than use social media for news. These three challenges are generally seen as closely linked in that more effective strategies for mobile news and use of third-party platforms are seen as key to reaching younger audiences and serving the whole population via all relevant channels. These challenges are also all seen as linked to an underlying issue of organisational change as most public service news provision is still structured primarily around legacy broadcast media rather than digital media. Table 1 provides an overview of the performance of public service news offline and online in terms of audience reach in the six countries covered. Overall, public service media are amongst the most widely used sources of offline news in all six countries, but their online reach varies significantly and in some countries social media are by now more frequently named as a source of online news than public service media. Table 2 provides an overview of the main national public service media organisations in each of the six countries, and their funding structure. Some of these are integrated public service providers which have always operated across platforms (radio, television, and now online). Others are separated by legacy platform (radio and television, each with their own online offerings). The funding levels vary, as do the commercially generated revenues, from a small fraction for the Finnish Yle to a majority of total revenues at the Polish TVP. The next section provides a series of country profiles for readers who want more context on each country. These can be skipped by those who want to go straight to the main findings around organisational change, mobile news provision, and use of social media.

Public Service News in Europe: Country Profiles

Finland - Yle

The Finnish public service media organisation Yle is an integrated public service provider for TV, radio and digital. It is 99.9% state-owned and operations are financed by public broadcasting tax which replaced television licences at the beginning of 2013. Yle has a strong position in terms of television reach. In 2014, the Yle television channels had a total daily audience market share of 55% (EAO 2016). When it comes specifically to news, 61% of Finnish respondents in the Digital News Report 2015 stated that they had watched Yle TV news in the last week. This means that Yle is the most widely used offline source of news in Finland. Online, Yle also has a strong position with 39% saying they use various Yle sites for news, but Yle has lower reach than the website of two tabloid newspapers Illta-Sanomat (55%) and Iltalehti (51%) (Newman et al. 2015; see Table 1). Smartphone use is high in Finland. Almost one in four respondents said smartphones are their main way of accessing news online. Social media were used by 40% of respondents specifically as a source of news in the last week (see Table 1). Facebook is the most widely used social media platform for news in Finland, followed by YouTube (Newman et al, 2015). Since 2013, the Finnish public service media organisation Yle has been tax-funded. In contrast to the flat licence fee before 2013, the tax is income-adjusted. All individual adults pay a flat income tax earmarked for Yleof 0.68% up to a maximum of €140 per year. The lowest paid, those earning less than €7,352 a year are exempt from paying the tax. At €85 per capita, Finland has the second highest level of public service funding of all the countries covered here, and with 97% of Yle's €476m budget coming from public funds, it has the lowest level of commercial funding of public service media (EAO 2016, see Table 2).

France - France Télévisions and Radio France

French public service media consist of two main separate organisations, one built around TV and one around radio: France Télévisions and Radio France. [7. Other publicly funded organisations such as the Franco-German channel, Arte, or the international channels, Radio France Internationale, France 24, and TV5 Monde are not covered here] Both are state-owned companies and funded by the revenues from a licence fee, additional state funding as well as commercial revenues. Policies on French public service media have been characterised by a strong government influence in the past (see Brevini 2013). In France, public service media also have a fairly strong position in terms of television audience share. Combined, the main French public channels in 2014 together accounted for about one-third (30%) of daily viewing (EAO 2016). For news, commercial television is the most widely used offline source. according to the Digital News Report 2015, the private channels BFM TV and TF 1 are the leading sources of news offline. both have 43% of French respondents saying they have used them in the last week. France Télévisions by comparison reaches 34%. Online, the most widely used brands are prominent national newspapers like the websites of the free daily 20 Minutes (12%), Le Monde (11%) and Le Figaro (10%) as well as digital - only offerings from Google News (11%) and Yahoo (8%). The public service media websites (FranceTV info and the various domains of France Télévisions) are used by a combined 16% of respondents as a source of news (Newman et al. 2015; see Table 1). The smartphone is increasingly important for how people in France access news. A quarter said it is their main way of accessing online news. Social media are also important with 34% of respondent using them specifically as a source of news. Facebook is the main social media platform for news, followed by Youtube (Newman et al. 2015). French public service funding is, at €46 per capita, significantly lower than in Finland, Germany, or the United Kingdom, but considerably higher than Italy or Poland. France Télévisions’ total revenues for 2014 were €3,018m, of which 82% came from public funding and the rest from commercial sources. Radio France revenues were €688m, and 84% came from public funding (EAO 2016; see Table 2). The majority of the funds for public service media in France comes from a household licence fee of €137 per annum, with some additional funding provided by the state. in germany, public service media structure reflects the federal political structure. there are two main national public service broadcasters: ard (founded in 1950) and ZdF (only tv, founded in 1963), as well as deutschlandradio, a national public service radio broadcaster (founded in 1994) which co-operates with ard and ZdF. ard consists of nine regional public service broadcasters. between them they all operate their own regional television channels, some in co-operation with others, and all of them have their own radio channels. together they collaborate on national programming for the so-called ‘first channel’ (das erste). in addition to this, the international service deutsche welle (dw) (founded 1953) is also a member of ard, but not covered here. in contrast to the ard’s complex federated structure, ZdF (Second german television) is established by all 16 states and serves a national audience.

Germany - ARD and ZDF

Together, the German public television channels accounted for a total daily audience share of 45% in 2014 (EAO 2016). when it comes to news, the national public service evening news bulletins still draw a large audience. In the Digital News Report 2015, 52% of German respondents said in the last week they had watched the main ARD news programme Tagesschau and 38% named ZDF’s flagship news programme heute. In comparison, RTL Aktuell, from the private broadcaster RTL, reached 36% of respondents weekly. Despite their offline strength, however, German public service media have only limited reach online. The main ARD online news offerings were used by 8% and ZDF.de by 7% (see Table 1). The site of the national news magazine Spiegel Online (16%), the portal t-online (13%), and the main tabloid newspapers Bild.de (11%) all reached more people online (Newman et al. 2015). Almost a quarter of German respondents said the smartphone is their main way of accessing online news. Social media platforms are used by 25% of respondents specifically as a source of news on a weekly basis. Facebook is the most important social media site in terms of news, followed by Youtube (Newman et al. 2015). Since 2013, all households in Germany have been paying a flat fee of €210 per annum. This fee has replaced the old GEZ radio and TV fee, which was paid per device. The fee is still defined as a ‘broadcasting contribution’ (Rundfunkbeitrag) and not a public service contribution. Public funding for public service media amounted to €98 per capita in 2014 in Germany, the highest level of all the countries covered here. Public funding accounted for 86% of ARD’s total revenues of €6,942m, and 85% of ZDF’s €2,254m, with the rest coming from commercial sources (EAO 2016; see table 2). Combined, the German public service media have the largest public service budgets in the world.

Italy - RAI

RAI is Italy’s national state-owned public service broadcaster. It is an integrated organisation for TV and radio. RAI is funded primarily by licence fee but relies on commercial sources for almost 40% of its total income, more than public service media in any other country covered apart from Poland. Political instability in Italy and frequent changes in government, combined with a governance structure that allows for more direct political influence than in some other countries, has led to a constant change in management in RAI, something that has previously been highlighted as holding back its development of digital content and services (Brevini 2013). RAI channels have a strong overall position in Italian television, accounting for a combined total daily audience share of 38% in 2014 (EAO 2016). Television is also the most widely used source of news in Italy. While RAI’s news bulletins are popular on TV according to the Digital News Report 2015, RAI has only limited reach online. The RAI.TV website was named by 15% of respondents as a source of news (see Table 1). Online, the sites of national newspapers like Republica.it (29%) and digital-only offerings like Google News (22%) are far more widely used (Newman et al. 2015). Almost a quarter of Italian respondents identify their smartphone as their main way of accessing news online. Social media are particularly important in Italy. 46% of respondents say they use social media specifically as a source of news weekly. Again, Facebook is the most widely used site for news, followed by YouTube (Newman et al. 2015). Public service media funding in Italy was at €26 per capita in 2014. Of the countries covered here, only Poland has lower levels of funding. The funding comes from a licence fee which was €113.50 in 2015. Recently, the Italian government has reduced this to €100 while simultaneously cracking down on widespread evasion (estimated at 26% of all households): from July 2016 all the Italian electricity bills will have a surcharge for the RAI licence fee. Public funding accounted for just over 60% of RAI’s total of €2,595m revenues in 2014 (EAO 2016; see table 2), the rest came from commercial sources, most importantly television advertising.

