1 00:00:08,960 --> 00:00:15,380 Welcome to Feature of Journalism, a podcast from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. 2 00:00:15,380 --> 00:00:22,830 I'm Federico Roubini. They had a leadership development a day. 3 00:00:22,830 --> 00:00:29,740 Is a special series of our podcast, and it's dedicated to the digital news report, 22 over seven episodes, 4 00:00:29,740 --> 00:00:35,230 we are diving into the most comprehensive piece of research on news consumption around the world. 5 00:00:35,230 --> 00:00:42,970 In this episode of the series, we're joined by Kirsten Eddy, research fellow at the Institute and co-author of the digital news report. 6 00:00:42,970 --> 00:00:51,100 As part of the report, Kirsten has authored a special chapter on how younger audiences are engaging with news and episodes. 7 00:00:51,100 --> 00:00:58,810 We will dive into some of the main differences between our generation's access and consume news and attitudes towards it. 8 00:00:58,810 --> 00:01:03,010 Kirsten, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. 9 00:01:03,010 --> 00:01:12,520 So determined young people is typically vague, shall we first unpack what you mean in your research when we use this term? 10 00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:22,210 Yes. This is such a great question because I think it's very easy for us to lump all young people into one big, monolithic category. 11 00:01:22,210 --> 00:01:28,570 In our research, we tried to avoid broad generational claims, so we focus this on two separate groups. 12 00:01:28,570 --> 00:01:37,330 The first are social natives, so these are 18 to 24 year olds who largely grew up with social networks and then digital natives, 13 00:01:37,330 --> 00:01:42,460 which are twenty five to thirty four year olds who largely grew up in the information age. 14 00:01:42,460 --> 00:01:51,300 But before the rise of social networks. Why is it important to consider young people news use habit? 15 00:01:51,300 --> 00:01:55,860 I mean, I don't think it's it's new information that publishers and journalists around the 16 00:01:55,860 --> 00:02:00,810 world are increasingly concerned about how to attract and engage young people. 17 00:02:00,810 --> 00:02:04,290 These groups are critical. Audiences for news are going to positions. 18 00:02:04,290 --> 00:02:09,600 I mean, they are the future generations of news consumers, but they're also increasingly hard to reach, 19 00:02:09,600 --> 00:02:14,970 and they're incredibly diverse and have different media behaviours and attitudes than their older peers, 20 00:02:14,970 --> 00:02:21,920 which I think makes one size fits all approach is particularly difficult for drawing these groups in. 21 00:02:21,920 --> 00:02:31,730 From your research, what would you say is the main difference between how younger generations engage with news compared to older generations? 22 00:02:31,730 --> 00:02:36,050 We really see a lot of differences in news behaviours based on age. 23 00:02:36,050 --> 00:02:43,310 But in terms of how they're accessing news, I think one key difference that we continue to find over time is that younger 24 00:02:43,310 --> 00:02:50,270 audiences overall are increasingly much more reliant on on side door sources to news. 25 00:02:50,270 --> 00:02:54,770 That includes social media aggregator sites and search engines. 26 00:02:54,770 --> 00:02:58,070 And they're far less loyal to news brands than older groups are. 27 00:02:58,070 --> 00:03:06,070 And we see this difference being particularly striking amongst those social natives or 18 to 24 year olds. 28 00:03:06,070 --> 00:03:14,140 We tend to associate younger people with some of the newer social networks like TikTok or Snapchat. 29 00:03:14,140 --> 00:03:17,860 To what extent are young people using this for news? 30 00:03:17,860 --> 00:03:24,580 I think that's a fair association and we definitely see the turn toward these newer social networks in general, 31 00:03:24,580 --> 00:03:32,770 largely resulting from shifts in those social natives media behaviours, while the older groups kind of tend to have more entrenched media habits. 32 00:03:32,770 --> 00:03:41,560 But I don't think the use of these platforms is quite as widespread as we might expect, and younger audiences aren't simply all tech talkers. 33 00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:43,180 However, to give one example, 34 00:03:43,180 --> 00:03:52,120 the percentage of 18 to 24 four year olds using TikTok for news has increased five fold over our markets over just a three year span, 35 00:03:52,120 --> 00:03:58,420 so that was three percent in 2020, using that for news and 15 percent in twenty twenty two. 36 00:03:58,420 --> 00:04:06,550 So while it is a fairly small percent, about 15 percent using TikTok for news and that is relatively low on its own, 37 00:04:06,550 --> 00:04:14,830 these changes over a very short period of time are pretty striking. And I think it's important to note that this also varies a lot by markets as well. 38 00:04:14,830 --> 00:04:21,070 So in Thailand, we see nearly a third of people under 35 using TikTok for news specifically. 