Owing to the internet and 24 hour television channels, accessing the latest news is simply a click of a mouse or the press of a button away. People no longer rely on their morning paper to find out what is going on in the world – or do they? How many of us do still read the papers in order to catch up on the world, how many of us even care what is going on and how many of us use new ways of following world events?
We conducted a survey across a nationally representative sample of 1000 adults in order to establish the UK’s news habits.
90% of the adults we surveyed like to keep up to date with UK/World news with 84% agreeing that it is important for us to know what is going on in the world around us.
When asking how these respondents like to keep up to date with news the top 5 responses were as follows:
BBC News website: 60%
News bulletins (on regular channels): 55%
Dedicated news channels: 41%
Buying a newspaper: 36%
Social Media: 25%
This lists highlights that nearly 1 in 4 people claim that Twitter & Facebook keep them up to date with the latest news. This suggests that whilst these sites may have begun as an enjoyable outlet to interact with our friends or celebrities, they are also fast becoming a source of factual information.
In fact, our survey found that it was the immediate nature of Twitter & Facebook that was the biggest draw to using them as a point of reference for breaking news stories (36%).
It appears the internet on the whole increases an individual’s awareness of news stories as well as providing them with a fast response of information. Half of all our respondents claimed they would choose a news website as their first port of call when searching for more information on a breaking news story.
So, whilst this need for speed when a story is breaking seems to heavily favour the nature of the internet what does this do to our newspaper habits?
Perhaps unsurprisingly more people are likely to find out a breaking news story via Facebook or Twitter (10%) than via a newspaper (6%). Nevertheless, 68% of respondents state that they do buy a newspaper at least once a month with a quarter of all respondents still buying one daily.
Will it be that in the end social media will be the first port of call for news? Perhaps not. Only 8% of our respondents classed the information gathered here as trustworthy whilst only 1 in 10 viewed it as impartial.
It appears that whilst the speed of the information that can be gathered from Twitter or Facebook is appealing, overall people want dependable, impartial news – something supported by the choice of the BBC news website as the top answer for keeping up to date with news.
How do you get hold of the latest news? Have your say below…
For a full copy of the report please contact OnePoll info
From TV news programmes.