Poland - Telewizja Polska and Polskie Radio

As in France, public service media in Poland are organised into separate organisations each built around a particular kind of traditional broadcasting: Telewizja Polska (TVP) and Polskie Radio. Both are state-owned. For public service media in Poland, commercial revenues are very important, and licence fee revenues relatively limited. As a consequence, some observers see Polish public service media as operating in ways very similar to their commercial, privately owned competitors. As noted in the introduction, the governance of public service media in Poland has changed significantly in 2016 with the introduction of a new media law that gives the government much more direct control. [8. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/07/poland-president-signs-bill-putting-state-media-under-government-control] This has been subject to critique from outside observers and has led the European commission to start a preliminary assessment of whether the new law represents a ‘systemic threat’ to fundamental EU values. [9. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35303912] TVP had a strong position in the Polish television market with a combined daily audience share of 29% in 2014. (It has, however, seen that share decline significantly in recent years: EAO 2016). In terms of news, 58% of respondents in the Digital News Report 2015 survey said that they had relied on TVP for news in the previous week (see Table 1). Only the commercial broadcaster TVN had a wider reach (61%). Online, however, portals like Onet (48%) and commercial broadcasters like TVN24 online (36%) have far wider reach than TVP Online, which was named a source of online news by 20% of respondents (Fletcher et al. 2015). In clear contrast to the other countries covered here, smartphones still play only a limited role in Poland: 14% of respondents saw their smartphone as their main way of accessing news online. Social media, however, are very important in Poland: 52% of respondents use them as a source of news weekly, again, first of all Facebook and secondly YouTube (Fletcher et al. 2015). Public funding for public service media in Poland was €4 per capita in 2014, far lower than in any other country covered in the report, even after taking into account that Poland is poorer than the five other countries. (Poland’s per capita GDP is about two-thirds of Italy’s, about half of the UK’s.) In 2014, the annual licence fee was €48 for television and €14 for radio. The evasion rate in 2014 was estimated to be 65%. [10. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26546570] Of Telewizja Polska (TVP) revenues, 31% is from public funds with the rest from commercial sources, while 61% of Polskie Radio funding is from public sources, with the rest commercial (EAO 2016; see Table 2).

The UK - The BBC

The BBC is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation (founded 1922) and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It is an integrated organisation for TV and radio and serves the whole of the UK. Apart from its national services it also operates the BBC World Service and BBC Worldwide, its main commercial arm. The BBC’s domestic services are almost exclusively funded by licence fee. The BBC is established under a royal charter. The current charter came into effect in 2007 and is due to expire in 2016, with the charter process renewal currently under way. In the UK in 2013, the BBC had a relatively strong position in television with a combined daily audience share for all channels of 35% (EAO 2014). The BBC has a particularly strong position in the UK when it comes to news. According to the Digital News Report 2015, it reaches 72% of respondents via traditional television and radio on a weekly basis. It has far wider reach than the second most widely source of offline news in the UK, ITV (used by 32%). The BBC is also strong in online news. Almost half of respondents (48%) report using BBC Online, making it not only the most popular source of online news in the UK, but also the most successful of all organisations in the 12 countries covered in the 2015 Digital News Report (see Table 1). After the BBC, the most widely used sources of online news in the UK are the Mail Online (14%), the Huffington Post (12%) and the Guardian online (12%) (Newman et al. 2015). Of respondents in the UK, 27% mentioned smartphones as their main way of accessing online news. Half of smartphone users also said they use the BBC news app. Social media are used by 36% of respondents specifically as a source of news on a weekly basis. Facebook is the most important social network for coming into contact with news, followed by Twitter. YouTube, which is widely used in most other countries covered here, is only named by 7% in the UK as a place where they find news (Newman et al. 2015). Public funding for public service media was €76 per capita in the UK in 2014. The annual licence fee is £145.50 per household. An estimated 82% of the BBC’s total revenues of €5,961m came from public funds in 2014 (EAO 2016; see table 2). [11. As noted above, the EAO figures for total BBC revenues include the turnover for its considerable commercial and international activities. Well over 90% of the cost of its domestic services is met from the licence fee.]

Public Service News Approaches to Organisational Change and Innovation

People in every public service organisation in all the countries covered highlight the importance of organisational change and innovation to delivering public service news more effectively online. But the different public service media organisations have very different approaches, both in terms of how news production is organised, and of how innovation processes are managed and supported.

