If you’re like us, you catch up on news in multiple ways – thru TV, mobile, web and of course, Usenet newsgroups. If you are, then you are also one of today’s archetypal news consumers, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life and the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The study reported and being discussed on newsgroups, shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans — more than 90 percent — use multiple platforms to get their daily news.
The wider availability of nearly instantaneous micro newsfeeds like newsgroups present has changed the very notion of our news consumption over time. Younger generations and technological savvy individuals are relying on news sources that are delivered in the form of community-sourced information.
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism asked more than 2,200 people where they get their news. Local and national TV news remain the leading news sources with online portals such as the USENET the third most popular and ahead of radio and national and local newspapers. Figuring out where users get their news is not as easy, however. Six in 10 said they have used Usenet like online portals in combination with other platforms.
“In the digital era, news has become omnipresent. Americans access it in multiple formats on multiple platforms on myriad devices,” reads the report. “The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone.”
In the digital era, humans have turned to news platforms that let them customize information according to their personal tastes. Twenty-eight percent of online users have created a personalized homepage that delivers news and information about topics that interest them or subscribe to newsgroups. They also expect to be able to access news headlines from their mobile phones when they are away from their computer. More than 30 percent of mobile phone owners use their device to read news headlines.
Pew pointed out that the Internet has become the third-most-used source for news but there was a clear sign that U.S. news consumers are using more than one news source. The Pew poll was conducted via telephone contact with 2,259 U.S. adults form Dec. 28-Jan. 19. The data carry a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points.