39 00:04:21,070 --> 00:04:25,280 But in the U.K., that number is only six percent right now. 40 00:04:25,280 --> 00:04:29,420 Now, it might be difficult to generalise because of the of the differences you just mentioned, 41 00:04:29,420 --> 00:04:35,060 but what do you think is the appeal of such platforms for news? Are there more visual? 42 00:04:35,060 --> 00:04:38,660 What is that? Definitely. I think that's a piece of it. 43 00:04:38,660 --> 00:04:46,400 And we actually we supplemented our survey data this year with qualitative research with 18 to 30 year olds in Brazil, 44 00:04:46,400 --> 00:04:52,070 the U.S. and the U.K., and asked them a ton of questions about their news, habits and attitudes. 45 00:04:52,070 --> 00:05:00,290 And many of them said that they're really drawn to kind of exactly what you said the form informal and entertaining style of visual media. 46 00:05:00,290 --> 00:05:10,220 They often talked about platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube as being more personalised and diverse than traditional formats like TV. 47 00:05:10,220 --> 00:05:17,180 They talked about it as a resource that they turn to for rapidly changing events like the Russia Ukraine conflict. 48 00:05:17,180 --> 00:05:20,840 And they talked about it as a venue for some of their more niche interests and hobbies. 49 00:05:20,840 --> 00:05:28,180 So some of the things that maybe we traditionally wouldn't even consider to be hard news in the first place. 50 00:05:28,180 --> 00:05:33,460 One of the central question in the main report concerns a level of trust in news, 51 00:05:33,460 --> 00:05:39,100 and we know one of the main findings this year is that overall trust in news is slightly down. 52 00:05:39,100 --> 00:05:46,090 It is a case also amongst younger people and how the level of trust differ between generations. 53 00:05:46,090 --> 00:05:54,370 Yes, that's certainly true. We continue to see longer term falls in interest and trust in news amongst younger audiences, 54 00:05:54,370 --> 00:05:57,860 though, as you said, we do see this across age groups and markets. 55 00:05:57,860 --> 00:06:05,680 So it's not just limited to our younger groups, but there are important differences in levels of trust by age. 56 00:06:05,680 --> 00:06:10,480 Both the digital and social natives are our low, lowest trusting age groups. 57 00:06:10,480 --> 00:06:18,970 So on average, across our forty six markets, only a third of both of these groups say that they trust most news most of the time. 58 00:06:18,970 --> 00:06:24,220 And that's compared with nearly half of those who are 55 and older. 59 00:06:24,220 --> 00:06:33,760 Specifically, if we look at recent years, we've faced so many, you know, big news stories that could have been seen as negative of the press, 60 00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:39,460 but also have very profound direct impact on young people life COVID 19. 61 00:06:39,460 --> 00:06:45,280 Think about it has disrupted people's young people's indication and perhaps the beginning of their careers. 62 00:06:45,280 --> 00:06:55,490 The world overall are younger people engaging news because they find it relevant to their lives or tuning out because of all of the negativity. 63 00:06:55,490 --> 00:07:02,320 What are they saying? This is such a great question, and it's one I've thought about a lot recently. 64 00:07:02,320 --> 00:07:05,950 We continue to see news avoidance increasing around the world, 65 00:07:05,950 --> 00:07:11,350 especially amongst younger groups, and even more so specifically for that 18 to 24 year olds. 66 00:07:11,350 --> 00:07:18,400 Group and younger audiences largely had similar responses when we asked why they choose to avoid the news. 67 00:07:18,400 --> 00:07:22,840 So there weren't major gaps between the sort of digital and social natives. 68 00:07:22,840 --> 00:07:27,070 They often said that it has, as you said, a negative effect on their mood in the UK. 69 00:07:27,070 --> 00:07:35,110 We heard that two thirds of news a Reuters under thirty five saying the news brings down their mood and some of our qualitative 70 00:07:35,110 --> 00:07:42,760 research participants talked about forming particular news habits to avoid negativity or to protect their mental health. 71 00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:48,760 They also often said that there's just too much news coverage of topics like politics or the coronavirus. 72 00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:54,460 And I think this is especially important because it shows us that younger audiences aren't necessarily avoiding all news. 73 00:07:54,460 --> 00:08:01,000 In fact, many of them are selectively avoiding topics like politics and COVID specifically. 