Organising Public Service News Provision

Some organisations have integrated newsrooms working across all channels and platforms, others still have newsrooms organised around distinctions between offline platforms like radio and television and digital platforms including website, mobile apps, and social media channels. In Finland and the UK, public service newsrooms have been integrated for years. Yle in Finland integrated its newsroom in 2007 and implemented further reforms a year and a half ago, when it was decided that every journalist should work for all media platforms (some are still designated as radio or television specialists). This more recent reform was widely discussed in the organisation before it was implemented, and explicitly framed as part of preparations for a digital future: ‘We felt like the internet is going to be everywhere and it is everybody's job to be able to understand the digital logic and to do stuff for the digital platforms, whether it's desktop or laptop or mobile phone or watch’, says Mika Rahkonen, Head of Development in Yle News and Current Affairs. [12. Mika Rahkonen, Head of Development/Media lab, News and Current Affairs, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] Journalists at Yle are now asked to think more about the angle and presentation of each story and only then to decide on the appropriate media or platform. Rahkonen explains: If it's a very visual story with lots of video, we can put it on TV, we can have a long video on the internet. And if it’s a story with lots of numbers, we can do a data visualisation and stuff like that. It used to be like slot first. Now it's story first. [13. Ibid] Atte Jääskeläinen, Director of News and Current Affairs, explains that the organisational structure of Yle News and Current Affairs is meant to ensure that there is one content manager who has the power to make decisions with respect to the type of media that should be privileged in cases where different media disagree over how to cover a story and how to publish it. Jääskeläinen says such conflicts were quite common initially, but have decreased over time as editors and journalists ‘have learned the basic rules’. [14. Atte Jääskeläinen, Director of News and Current Affairs, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] While Yle’s current news strategy prioritises online distribution first, and in general does not hold back news for traditional broadcasting bulletins, the interviewees were already talking about transitioning to mobile-first as the next logical step (more on this below). The BBC introduced an integrated newsroom in 2008, moving from a separation between broadcast bulletins, the 24-hour news channel, BBC World, and online to one multimedia newsroom that emphasised an integrated leadership, co-location, and sharing of information. Today, journalists working there are trained to be multi-media providers, and content from various channels like BBC News Channel, Radio 4 and so on is used across the whole news division and repurposed for other platforms. Michael Hedley, Head of Strategy, News at the BBC, explains: We really serve audiences with the most appropriate form of content for that period. So if a journalist is out in the field preparing a TV bulletin, they may be also at the same time writing a piece for online, or doing a short piece to camera, they may be doing a piece to radio, and then they'll cut and do a piece to TV and so on. [15. Michael Hedley, Head of Strategy, News, BBC, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 14 Dec. 2015, in London] In 2013, when BBC News moved into a new, specially designed newsroom in New Broadcasting House, the integration was taken a step further. Global and UK output was brought together, all intake processed through the same content management systems, and content for digital platforms was made first priority for all breaking news. As BBC Director of News James Harding put it then: ‘We are all digital journalists now.’ [16. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/speeches/2013/james-harding] And this is not only about a digital-first approach to news, but also about constantly evolving as digital media evolves. According to BBC Executive Editor, Digital, Steve Herrmann, the focus is increasingly on live, social, and mobile news. [17. Steve Herrmann, Executive Editor of Digital, BBC News, presentation at RISJ, 11 Nov. 2015.] In other public service media organisations elsewhere in Europe, the situation is quite different. In Germany, there is some cooperation and collaboration between the traditional media and online, though not to the same extent as in Finland or the UK. At ARD Aktuell, there is exchange on the planning level of television programme and online content. But apart from this, television and online journalists work in separate newsrooms since an earlier attempt to introduce an integrated newsroom was judged a failure. (According to one report, the TV journalists felt disturbed by their noisy online colleagues. [18. http://meedia.de/2010/03/21/tagesschau-dreht-redaktionsreform-zuruck]) Most journalists at ARD today work primarily for ‘their’ medium and only support other media in special cases like breaking news situations. Christiane Krogmann, Editor in Chief, tagesschau.de, ARD, says: For us, these are really synergy effects in case of breaking news. Today, it is no problem anymore to go into the neighbouring room and ask who has time right now and can support us. The online team is still smaller than the television team due to a traditional structure. However, we think that a lot will still change in this respect. [19. Christiane Krogmann, Editor in Chief, tagesschau.de, ARD, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 21 Dec. 2015, in Hamburg.] The traditional structure also leads to television and online working with different content management systems, which requires journalists to learn to work with both media. When it comes to radio, Krogmann says, cooperation is relatively strong. [20. Ibid] However, these employees are not present in either television or online newsrooms. This is in part because Germany has no nationwide ARD-radio, instead, the nine regional PSBs all have their own radio channels. At Germany’s other national public service media organisation, ZDF, the structure is also relatively traditional, with television and online journalists working in parallel with little integration. However, ZDF has launched a new venture called ‘heute express’ in 2015, a short news format for online programming (including social media) and TV. These short news programmes are produced by a cross-media team to avoid replication and save resources. Furthermore, ZDF has launched a late night news show heute+, a cross media format, in the same year, replacing the traditional former night edition of the heute news bulletin (see box below). [21. http://www.dwdl.de/magazin/53556/heute_im_zdf_experimente_ohne_breaking_news] [22. See e.g. http://www.zeit.de/kultur/film/2015-05/heute-plus-zdf-nachrichten-broeckerhoff] [23. http://www.dwdl.de/magazin/53556/heute_im_zdf_experimente_ohne_breaking_news] In France, the inherited structures of traditional public service broadcasting continue to influence how news is provided today. In contrast to integrated public service media like the BBC and Yle, France Télévisions and Radio France are separate organisations, each built around a distinct legacy broadcast platform. The news website FranceTV Info is produced by a separate online newsroom of France Télévisions. This newsroom is organised around what Jérôme Cathala, Director of News at France Télévisions, calls ‘news temporality’ rather than by topic or channel. [24. Jérôme cathala, Director of News, France Télévisions, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 18 Dec. 2015, in Paris.] The newsroom is divided into three parts: Desk 1 produces breaking news and publishes them on a newsfeed updated from 6am to midnight called ‘live’. The staff working at Desk 1 tend to work only on text-formats and publish immediate news that they call ‘hot news’. Desk 2 works on images and video and often on news that requires one or two hours of work before publication. Finally, Desk 3 works on news that is published at the end of the day or the following one and aims to provide more background, depth, and perspective. Most of the journalists at FranceTV Info primarily work at their desk. Only the journalists working for Desk 3 occasionally go into the field to collect information. News production at France Télévisions is thus still primarily organised around platforms, like at ARD and ZDF, but in contrast to the BBC and Yle. Plans for a more integrated newsroom are mentioned, however, in the context of a planned 24-hour news channel. The new channel is still not definite but is a plan that France Télévisions has had for years, adapted to take into account the rise of digital media. Cathala says: We are in late and we try to make up for this delay: we already had this plan [for a 24-hour news channel] in the 2000s, but at the time the government prohibited it because they thought there was not room for several all-news channels in France. . . . But we are trying to transform this situation to an advantage because we want to imagine it digital first. [25. Ibid] At RAI, the PSB in Italy, news production has long been highly decentralised. Each of the main RAI television channels (Raiuno, Raidue, Raitre, and Rainews24) has their own news division, whereas the RAI radio channels’ news bulletins have a centralised newsroom. This decentralised structure was replicated when RAI started offering online news, and every television and radio channel (even many individual programmes) opened their own news website and later social media pages. Only in 2013 was Rainews.it made into a common news website drawing on all parts of RAI, with the aim of aggregating content from across the organisation in one place and more effectively competing for audiences’ attention online. However, our interviews suggest that some directors of news operations elsewhere in RAI accepted this decision only reluctantly. From their point of view, they were being asked to give up their own independent websites and contribute support to the joint website, thus draining their resources and undermining their independence. In practice, some management of decentralised newsrooms continue to resist providing the newsroom of Rainews.it with stories, even when they have already broadcast the stories on their own channel or show. Within the organisation, television is still seen as more important than online by many, not only management, but also by journalists who, when asked to work for multimedia projects, consider online journalists to have lower status and a more limited audience than television journalists. Monica Maggioni, who was appointed President of RAI in August 2015, speaks frankly about some of the issues confronting RAI’s online news operation and what she plans to do to tackle them. If we want to provide an honest description of the RAI situation, we have to describe also a delay, because this is the truth. RAI, but also some other European networks, is facing this delay because, for decades, we have been, by nature, focusing on linear television, and this has taken our best energies, creativity and production ability. When we realised the world was going in another direction, we started to do projects, but these initiatives weren’t necessarily well-coordinated, not necessarily going in the right direction, provided that a ‘right direction’ exists. The change phase started a couple of years ago, when we realised that the development of our 24-hour channel [Rainews24] was an essential passage to move also in the direction of the online news. [26. Monica Maggioni, President of RAI, RAI, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 27 Jan. 2016, in Rome.] In December 2015, RAI established a new digital division. Monica Maggioni explains that the new division has been created to overcome the traditional separation between the editorial and the technological parts of the organisation, and will be able to ‘talk with all RAI sectors and to ask them for content’. She says it will provide ‘a connection point between the endless bunch of RAI contents and the final user’. [27. Ibid] The Head of the New Division is currently working on restructuring the whole RAI digital offer. The aim for the future is RAI’s ‘transition from public service broadcaster – as we still are today – to public service media’, says Andrea Fabiano, Deputy-Director of Raiuno. [28. Andrea Fabiano, Deputy-Director of Raiuno, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 4 Dec. 2015, in Rome.] Finally, in Poland, public service media are (as in France) organised around legacy broadcast platforms with Telewizja Polska (TVP) built around television and Polskie Radio around radio. One interviewee describes Polish public service media as being at the ‘beginning of [a] road’ from being public service broadcasters to being public service media – and adds that the transition might take several years. (Internet use and smartphone penetration is also lower in Poland than most other countries covered here.) The situation is described as in some ways similar to that in Italy: every radio and television channel has its own newsroom. However, the news website TVP.info is described as a hub for online news from all television channels and polskieradio.pl for online news from all radio channels and programmes. In terms of news production, television and radio journalists typically do the actual reporting and produce stories for their respective broadcast platform, leaving it to editors back in the newsroom to adopt the content for online publication. At the beginning of 2016, however, TVP.info had started a new project with ‘mojos’ (mobile journalists) producing audio-visual content exclusively for the website. Our interviews show a wide variety of different organisational structures and workflows across public service news provision in Europe. In some organisations like Yle and to some extent the BBC, news production is highly integrated and the approach is story-first, rather than format-first. But in most public service media organisations, news production is still structured primarily around legacy broadcast media and online news largely seen as separate, with various degrees of collaboration between broadcast journalists and online journalists when it comes to sharing of content and often limited investments made in digital-first news production (compared to the resources invested in broadcast news).

