Survey: People Aren?t News Reading; They?re ?News Snacking?
Survey: People Aren’t News Reading; They’re ‘News Snacking’
By editern on June 25, 2013 2:25 PM
Mobiles Republic, a global news syndication company, recently released the results from its 2013 survey of news reading habits.
The study, based off the responses of over 8,000 of itsNews Republic® app users, indicates that news consumption is rising; as the number of news outlets grows, so do readers’ appetites for accurate, multi-sourced and fresh news.
Here are key takeaways and the full infographic:
People are checking the news more frequently and for shorter amounts of time.
Forget news reading. Today, it’s all about “news snacking,” meaning people are checking the news more often and typically on mobile devices. 75 percent of readers with smartphones and 70 percent with tablets check the news more than once a day.
It’s all about aggregators.
According to the study, 73 percent of those surveyed said they use aggregators intensively, up from 33 percent a year ago. Use of branded news applications (such as leading national dailies), on the other hand, decreased from 60 percent to 40 percent in the same period.
Social media is on the rise for checking news.
The report also indicates that people are increasingly checking sites like Facebook and Twitter for news updates; 43 percent of readers now use Facebook to check news, an increase of seven percent from last year.
What does this mean for the world’s primary news outlets? Gilles Raymond, mobile industry veteran and CEO of Mobiles Republic, said in a press release that the research, “confirms [news orgs] must have multiple streams of mobile news distribution in order to reach the mobile audiences and continue to thrive.”
– Sherry Yuan
