Where do we learn about the crime stories from our city, the latest lockdown restrictions, local and global politics? My parents, in their eighties, watch Indian TV channels and read two mainstream local newspapers. My wife reads an English language newspaper, and uses WhatsApp. I digitally subscribe to a few newspapers, but read them in a non-linear fashion. My 17-year old daughter gets news on her mobile before anybody else in our family does.
*****
Based on data from six continents and 46 countries,
the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021 was published yesterday. It
tells us how the coronavirus pandemic has quickened earlier trends. The
pandemic shook the news industry, particularly printed newspapers. Initially
the lockdowns severely restricted their distribution. More worrying was their
loss of advertising revenue. There have been large scale layoffs in the news
industry. In the USA, sixty local news organizations were shut off. Free sheets
like Metro or the Standard in London have lost 40% of their income. New
business models ask readers to subscribe, take membership or donate. These attempts
have been unsuccessful in replacing the lost ad revenue.
*****
The good news
for traditional media is that the trust gap between news media and social media
has grown. TV channels like BBC news inspire trust in their viewers. Trust
levels vary. Finland has the highest overall trust in the news (65%), and USA
has the lowest (29%). After 2016, the US news media experienced a Trump bump,
now it is replaced by a Trump slump. Both Fox News and CNN have lost large
number of viewers. (Biden is boring).
*****
Young people and people with low level of education
use social media as their source of news. TikTok now reaches 24% of under-35s,
many of them using the platform for news.
Generation Z (18-24) has little connection to
newspapers, websites or news apps. They get their news from social media, aggregators
(Google news, Apple news) or mobile alerts. Mobile aggregators play little role
in the Western countries, but are strong in India, Indonesia, South Korea and
Thailand. AI-powered apps like Daily Hunt, Smart News, Naver, and Line Today
are important sources of discovering news.
Most young people across the world feel they are not
fairly represented in mainstream media. There is little coverage of the issues
they care about. That is why they embrace social media. They neither pay money
nor attention to the media that is unfair and uninteresting for them.
Online newspaper subscribers tend to be more educated,
richer and older. As a rule, nobody under 40 digitally subscribes to a
newspaper.
*****
Overall, the leading channel of misinformation is
Facebook (28%), followed by news websites (17%), WhatsApp (15%), Twitter (6%)
and YouTube (6%). In India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Nigeria,
WhatsApp is the big culprit. Its closed, encrypted nature prevents
fact-checkers from spotting the origin. UK and USA cite Facebook as the prime
worry for misinformation.
*****
Smartphone dependence has grown during lockdowns. Now
73% access news via smartphones. Mobile phones are rapidly replacing laptops
and desktops. In the pandemic, government has further boosted smartphone use
for covid messages and vaccine appointments. In the UK, the computer-smartphone
gap has grown to 25 points. In the past ten years, computer use fell from 67%
to 43%. Smartphone use went up from 29% to 68% in the same period.
*****
When asked about their motivation, people said Twitter
was good to access and debate news. Facebook was used for other reasons.
Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are seen as fun and time-killers. YouTube users
were looking for alternative perspective on the news.
*****
Aggregators like Google news or Apple news simply take
you to links. Some journalists still have to create original content. If nobody
under forty is interested in reading news in the mainstream media, printed
newspapers have another fifty years to live.
Ravi
म
ReplyDeleteमला रोज पेपर वाचल्यावरच बरे वाटते
ReplyDeleteVery depressing in some ways. No space to write thoughtful insightful articles - just more and more soundbites
ReplyDelete