Innovation and Development

Similar differences are clear in terms of how public service media manage and invest in innovation in news. Some public service media organisations have teams dedicated specifically to developing new approaches and ideas for digital news. Others have a less formalised structure where innovation is based on individual staff members within the newsroom developing new ideas and building support for them. (All the organisations covered have their development and/or innovation teams elsewhere, but not all have such units in the newsroom or with a specific focus on news.) Again, Yle in Finland and the BBC in the UK stand out for having invested significant resources in building teams tasked with innovation in news production and distribution. At Yle the web and mobile development team consists of eight staff members who are supported by five to ten additional freelance subcontractors, depending on the situation, according to Aki Kekäläinen, Head of Web and Mobile Development at Yle. (The team also draws on the resources of the broader development department at Yle.) The decision to organise the development team as a separate department is meant to give them freedom from day-to-day work, so as to enable them to ‘[focus] on what should happen, what we should do so that we are on top of things in the future as well’. [29. Aki Kekäläinen, Head of Web and Mobile Development, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 3 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] In order to generate ideas on a continuous basis, the Yle web and mobile development office has a regular meeting every Tuesday from 10am to 3pm to brainstorm new ideas to respond to the changing media environment. The team of approximately ten people (some on staff, others on subcontracts) is divided into groups of three or four. Aki Kekäläinen describes the meetings: We focus on a topic. . . . We crunch the numbers and we check the statistics and in some cases we do benchmarking. . . . What's the best already available, the baseline that we should do at least as well as they're doing, and why are they the best example? Or do we need to do some user research? We could go and interview some people or at least think though how we might research the question. Or we can build [a] prototype and try it out. [30. Ibid] Kekäläinen points out that the work organisation in small groups is an important factor in this context, leading to fruitful discussions where the teams challenge each other and thus further develop ideas. Similarly, BBC News has had a ‘BBC News Lab’ to support innovation in news since 2012 (see box below). [31. For a more comprehensive description of the BBC News Lab as well as current and past projects see http://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects.] In Germany, ARD has a small team of four people working with strategy and innovation development specifically for news, Kai Gniffke, First Editor in Chief of ARD Aktuell, explains. [32. Dr Kai Gniffke, First Editor in Chief ‘ARD Aktuell’, ARD, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 21 Dec. 2015, in Hamburg.] Similarly, at Polskie Radio, a group of about five staff members are tasked, among other things, with observing new developments, going on field trips, and exchanging information and know-how with EBU partners. France Télévisions did not have a development team specifically for news when we did our interviews, but was just about to start one. At ZDF, there is a development team for new media in general, but not one specifically focused on news. Instead, small decentralised groups work on innovations for news. [33. Robert Amlung, Head of Digital Strategy, ZDF, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 22 Dec. 2015, in Mainz.] Elmar Theveßen, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Head of News, ZDF, describes the ZDF newsroom’s approach to innovation as ‘learning by doing’ on the basis of information they gather, for example through the EBU, field trips to innovative newsrooms, and conversations with commercial broadcasters. [34. Elmar Theveßen, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Head of News, ZDF, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Jan. 2016, in Mainz.] The approach at the Italian RAI and Polish PSB is similar. Currently there are no teams in place for regular development specifically focused on news. RAI maintains a small, so-called WebLab in the online newsroom. This group, however, focuses mostly on storytelling in the digital age and less on broader strategic issues, explains Roberto Mastroianni, News Editor and Media Manager at Rainews24. [35. Roberto Mastroianni, News Editor and Media Manager at Rainews24, RAI, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 3 Dec. 2015, in Rome.] European public service media thus do not only differ in terms of how they organise online news provision, but also in terms of how they have organised innovation around online news. Some have teams or units in place specifically tasked with thinking about ways in which the wider organisation could or should change. In most cases, however, innovation is based on a combination of ad-hoc teams put together from people who have other day-to-day responsibilities in the newsroom and development departments elsewhere in the organisation.

