We’ve had a fair amount on discuccion on how people consume news in the digital age. A new survey conducted jointly by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism has been released showing that 92% of Americans get their daily news from multiple platforms.
Apple iPad, Courtesy of Reuters Pictures
The survey shows that the Internet is now the third most-popular news platform. Moving ahead of more traditional outlets such as newspapers and radio and only just behind local and national television. Six out of ten Americans now get their news from a broad combination of sources and the Internet is allowing them to personalize how they receive their news.
Personalized: 28% of Internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
News is also becoming more participatory with the rising use of social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news. A press release from the center says that people are also using;
“traditional email and other tools to swap stories and comment on them. Among those who get news online, 75% get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% share links to news with others via those means. ”
Participatory: 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
The results of the survey also show that mobile technologies are making news more portable.
Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
Read the full report here.
Read the survey questions here.
broadcasting5
camelstu
ejk
hayleygrainger
rosssatron
Stuart Oates
zoegraham
Digitegrity 
But what about the quality of the news being consumed? Is that being helped or hindered by the internet? Here’s a paragraph from a diatribe on the Flat Earth Blog. The post bemoans the impact of the internet on the quality of newsgathering, the myriad of unchecked sources and the squeeze on the newspapers resulting from the ready availability of free information on the internet
“The majority of bloggers and Internet addicts, like the endless rows of talking heads on television, do not report. They are largely parasites who cling to traditional news outlets. They can produce stinging and insightful commentary, which has happily seen the monopoly on opinion pieces by large papers shattered, but they rarely pick up the phone, much less go out and find a story.”
If you feel like an evening in with a bottle of wine, being bitter, you can read the full post here http://www.flatearthnews.net/category/blog/a-us-journalist-american-churnalism-and-weakness-internet
Not everyone shares this view however. NUJ President Michelle Stanlstreet said in a debate in March 2008 that standards in Journalism are suffering because of;
“The squeeze on jobs and resources and the consequent pressure to produce too much material too fast.”
In the same article BBC defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan says “the web has transformed the work of journalists; getting information in so quick. I would have had to spend half a day going to Companies House for information on a company that I can now get in ten minutes.”
Still need the judgement to back it all up with though!
You can read the full article from the Journalist here http://www.thejournalist.org.uk/PDF_Apr08/Journalist_Apr08_news.pdf
I still don’t understand the whole “news on social media” I’ve seen some of the pages and groups who update frequently on current affairs, and some of the news they show is just sloppy, parts of the story are missing (crossing referencing with BBC and Sky News) others are just copied pasted directly from main news websites.
I cant imagine people who use social medias for a primary source of news to know what is actually going on in the world.
I agree with Kyle- do people actually really know what’s going on with the news if they access it completely through social media-probably not.
But, if you look at how many people use social media you can understand the purpose of placing news there.
I commented on a post on tamingthebeast.wordpress.com last month, about how I found out about Michael Jacksons death, which was on Facebook.
So many people changed their status with a comment about MJ’s death it was hard not to see it- I did however log straight on to the BBC website to 1. Confirm this 2. Find out the details.
I see social media as jumping off point for finding out about news. I would never just read a story on Facebook and take it as gospel. But if there is a brief update and a link to a reputable news site then I will click on the link and read the story there.
Same with Twitter, I’ve found it a very useful tool as far as following breaking news stories. When the earthquake happened in Chile I used Twitter to follow the latest developments, simply by looking at what was trending. Not only were BBC and CNN tweeting their latests updates but also people from Chile were tweeting about what was going on on the ground.
Social Media is a good way to see what stories people are discussing and then following their links to reliable news providers to get the story.
good points from all round, it does seem that some sites are taking the more breaking news more seriously.
http://mashable.com/2010/03/19/twitter-search-popular/
that will definitely help in viewing the official news say the queen middle fingered a little kid, that would be extremely popular and thus be at the top of the list for others whom havent seen it yet to find, and it would go on and on.
so perhaps with implementations like that it could work to some degree