New breed of 'net newsers' shape US media habits, says Pew report | Media | gu... - The Diigo Meta page

• 18 Aug 08
  

  Yule Heibel

  Jemima Kiss writes about the recent Pew report that describes how "well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research."
  
  Interesting findings on education levels and TV-watching *and* interest (lack thereof) in science and technology, too.

  newspapers television media news the_guardian jemima_kiss reference aggregators pew trends

  • A new generation of well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research.
  • "net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and have a strong interest in technology and technology news.
  • 6 more annotations...
  • • Net newsers are typically affluent and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.
    • They do favour some traditional media brands, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.

    • The research paints a picture of steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.

      According to the long-running survey, respondents saying they listened to radio news fell from 47% to 35% over the same period. As for network TV, the national news dropped from 60% to 29% and local news from 77% to 52%.

    • However, TV is still the most popular medium for the US, with 46% of the public classified as "traditionalists" who watch throughout the day, but are likely to be older and less well educated than net newsers.

    • More than 40% of this traditionalist group are unemployed, and were found to prefer visual news stories to audio and have little interest in science or technology news.

      A further 14% are described as "disengaged", a poorly-educated group with little interest in current affairs.

    • The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news.

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