Public Service News Approaches to Mobile News

The rapid move from a desktop web to a mobile web in recent years is one of the central developments in digital media. Desktop use has been broadly stable, while mobile use has grown explosively in just a few years, and already accounts for over half of time spent with digital media in some countries and more than half of all traffic for many news sites. The pace of change differs from country to country, but increasingly, the smartphone looks like the defining device for digital news (Newman et al. 2015). Most of the public service media organisations we cover in this report are aware of this development, but the degree and ways in which they have adapted their digital news provision for mobile differ. The BBC launched its mobile news app in 2010 to supplement the website the corporation has run since 1997. Both the website and the news app were redesigned in 2015. The website switched to responsive design to ensure it worked across personal computers, tablets, and smartphones, with a cleaner design, faster load times, and a greater emphasis on video. Similarly, the news app was relaunched to include a broader range of content, to integrate more video, and offer more ways for people to discover content by supplementing the edited front page with ‘most read’ and ‘most viewed’ sections and the ability to follow topics and stories with a personalisable ‘My News’ section. [36. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/fc6b5571-f3dd-3af5-83b9-000ddb4f0381] Michael Hedley, Head of Strategy, News, at BBC, describes the app mainly as ‘an interface to get into BBC news content’, with a strong possibility ‘to personalise the news’. This is possible by streams, but also by topics and by location. ‘It's a faster, more accessible experience’, Hedley says. [37. Michael Hedley, Head of Strategy, News, BBC, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 14 dec. 2015, in London.] One of the features of the app that BBC News is constantly trying to get right is the balance between general news selected for people on the basis of their expressed preferences and past use. Daniel Wilson, Head of UK Policy at the BBC, underlines that while the new app enables personalisation, it also ensures that all users get the most important news, as well as articles that may be neither general news nor personalised news, but might still surprise and interest people – what he calls ‘serendipitous’ content. The idea is that through much more use of data and with [the] audience’s consent, we will be able to optimise much better the journeys between the things that people already know they like, and the things that they don't know they like, and the things that they don't know are important. If we can keep bringing together the important, the popular and the serendipitous, then I think we're doing a good job. [38. Daniel Wilson, Head of UK Policy, BBC, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 18 Dec. 2015, in London.] Looking forward, the BBC has indicated its plans to make ‘a transition from rolling news to streaming news’ with the announcement of a project called ‘BBC Newstream’. [39. ‘The BBC’s Programmes and Services in the Next Charter’, https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/pdf/futureofthebbc2015.pdf.] Newstream is projected to be a mobile-focused project with a greater focus on video, complemented by audio, graphics, and text live from BBC News, and aims to integrate personal, portable, and on-demand news. The balance between personalisation, general news, and the occasional serendipitous surprise is also central to how the Yle has developed its news app NewsWatch, launched in 2014 (see box below). [40. Aki Kekäläinen, Head of Web and Mobile Development, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 3 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] [41. Mika Rahkonen, Head of Development/Media lab, News and Current Affairs, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] Although Yle sees its new app as successful, it is still only ‘serving a niche’, according to Tuija Aalto (Yle). Atte Jääskeläinen makes the same point: NewsWatch is a kind of platinum product for heavy news users. . . . The features are very kind of high end, what they have in NewsWatch and for regular news customers they may be a little bit too much if you choose from 140,000 keywords. [42. Atte Jääskeläinen, Director of News and Current Affairs, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] Yle is now redesigning its responsive news website that was among the first of its kind worldwide when launched in 2012. It is planning to bring the personalisation of the app to the news website itself. In order to prepare journalists for a mobile-first strategy, Mika Rahkonen says that Yle is planning to have big screens in the newsroom showing exactly what is seen on a mobile screen. [43. Mika Rahkonen, Head of Development/Media lab, News and Current Affairs, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] For ARD in Germany, their mobile strategy is deeply intertwined with the wider political discussion of the role and remit of public service media online, specifically the ongoing court case brought by several newspapers against the ARD after the Tagesschau news app launched in 2010. The newspapers are arguing that the app is too similar to their offerings, distorts the market, and does not represent the kind of ‘programme-related content’ German public service media are restricted to offering online. It seems clear that the ongoing court case has limited investment in developing the app. However, the ARD are aware of issues around navigation, the presentation of videos, and load times that they would like to address. Kai Gniffke (ARD) describes the main focus of the app as providing an overview of all relevant news of the day, partly enriched with background information and analysis. [44. Dr Kai Gniffke, First Editor in Chief ‘ARD Aktuell’, ARD, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 21 Dec. 2015, in Hamburg.] His colleague Christiane Krogmann (ARD) explains that due to the German requirement that public service offerings online must be programme-related, the ARD cannot offer the app as a stand-alone news product and the content it presents has to be related to existing ARD broadcast output. [45. Thristiane Krogmann, Editor in Chief, tagesschau.de, ARD, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 21 Dec. 2015, in Hamburg. The two national German public service media organisations ARD and ZDF have now been allowed to develop their first stand-alone online news offer, after a planned (joint) news channel aimed at 14-29 year-olds and intended to work across broadcast and online was turned into an online-only offer by a political decision at the Länder-level. The channel is supposed to launch in 2016.] Germany’s ZDF also plans to relaunch both their news website and the news app they have built around their main evening news bulletin heute. The relaunch is scheduled to happen no later than 2018. Amongst the priorities for the relaunch of the website and app, Elmar Theveßen (ZDF) mentions personalisation of content as well a stronger focus on video. [46. Elmar Theveßen, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Head of News, ZDF, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Jan. 2016, in Mainz.] In France, the main news website, FranceTV Info of France Télévisions, has had a responsive design since 2011. In addition, France Télévisions introduced a news app the same year. Like the other news apps discussed above, the FranceTV Info app includes an overview of news with background articles, video streams, and notifications for important stories. In addition, a unique feature of the app is an information feed called ‘live’. Jean-François Fogel, who works as a consultant for France Télévisions, explains: The most innovative aspect of FranceTV Info is ‘live’ . . . The ‘live’ stream is a way to produce information and to have a permanent conversation with our audience (they ask questions on the live, and our journalists provide answers). . . . It is important to mention also the fact that we publish on our live both the contents we produce and those produced by other news outlets, including those produced by private media. [47. Jean-François Fogel, consultant, France Télévisions, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 17 Dec. 17, 2015, in Paris.] Rainews, the structure in charge of the RAI digital news offer, has likewise developed a news app offering news both on text and video formats. The app also provides on-demand videos, live streaming and push notifications. However, several interviewees say that, so far, RAI’s top management have not considered mobile strategies as being as important as traditional media activities. This is in line with previous research which has suggested that RAI has historically not been a particularly innovative public service provider, which in turn has impacted its reach online (Brevini 2013). The RAI President Monica Maggioni underlines that the new digital division is currently working on product personalisation and platform designing to make RAI news to become ‘more attractive . . . within the social media and mobile channels’. [48. Monica Maggioni, President of RAI, RAI, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 27 Jan. 2016, in Rome.] Poland is the country covered here with the lowest smartphone penetration and the lowest number of people naming mobile devices as their main way of accessing online news. It is also the only country where the public service media do not offer dedicated news apps, but just general apps. However, both their news websites are built with responsive design to facilitate mobile use. One interviewee mentions that Polskie Radio is currently planning a news app which will rely mainly on audio with very little text and pictures. This means that it is likely to be more of an audio than a multimedia app. As with the organisation of newsroom work and innovation, there are clear differences in terms of how public service media organisations across the countries covered approach mobile news. The BBC and Yle have dedicated mobile news apps that offer general news and personalised content in both text, audio and video formats, and have websites built with responsive design facilitating both desktop and mobile access. The Yle is developing a mobile-first strategy. France Télévisions is moving in the same direction with a dedicated mobile news app and a responsive design website, and is working on personalisation as well. In Germany, both ARD and ZDF have mobile news apps, but they are tied to specific broadcast news programmes and development of mobile offerings is slowed by legal challenges and political pressures. After the gradual centralisation of RAI’s online news offerings, Rainews has also developed and launched a mobile app, but our interviews suggest the development is hampered by internal indifference and resistance from some parts of the organisation. In Poland, TVP and PR have responsive design websites and general apps, but no news app for mobile as yet.

Public Service News Approaches to Social Media Distribution

As with organisational change and mobile strategy, public service media across Europe differ in terms of how they approach social media distribution and think about their relations with increasingly important digital intermediaries such as search engines, video-hosting sites, messaging apps, and – when it comes to news perhaps most importantly – social media sites. Daniel Wilson from the BBC offers two different perspectives on this topic: The whole industry is struggling between trying to keep their website, their app, their environment as the point of contact for their audiences and maintaining that control versus the challenge of audiences increasingly going to other big international platforms like Facebook, Google, and other social media such as Twitter. I think there are two extremes. You can either say you want to be a platform in your own right, and you don't want to link out to anyone else or disaggregate your content in any way, or you can say it's all publicly funded content, everyone should have access to it everywhere. [49. Daniel Wilson, Head of UK Policy, BBC, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 18 Dec. 2015, in London.] Most of the public service media organisations covered here try to position themselves between these extremes and combine an emphasis on their own destination websites and mobile apps along with attempts to leverage social media distribution in particular to maximise public service reach. In no other area is the language of opportunities and risks more appropriate or more frequently invoked than when it comes to the relationship between public service media and third-party platforms like social media.

Challenges and Opportunities Associated with Social Media Distribution

Our interviewees highlight in particular two reasons for investing in social media distribution. One is referrals, the other is off-site distribution.

To Bring Users to their Own Website and Not Lose Traffic

Interviewees in all six countries point out that social media are important drivers of traffic to their websites. Data from comScore support this (see Table 3 on the next page). With some variation, all the organisations covered here get a substantial share of their traffic from Google and Facebook (and a fraction from Twitter). Thus, some interviewees argue that not being active and present on social media platforms would lead to a loss of audience. Atte Jääskeläinen from Yle argues that, especially for mobile users, ‘they are not visiting that many different pages or opening that many different applications. So we would lose a big part of our audience if there wasn't social media or we weren't on social media.’ [50. Atte Jääskeläinen, Director of News and Current Affairs, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] Internal audience research from one organisation suggests there is good evidence to support this point of view – while the vast majority of users who go direct to that particular organisation’s website and app are returning users, social media referrals account for most new users drawn in, and thus represent a major opportunity to reach beyond an existing loyal audience.

To Reach Young Audience and Light News Users Off-Site

Several interviewees see social media, especially Facebook, as a way of reaching younger users as well as light users who otherwise would not necessarily come to the PSB websites. This is in part about drawing people who do not seek out news of their own volition to public service news sites and news apps through referrals, but also about placing public service news on off-site platforms where people who will not click on the link may still enjoy the content. Instead of only trying to draw people to public service news sites, it is about going to where they already are. Robert Amlung (ZDF) says that the main advantage from the users’ point of view is that social media have a whole range of different attractions well beyond news and in addition can aggregate content from many different players. For some users, this will make them more attractive sources of news than public service apps and sites that only contain content from one source, [51. Robert Amlung, Head of Digital Strategy, ZDF, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 22 Dec. 2015, in Mainz.] and for some, they stumble upon news, including public service news, while they are on these sites for other purposes (Newman et al. 2015). Despite the attractive opportunities for increased reach through referrals and off-site use, our interviewees also identify a range of risks they associate with third-party platforms and social media distribution in particular.

