For every group under the age of 45, in all the countries surveyed [for a new Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University], online news is now more important than television news.
Drilling down on types of online news a bit: 51 percent of those surveyed use social media as a source of news each week, while 12 percent of all surveyed say it’s their main source. And among 18- to 24-year-olds, social media alone edged out TV as the “main” news source (28 percent to 24 percent). Print came in at a lowly 6 percent for that group and at just 12 percent for those 55 and older.
More than half of all respondents (53 percent) use a smartphone to get news. Heavy smartphone users access news more frequently than people who mainly use desktop and laptops or tablets, the Reuters Institute found “evidence that the move to smartphone goes hand in hand with the move to distributed content. When we ask people about the MAIN way in which they come across news stories we see that people use social media more on the smartphone, whilst they are less likely to use a branded entry such as a website or app.”
Read the full piece at Nieman Journalism Lab
