How has the internet affected people’s news consumption? Will established newspapers and broadcasters suffer or does the internet open up fresh opportunities for their brands, asks Barrie Gunter.
Public opinion polls over many years have indicated that television is the most trusted source of news. While newspapers are still widely read, news consumers know that most national dailies have long-established political orientations that are reflected in their editorial comments and story choices. In the past 10 years, however, both major news media have faced growing challenges from a new information provider – the internet.
Internet penetration has grown rapidly in the UK and other parts of the developed world. One key driver has been the emergent significance of the internet as a news provider. When asked why they use the internet, the search for news is high on the agenda of most web consumers. But do these developments ring the death knell for news broadcasting and newspapers? Or, has the internet opened up fresh opportunities for the established news brands?
A question of trust
When consumers seek out news, regardless of the technology platform, are they turning away from the old providers in favour of new suppliers? Given that news source patronage depends critically not only on the volume and diversity of information provision but also how much a source can be trusted, have news consumers lost faith in old news brands?
This question was examined in a recent UK online survey conducted by the British Life and Internet Project. Over a four-week period from 20 April 2006, 1,803 respondents from an established national online panel completed the web-based questionnaire.1
The sample was demographically heterogeneous. Female respondents (54%) slightly outnumbered male, but a range of age categories was represented: 18-24 (6%), 25-34 (22%), 35-44 (27%), 45-54 (24%), 55-64 (16%) and 65+ (5%). Respondents were politically evenly divided in terms of their support at the last election for Labour (25%), Conservatives (20%) or Liberal Democrats (26%). Respondents also showed an evenly distributed patronage of a range of news broadcasters and national daily newspapers.
The survey asked respondents about their main sources of news, the frequency with which they used the sources, and their opinions about them, with the focus placed on perceived trustworthiness of online news.
Main news sources
The most often mentioned main source of news about the wider world was national television news (nominated by 45% of all respondents) with the internet (20%) in second place ahead of national radio news (16%) and national daily newspapers (13%). A second question asked respondents to nominate their main source of local news. Local daily or weekly newspapers (36%) were most often nominated, with regional television news (31%) coming second, both finishing a long way ahead of any other news sources. In third place was ‘other people’ (9%), in fourth local radio news (8%) and in fifth the internet (7%).
Answers to the first two questions confirmed the results of previous opinion polls in which television is the chief source of world news and is regarded on an equal footing with regional and local newspapers for local news. It is also apparent that, among internet users, the internet has become established as an important source of world news and is becoming more significant in relation to more localised news coverage.
Frequency of use of news sources
One in two respondents (49%) used the internet to access news information at least once a day, and a further 30% at least once a week. Men (62%) were proportionately more likely than women to use the internet for news everyday.
All those respondents who ever used the internet as a news source (n = 1,690) were then asked how often they used a range of news websites. Top, by a wide margin, was BBC online news (92%), with a number of established and newer brands following in its wake: a collective of different regional newspapers websites (44%), Guardian (42%), Independent (38%), Google News (38%), Times (35%), Telegraph (33%), Sky News (31%), CNN (30%), ITN (UK) (29%), Yahoo News (27%), Mail (20%), Sun (17%) and Mirror (15%).
Thirty per cent claimed to visit the BBC’s site everyday, with men (41%) far more likely to do this than women (20%).
The findings confirm the growing presence of the internet as a regional or local news source. High positions were also attained by the Guardian and Independent nationals. These two print newspapers were the most widely read by our panel (by 18% and 20% of the total sample, respectively) but their news websites were used by consumers other than regular (at least two copies a week) readers of the offline versions. The Guardian’s website was the second most likely to be used everyday (by 9%). Both the Guardian (33% versus 51%) and Independent (24% versus 54%) news sites attracted fewer women than men visitors.
Google also achieved a high ranking. Nearly four in 10 online news consumers turned to Google as a news site.
The dedicated avatar news site Ananova received patronage from 9% of these news consumers. The very small numbers using this site daily (0.4%) indicated that it had novelty value rather than an established niche following.
Trust in news sources
While new news brands such as Google and Yahoo have emerged as important news providers, the longer-established news brands still dominate even in the new medium. Could this be linked to trust?
This survey asked all respondents to indicate which news sources they trusted to give accurate and unbiased coverage of events. Listed sources included television channels, radio services, newspapers and internet sources. A number of branded online news sources were named (see Table 1 in print version of September Update, p. 41).
These findings reveal differences in news consumers’ perceptions of news sources not only by platform, but more especially by ‘brand’. The BBC exhibited the strongest news brand overall and was widely trusted on every platform – television, radio or internet. The two public service television broadcasters – Channel 4 and ITV1 – were also widely trusted.
Next in the trust list came the Independent and Guardian newspapers and we found the extent to which these publications commanded public trust exceeds their regular readership. The faith in the Guardian brand extends to its news website, which was as widely trusted as Five News and the highly regarded Financial Times. Despite the traditionally high level of trust placed in television as a news medium, Sky News commanded less confidence as a brand than did other UK television news broadcasters. Independent (commercial) radio also clearly commanded far less public trust than did BBC radio.
Less trust in internet in general
The ‘internet’ in general was less widely trusted than the major broadcasters and tabloid newspapers, but more widely trusted than tabloid and mid-market daily newspapers. Particularly interesting is the fact that the public’s faith in tabloid news providers is down in the same zone as trust in Al Jazeera, the Arab television channel best known for transmitting terrorist groups’ messages.
Gender differences were rare. The most notable findings were that women were more likely to place trust in the Mail (31% versus 17%) and less likely to place trust in the Daily Telegraph (35% versus 45%). Male respondents were more likely (21%/10%) to exhibit some degree of trust in Al Jazeera.
Online versus offline
Finally, is there any evidence that online news is taking news consumers away from offline news? In particular are new brands replacing old brands in terms of patronage? Respondents were asked whether they had perceived any effect of using internet news on their use of other types of news. While such self-attributions may not necessarily reveal actual behaviour changes, they do indicate what potential changes consumers might expect.
Most respondents thought use of the internet for news had had no effect on their use of other news sources (79% in the case of radio, 70% for television, and 64% for newspapers). However, among the minorities who had noticed effects, many more claimed that their use of other sources had decreased rather than increased. In all, newspaper reading appeared to have been most affected (28% saying it had declined), followed by television (25% reporting decreased viewing) and finally radio (13% reporting decreased listening).
Gender variations occurred here in respect of newspaper and television news consumption. Male respondents were far more likely to say that their newspaper readership (34% versus 23%) and viewing of televised news (33% versus 17%) had declined.
When going online for news, many news consumers still seek out established brands. For instance, many respondents visited the news websites of the newspapers they read in hard copy. One in 10 users of online news visited the website of a newspaper they read everyday, while nearly one in three (32%) did this at least once or twice a week or even on most days.
Use of the websites of other newspapers they might read in hard copy occurred less often, with just three per cent saying they visited such sites everyday and one in four (25%) more than once a week but less than everyday. These results indicate that patronage of newspapers in one form (offline) may lead to patronage in another form (online) and that this link is most likely to occur with a reader’s preferred newspaper.
It is clear that the internet is a news platform of ever-growing significance. Equally, the use of this new news platform and the trust placed in it as a news source continue to be driven by the best known offline news brands that have now established a firm web presence.
Reference
1 The online panel is operated by eDigitalResearch.com, a UK internet research company.
Barrie Gunter is Professor of Mass Communication and Head of the Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester.
Updated: 23 August 2006