The Challenge of Building Relationships With Platforms

The key concern expressed by several interviewees is that social media platforms are not transparent and predictable in terms of their strategies and that public service media have little influence on them. Aki Kekäläinen from Yle illustrates this worry: If money is the main driver, then commercially driven content could be more interesting for Facebook and if that happens then they just tweak their algorithm a little bit and our audience coming from Facebook drops significantly overnight. So if we don't have any control it's really bad for us. [52. Aki Kekäläinen, Head of Web and Mobile development, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 3 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki. In Finland as well as in some other countries, public service media are forbidden from having commercial advertisements online. The situation is different in Italy and especially Poland, where advertising is an important part of public service media revenues and many have concerns over monetisation similar to those expressed by many private media: ‘We are not a part of the Zuckerberg business, and we are not a part of the Google business. We have our own business’ says Adrzej Szozda, Deputy responsible for New Media at Polskie Radio (interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 11 Jan. 2016, in Warsaw).] The relationship between public service media and social media is discussed in several interviews, along with strategies to cope with the new dynamics. Tin Radovani, Strategy Analyst for the World Service at the BBC, says: That sort of relationship is quite difficult to establish, and it's quite difficult to bring value back to us since you are living in somebody else's garden, in somebody's else's platform. So, it's a developing relationship, and we are developing our understanding of how best to work in somebody else's platform. [53. Tin Radovani, Strategy Analyst for the World Service, BBC, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 14 Dec. 14, 2015, in London.]

The Challenge to Fulfil the PSB Remit in a Disaggregated Environment

Several interviewees, especially from the BBC, also see potential risks in the tension between the public service obligation to provide information across the full range of relevant issues and the ways in which social media operate in practice. Daniel Wilson argues that this public service remit of the BBC could be harder to fulfil as content becomes more disaggregated – pointing to fears over potential ‘filter bubbles’ or ‘echo chambers’: ‘Disaggregating all your content effectively stops the BBC playing that public service role I mentioned earlier, linking the popular to the good, the popular to the important and providing variety in what audiences consume from the BBC.’ [54. Daniel Wilson, Head of UK Policy, BBC, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 18 Dec. 2015, in London.]

The Challenge of Keeping Users’ Aware of Public Service Brands

A further challenge is how to ensure that users who encounter public service content on social media platforms recognise the brand and credit the public service media organisation for the content they use. Eric Scherer (France Télévisions) says: With these platforms, there is the risk of losing control over your distribution process and, possibly, over the relationship we have with our audience. At the same time, if we don’t go there, we risk losing a large part of the audience: young people who don’t watch TV. [55. Eric Scherer, Director of Future Media, France Télévisions, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 21 Dec. 2015, via Skype.] Andrzej Mietkowski, Responsible for New Media at Polskie Radio, express a similar view: You have to work on your own image, to build your own credibility and to make a distinction for the users that you are the Polish Radio, you are not Mr John Smith. And when you start to use the social media, which is the environment of John Smith, you have to make it with a lot of precautions, and to have in mind that you cannot play on the same level, the same rules, the same games for people. [56. Andrzej Mietkowski, responsible for New Media, Polskie Radio, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 11 Jan. 2016, in Warsaw.] Beyond the opportunities and challenges social media and the like present for public service media, one interviewee expressed a more fundamental worry about national commercial media ultimately being subsumed by the ascendance of social media platforms, leading to a less diverse media environment: I fear that the commercial publishers will jump into that, and in that sense, we'll lose the kind of last hope of surviving in this environment if they jump into social media giants' boat in which they don't really have a voice and control over the future. So I think that there will be a major change in the environment in that sense. [57. Quote not for attribution.] Most public service organisations thus see considerable opportunities in social media distribution, especially around referrals and off-site use. It is clear that all of them get significant proportions of their website traffic specifically from search engines and social media. Some of them also have considerable off-site reach via a range of social media platforms. The analytics company Tubular Labs estimates that BBC News had a social reach of more than 87 million impressions globally across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Vine in January 2016, not far behind its estimated c.100 million global monthly unique website users. [58. https://tubularlabs.com/yt/bbcnews] But there are also challenges around the risk of relying on third-party platforms for distribution, editorial control in distributed environments, and fears that users will not necessarily appreciate content producers when they encounter their news via third-party platforms.

