More people get their news from online resources versus print media, with online news-intake also surpassing other channels including radio. The survey results came from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which took daily tracking surveys from 2,259 adults age 18 or older. So what does it all really mean?
I doubt anyone is really surprised that we’ve reached this point–online media has grown to a large extent, especially in the past few years. The print media has been dreading this day for some time, though the ongoing expectations of news media reaching this level of online permeation has enabled the traditional media sectors to prepare for the current state.
Surely that preparation has had something to do with the large number of respondents that admit to gaining their news knowledge from online, email and social media sites and services. Over 60% of survey respondents take to online news outlets, with three-fourths of respondents noting their specific use of email or social media sites for this purpose.
News resources such as CNN have been advocates of social media integration for some time, and have done a pretty good job at integrating the two aspects of news distribution and audience interactivity. The result has been a new method of sharing news content, which has been filtered to a large extent and made increasingly accessible for nearly every consumer.
The timing is working out pretty well for news resources as well, as certain social media and electronic device outlets are leaning towards even more news integration. The bulk of this integration revolves around accessibility, which has been a driving force in the online consumption of news. As far as Facebook goes, the social networking sites has been tweaking its news feed since its inception, and has recently won a patent for its format.
With Apple, media consumption is a primary goal for its consumer-facing products, also helping to drive the distribution partnerships it garners with news resources and other content providers. Both Facebook and Apple, along with the rest of the technology-enhanced methods for spreading and accessing multimedia content, are helping to further shift the market and make it easier, in some ways, for news providers to retain their audiences.
The question of finding the best way in which to continue on this path remains unanswered, as content overload, privacy and monetization are all factors still being worked out from media outlets and content providers alike. Even as others, such as investment firms, turn to Facebook’s model for news aggregation and redistribution, the matter of optimizing such methods have yet to be reached. Knowing how the public is getting its news, though, is a huge step in the right direction.