Thursday, October 16, 2014

Comparison of Digital News Consumption in Germany, UK and Spain

By Ryan46 and Anthony13

Background

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford recently published their digital news report for 2014. After reading and analyzing the content within the study, we decided to present a comprehensive portrayal of digital news consumption in three European countries; Germany, UK and Spain.

Interest  in news by country

We looked at the interest of news in the UK, Germany, and Spain. Amongst these three categories, Germany was the leading country. In the study, 87% of the people said that they were interested in checking the news, which leaves the remaining 13% saying that they weren't very interested. When you look at the large scale, 87% percent is a large majority of the country. Spain fell right below Germany with a total of 73% saying that they were interested in checking the news. The UK was towards the bottom of the list with only 64% of the people saying they were interested. Out of all the countries studied, every country with regards to being interested in the news was above 60 percent.


The types of news that each country was interested in varied based on the country.

 In Germany, regional news seemed to be more important, which reflects the way that media and politics are structured in the country. In Germany, 51% said they they were interested in news about their region. In Spain we see that they are interested in their own country, which includes interest in art and culture. The UK had a wide variety of interest, the study they said that they were very interested in international news as well as local news about their town or city. The highest percentage of interest in all countries came from the news in their own country.


Interest in types of news by country

Across all the countries, television is still the primary method of interpreting news. TV news consumption is primarily conducted through news bulletins and 24 hour news channels. The study showed further that online news consumption was the second most prevalent form of news analysis. Online consumption can be understood to be through computer, mobile or tablet viewing of websites/apps. We see a low level importance placed on online news in Germany and France. While online sources are valued in Spain and US.


Smartphone vs. Tablet Consumption of News by Country

From the above graphic we saw that online news, which we understand to be relatively new, is an important method of gathering information. We wanted to get a more comprehensive view of digital media usage so we synthesized the information regarding social news consumption in Germany, Spain and the UK. We can gather a lot of info from this approach such as how there has been an increase in both smartphone and tablet usage for news in the past year and also that smartphones for all three countries are more predominant than tablets for news gathering. 






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