Social Media Strategies

Despite the reservations they have, public service media are actively developing strategies for making the most of the opportunities offered by social media. In Finland, Facebook is described as the most important social media platform for Yle news. However, they use a variety of platforms and Mika Rahkonen (Yle) points out that flexibility and adaptation to new situations is required: The important thing in terms of the development department is to think big. We're here to re-invent news. And to re-invent the ways to consume news, to keep up to date and be informed and entertained and so on. It means many things, and some of those we don't even understand yet. What we do understand is that we have to be so flexible that we can do stuff like in one month. Okay, here's a new platform, it looks really great, it seems that the kids are there, what are we doing there, what are we doing there that we look cool there, that we don't look stupid, that we don't look like your grandpa is trying to learn new platforms because that's immensely important. [59. Mika Rahkonen, Head of Development/Media lab, News and Current Affairs, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] Distributing news not only via public service media’s own websites and apps but also via social media requires changes in how the news is produced. Panu Pokkinen, Head of Sports at Yle, argues that as the front page is becoming less important because more and more people arrive at individual articles via social media, ‘we have to put our effort into how to structure one article and to try to persuade people to find another article or a third article to read with that’. [60. Panu Pokkinen, Head of Sports, Yle, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 3 Dec. 2015, in Helsinki.] About a year ago, Yle started a department called Kioski in order to deal with social media distribution (see the box below). In the UK, the BBC has also established a social news team to make the best use of social networks for distributing news and engaging with the audience. BBC News has long worked with social media both as a means of news reporting and news distribution (Belair-Gagnon 2015) and many channels and news programmes have built their own social media profiles. Throughout 2015, BBC News continued to reorganise its social media presence, rationalising its Facebook presence with the creation of a single shared page while continuing to experiment with and use newer tools like Periscope, Telegram, and YikYak. [61. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-editors-35061802] Examples of social media initiatives are BBC Shorts,15-second videos primarily produced for Instagram in a way that users can understand the story with the sound off, BBC Trending, a service reporting on trending topics on the internet, and Go Figure, an image format delivering key statistics optimised for social channels. In Germany, ARD is also experimenting with different social media platforms to distribute news content. They concentrate on Facebook and Twitter, with Twitter described more as a platform to reach other journalists, public figures, and communicators in society and less to reach a wider audience. Tagesschau.de has also agreed to participate in Instant Articles on Facebook. In-house, especially concerning the Instant Article cooperation with Facebook, people talk about a ‘marriage of convenience and not out of love’, says Christiane Krogmann (ARD). [62. Christiane Krogmann, Editor in Chief, tagesschau.de, ARD, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 21 Dec. 2015, in Hamburg.] ‘Sweet poison’ is Kai Gniffke’s (ARD) metaphor for the relationship. [63. Dr Kai Gniffke, First Editor in Chief ‘ARD Aktuell’, ARD, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 21 Dec. 2015, in Hamburg.] Despite such reservations, ARD has decided to pursue this step to reach users who do not come to the PSB‘s own news website. Christiane Krogmann (ARD) says that the decision marks the beginning of a trial period which will be followed by an evaluation. [64. Christiane Krogmann, Editor in Chief, tagesschau.de, ARD, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 21 Dec. 2015, in Hamburg] In addition, tagesschau.de has just established a new video team to produce content exclusively for Instagram, since they see this platform as growing in popularity, and also to conduct some testing of WhatsApp with a sample group of young users. At present, according to Christiane Krogmann (ARD), the main aim is to find forms of presentation that fit each platform best: This means, if we put our videos on Facebook, we try to find an optimal presentation for this platform. We try to work with different means. For example, we only put cuttings of interviews or a core sentence on a photograph. We also often try to have subtitles. . . . If you are sitting in a train and have no ear phones, it is a way to help and explain what you see on the screen. [65. Ibid] In this way, tagesschau.de uses Facebook videos to deliver explanations for current situations, which has thus far worked well, since ‘the analysis provides a personal attitude and not just the pure news and this is most appreciated by the users’, says Krogmann (ARD). [66. Ibid] In terms of social media, Germany‘s ZDF distributes news mainly via Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, but is also experimenting with Instagram and closely observing possibilities with Snapchat and WhatsApp. The ZDF interviewees highlight that different social media channels require different ways of presenting the news. Robert Amlung (ZDF) explains that, from his point of view, YouTube is closest to a traditional TV broadcaster. ZDF was also a launch partner for YouTube in Germany. You can use the whole variety of TV formats also on YouTube and it works. You can do long formats, you can do short formats, you can do playlists, a programme sequence. . . . It is closer to where we come from. [67. Robert Amlung, Head of Digital Strategy, ZDF, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 22 Dec. 2015, in Mainz.] Despite these advantages, he also points out that YouTube brings other challenges for a traditional TV broadcaster like questions of copyright or the challenge to draw the attention of users to the YouTube channel. Facebook, in contrast, he describes as more interactive and in general, with exceptions, more suitable for pictures and shorter videos of about a minute. The strategy for Twitter is not focused on videos, but just on pictures and text. With respect to Instagram, the organisation is in the preliminary phase of exploring what works well and what does not. A focus of ZDF‘s social media activities is the interactive news show heute+, mentioned above, that is distributed via social media as well as ZDF-platforms and on traditional TV. Reaching a young target audience is the main aim behind these activities, as Elmar Theveßen (ZDF) points out: ‘We know that 80% of our users on Facebook [speaking about the heute+ account] are between 17 and 45 years old. This means, this is a target group that we do not reach with traditional TV news anymore.’ [68. Elmar Theveßen, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Head of News, ZDF, interviewed by Annika Sehl, 4 Jan. 2016, in Mainz.] In fact, Theveßen explains, ZDF’s main television news bulletin heute reaches only 170.000 viewers under 40, out of a total of 3.7 million viewers. ZDF is aware that a Facebook presence will not necessarily bring those users to the traditional TV programme, but it still provides a point of contact with younger people. [69. Ibid] In France, public service media are also engaged in distributing news on social media platforms. However, France Télévisions does not yet have a designated team in charge of this expansion process. Facebook and Twitter are mentioned by the interviewees as the most important social media platforms for news distribution, ‘because Facebook is the platform with the largest part of the audience now, and Twitter is the place where you can influence the web dynamics’ says Jean-François Fogel, consultant at France Télévisions. [70. Jean-François Fogel, consultant, France Télévisions, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 17 Dec. 2015, in Paris.] Furthermore, YouTube is used as a distribution platform, with France Télévisions having been the first French broadcaster to use it, as Eric Scherer, Director of Future Media at France Télévisions, notes. [71. Eric Scherer, Director of Future Media, France Télévisions, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 21 Dec. 2015, via Skype.] Snapchat is seen as an interesting innovative platform, but also a challenge to a traditional broadcaster: ‘It is a problem for us, because they have walled gardens: you have to make products for discovering content there’ says Jean-François Fogel. [72. Jean-François Fogel, consultant, France Télévisions, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 17 Dec. 2015, in Paris] One interviewee says that France Télévisions’ approach to news distribution via social networks is somewhat hesitant, especially when it comes to the question of Instant Articles: We refused to go on Facebook Instant Articles. This was our choice. Facebook is looking for content and we could provide content, but this must create value also for us, not only for Facebook. Therefore, for now, we said no. . . . I think we are not too interested in having tight collaborations with Facebook and Google. However, it is necessary to be present on these platforms. [73. Quote not for attribution.] At the moment, France Télévisions is just beginning to test new forms of storytelling for mobile screens and social media platforms, explains Jérôme Cathala (France Télévisions). [74. Jérôme Cathala, Director of News, France Télévisions, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 18 Dec. 2015, in Paris.] Laurent Guimier, Director of France Info, the all-news channel from Radio France, sees a ‘huge opportunity’ in social media distribution, but also a challenge of adapting the content for this purpose and in moderating interaction: The only challenging aspect is that we have to invest in human resources that produces non-linear videos for Facebook. Another risk concerns the moderation of conversations linked to the content we distribute on these platforms. [75. Laurent Guimier, Director of France Info, Radio France, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 18 Dec. 2015, in Paris.] At the Italian RAI, social media strategies reflect the more decentralised structure already discussed above. Some interviewees mention that certain news outlets are on social media platforms while others are not and that there is no corporate policy prescribing rules for social media use. One interviewee describes the situation like this: RAI has a strong presence on social media. I personally think that we are too present on these platforms and that we repeated on these new platforms the bad habits that affected our first phase with news websites: many offers, mainly irrelevant. . . . Each of them with few people working on posting content. [76. Quote not for attribution.] Facebook and Twitter are described as the relevant social media platforms for news distribution. YouTube was relevant in the past, but there is no current agreement between RAI and YouTube. At stake in the discussion are the terms and conditions offered by YouTube and RAI’s concerns over its visibility, revenues, and ability to deliver public service via this platform. More broadly, one interviewee argues, there is no general consensus in RAI on social media distribution. Rather, opinions diverge in two ideological directions: On the one side, someone thinks that taking our content to other platforms is convenient only for the players that own these platforms. On the other side, people think that we have to go where the public is located; it is complicated to reach people if you don’t go in the environments where they are, and this is true especially if your products (your contents and the user experience you offer) are not particularly brilliant and innovative. According to the latter position, to reach the audience with our offer is a value in itself, beyond any implication in terms of revenues or commercial agreements. . . . I think that this conflict concerns in particular YouTube, Google News, Yahoo, and other similar platforms. Concerning social networks such as Facebook there are more open positions. [77. Quote not for attribution.] In this context, interviewees said they assumed the new management of RAI would pursue greater social media distribution. In fact, Monica Maggioni, the RAI President, points this way and says that RAI will focus more on social media distribution in order to reach young target groups: We realised that our public is not where we are used to looking for it anymore; . . . Instead, we have to look for these people where they already are. And they are in the social media world, they live with their smartphones and tablets, and so we need to move our content offer to other platforms in order to become more interesting for them. [78. Monica Maggioni, President of RAI, RAI, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 27 Jan. 2016, in Rome.] In Poland’s two public service media organisations, social media distribution is widely discussed. Twitter is mostly used in the context of news, while Facebook is seen as the most important social media platform for the distribution of entertainment content. Polskie Radio also mentions the use of YouTube. Andrzej Godlewski, Deputy Director of TVP1, mentions that during a televised debate between candidates before the last national election, the hashtag #TVP was the most popular in Poland. Andrzej Mietkowski, Polskie Radio, explains that besides the general Polskie Radio account there is also a news account, a business account, and a sports account. [79. Andrzej Mietkowski, responsible for New Media, Polskie Radio, interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 11 Jan. 2016, in Warsaw.] However, the interviews suggest that there is no general strategy for social media distribution at Polish PSB and, likewise, no specialised teams. Other formats like adapted videos for social media are not produced: ‘We use social networks to deliver videos too, but as you see, if you click, you are directed to the TVP.info.’ [80. Andrzej Godlewski, Deputy Director of TVP1, TVP; interviewed by Alessio Cornia, 11 Jan. 2016, in Warsaw.] In sum, this chapter has shown that all countries in the sample use social media distribution for news, but to a varying degree. All are searching for the right combination of channels over which they have a higher degree of control, like their own websites and apps, and third-party platforms that offer greater reach and opportunities to reach especially younger audience if used well, but offer less control. Some organisations, like Yle and the BBC have developed social media teams as well as new editorial products that are specifically designed for social media distribution, like Kioski or BBC Trending. Other organisations have a more ad-hoc approach to social media and have so far invested less in developing public service news for social media distribution.

Conclusion

In this report, we have reviewed public service media organisations’ performance across six European countries in terms of their offline and online news provision and have analysed how they are working to 1) change their organisation, 2) develop mobile offerings, and 3) use social media to more effectively deliver public service news in an increasingly digital media environment. Our interviews suggest that the BBC in the UK and Yle in Finland have consistently done more to change their organisation, invest in mobile offerings, and develop social media strategies than most other public service media organisations. Our review of public service media organisations’ performance also suggests that the BBC and Yle stand out in having built significantly broader reach online to match their offline reach, whereas many other public service media organisations, despite their offline strength, have only limited reach online. What do these two high-performing organisations have in common? We would point to four external conditions over which public service media organisations themselves have little influence, but also two important internal factors that reflect public service media organisations themselves more than their environment. External factors first. First of all, both the BBC and Yle operate in technologically advanced media markets, more so than many other public service broadcasters operating in countries with somewhat lower levels of internet use and smartphone penetration. Second, both are well-funded compared to many other public service media organisations. (Though Yle is in absolute terms a smaller organisation than most other public service media covered here.) Third, both are integrated and centrally organised public service media organisations working across all platforms and covering their entire country. Fourth, both have a degree of insulation from direct political influence by virtue of regulatory frameworks that place them one step removed from day-to-day governmental and parliamentary politics and create some certainty through multi-year agreements on public service remit, funding, etc. [81. e.g. Hanretty (2011), brevini (2013), Nowak (2014).] These four external conditions are not in place in many of the other countries covered here. In Italy and Poland, for example, public service media organisations operate in less technologically advanced markets, have lower levels of per capita funding, are separated into multiple organisations and often run in a very decentralised fashion, and have less insulation from political influence. In Germany, public service media operate in a technologically advanced market and enjoy some of the highest funding levels in the world, but are organised in a decentralised fashion and face political pressures and legal constraints around their online offerings. In France, public service media are less well funded than in Finland and the UK and delivered by different organisations which are less insulated from political influence. These external factors are likely to hamper their ability to fully seize the opportunities presented by digital media. The internal factors next. First, both the BBC and Yle have worked hard and for many years to develop a pro-digital culture where new media are seen as opportunities rather than as threats. Second, in both organisations, senior editorial leaders have clearly and publicly underlined the need to continually change their organisations to adapt to a changing media environment; even when these changes involve hard decisions such as cutting legacy services to free up money for new initiatives, lay-offs in newsrooms built around twentieth-century media to make them fit for a twenty-first-century environment, and experiments with new initiatives, some of which will inevitably fail. Developing this kind of pro-digital culture and editorial leadership is not easy. It generally comes at least partially at the expense of traditional ways of doing things, especially when an organisation has to change and cut costs at the same time. Change without conflict is rare. The BBC and Yle share these two features, a pro-digital culture and leadership, in common with many private media recognised as leading innovators in digital news (Küng 2015). They are features that other public service media organisations aiming to make the most of digital media would do well to develop, something many of our interviewees in France, Germany, Italy, and Poland are clearly conscious of. To paraphrase an interviewee in Italy, it is not always a question of resources, sometimes an organisation can be its own worst enemy when it comes to change. (This is clearly something the new RAI President Monica Maggioni is aware of and working to change.) This is the case at the BBC and Yle too, and that is why cultural change and leadership are so important. The media environment public service media organisations operate in will go on changing as digital technologies continue to evolve rapidly, often faster than even the most innovative legacy media organisations (whether private or public) can follow. The mobile, social internet of today is dramatically different from the desktop-based internet that preceded it and continues to evolve. Many legacy media organisations are still going through a painful and prolonged transition to adjust to a web 1.0 even as a web 2.0 has been completely mainstream for most Europeans for years. Most news organisations’ response to the rise of digital media has been reactive, defensive, and pragmatic. [82. e.g. Boczkowski (2004).] This is a dangerous approach to innovation, as the environment continues to change at a faster pace than many media organisations, compounding their problems over time. As difficult as changes over the last two decades have been, the fact remains that there is far more to come – even at the BBC and Yle, public service news provision is still deeply shaped by legacy media while the media environment is becoming mainly digital. Unless public service media organisations develop organisational forms, platforms, and distribution strategies tailored to this changing environment, they will lose touch with their audience – the public they exist to serve. Facilitating this ongoing renewal and evolution of public service news delivery to match the media environment in which we live requires both external and internal change. In terms of external factors, public service news provision benefits from a stable funding environment and a degree of insulation from direct political influence (even as public service media should of course have clearly defined remits and be held effectively to account for how public money is spent). How these issues should be handled is a matter for public discussion and political decision-making. In terms of internal factors, public service news provision online benefits from a pro-digital culture in the organisation and from senior editorial leadership publicly embracing and working towards seizing the opportunities offered by digital media. These are issues public service media themselves need to address if they want to stay relevant in an increasingly digital media environment.

References

Arriaza Ibarra, K., Nowak, E., and Kuhn, R. 2015. ‘Introduction: The Relevance of Public Service Media in Europe’, in K. Ibarra Arriaza, E. Nowak, and R. Kuhn (eds), Public Service Media in Europe: A Comparative Approach. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 1–8. Belair-Gagnon, V. 2015. Social Media at BBC News: The Re-Making of Crisis Reporting. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Boczkowski, P. 2004. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brevini, B. 2013. Public Service Broadcasting Online: A Comparative European Policy Study of PSB 2.0. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Donders, K., and Moe, H. 2011. Exporting the Public Value Test: The Regulation of Public Broadcasters’ New Media Services across Europe. Göteborg: Nordicom. European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) 2014. Yearbook 2014, vol. 1, Television, Cinema, Video and On-Demand Audiovisual Services in 39 European States. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) 2016. Yearbook 2015: Television, VOD, Cinema and Video in 39 European States: Markets and Players, Services and Usage. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory [electronic version]. European Broadcasting Union (EBU) 2013. Viewpoint: Media Freedom and Pluralism, Jan., http://www3.ebu.ch/files/live/sites/ebu/files/Publications/EBU-Viewpoint-MediaFreedom_EN.pdf. European Broadcasting Union (EBU) 2014. Vision2020: Connecting to a Networked Society, https://www3.ebu.ch/files/live/sites/ebu/files/Publications/EBU-Vision2020-Full_report_EN.pdf. Fletcher, R., Radcliffe, D., Nielsen, R. K., Levy, D. A. L., and Newman, N. 2015. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015: Supplementary Report. Oxford: RISJ. Hanretty, C. 2011. Public Broadcasting and Political Interference. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Humphreys, P. 2010. ‘EU State Aid Rules, Public Service Broadcasters' Online Media Engagement and Public Value Tests: The German and UK Cases Compared’, Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture 1(2), 171–84. Iosifidis, P. 2010. Reinventing Public Service Communication: European Broadcasters and Beyond. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Küng, L. 2015. Innovators in Digital News. London: I.B.Tauris. Malinowski, J. 2014. ‘Foreword’, in M. Głowacki and L. Jackson (eds), Public Media Management for the Twenty-First Century: Creativity, Innovation, and Interaction. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, pp. xvii–xxiv. Newman, N., Levy, D. A. L., and Nielsen, R. K. 2015. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015: Tracking the Future of News. Oxford: RISJ. Nowak, E. 2014. Autonomy and Regulatory Frameworks of Public Service Media in the Triangle of Politics, the Public and Economy: A Comparative Approach. Working Paper. Oxford: RISJ.

List of Interviewees

Positions are those people held at the time they were interviewed.