74 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:08,380 So you suppose you talk about topics, but are there any differences in the types of music younger people in first place consume, 75 00:08:08,380 --> 00:08:12,760 but also what they consider news in the first place? 76 00:08:12,760 --> 00:08:14,230 There are, and I think, 77 00:08:14,230 --> 00:08:22,270 those perceptions of of too much newsroom attention going toward topics like politics and COVID sort of reflect those differences. 78 00:08:22,270 --> 00:08:26,410 We find that many young people have a much wider definition of what news is. 79 00:08:26,410 --> 00:08:36,430 So in our qualitative work, they would often distinguish between the news as a sort of narrow traditional agenda of politics and current affairs, 80 00:08:36,430 --> 00:08:46,570 and a broader news umbrella encompassing a whole range of topics from sports to celebrity gossip to culture and science. 81 00:08:46,570 --> 00:08:50,560 And I think this also came through in our survey research this year. 82 00:08:50,560 --> 00:08:55,000 Both of our younger groups are less interested in news in general than older groups, 83 00:08:55,000 --> 00:09:00,550 and so it makes sense that they expressed lower interest in most news topics generally. 84 00:09:00,550 --> 00:09:07,780 But they were particularly less interested in traditional beats like politics or international news than the older cohorts were, 85 00:09:07,780 --> 00:09:15,160 and they were more interested in softer news topics like entertainment and celebrity or education news. 86 00:09:15,160 --> 00:09:23,350 And I think we find that even many of the types of news that we often deem as a sort of young people topics so things like social justice, 87 00:09:23,350 --> 00:09:27,910 mental health and wellness, climate change or fun news or satire. 88 00:09:27,910 --> 00:09:37,280 These things don't necessarily translate into greater interest in news about these topics for all or even most younger audiences. 89 00:09:37,280 --> 00:09:44,480 We talk about some of the reason for avoiding the news. But what about the reasons for accessing the news? 90 00:09:44,480 --> 00:09:49,730 What are the main differences of this cohort compared to all the people? 91 00:09:49,730 --> 00:09:57,680 When we asked about why people personally choose to keep up with the news this year, we actually see some similarities across our age groups. 92 00:09:57,680 --> 00:10:03,770 On average across our markets, all age groups see the news as equally important for learning new things. 93 00:10:03,770 --> 00:10:11,630 But we do see that our younger groups are slightly more motivated than older groups by how entertaining the news is and how shareable it is. 94 00:10:11,630 --> 00:10:16,370 And they're slightly less motivated than older groups by that sense of duty to 95 00:10:16,370 --> 00:10:23,390 stay informed of news or by feeling how feeling it's personally useful to them. 96 00:10:23,390 --> 00:10:26,450 But this very drastically within each market. 97 00:10:26,450 --> 00:10:34,460 So it became clear to us that young audiences engage in a sort of mix and match of motivations depending on their interests, 98 00:10:34,460 --> 00:10:43,320 along with the types of content that they're thinking about or seeking out. Given that young people, by definition, the next generation of news, 99 00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:48,990 consumers are engaging with journalism in different ways to their older counterparts, 100 00:10:48,990 --> 00:10:56,220 what do you think news organisations can do to reach this demographic and ensure the viability of their respective outlets? 101 00:10:56,220 --> 00:11:00,450 Are there any good examples out there that you can point to us of? 102 00:11:00,450 --> 00:11:06,060 You know, organisation using innovative ways to attract younger audiences? 103 00:11:06,060 --> 00:11:11,490 You know, as as we continue to see young audiences behaviours and preferences shift, 104 00:11:11,490 --> 00:11:16,380 even in ways that distinguish the social natives from digital natives, 105 00:11:16,380 --> 00:11:22,530 it's certainly more of a challenge for media organisations to attract them and to keep them around. 106 00:11:22,530 --> 00:11:30,840 And I think it's important to note that some of what we see here a young news users as more casual, less loyal, 107 00:11:30,840 --> 00:11:36,240 less trusting and more sceptical is sometimes out of the control of individual outlets, 108 00:11:36,240 --> 00:11:41,970 and it isn't necessarily something that could just be fixed by creating a TikTok account. 109 00:11:41,970 --> 00:11:43,290 But that said, 110 00:11:43,290 --> 00:11:51,720 we do find that younger audiences are looking for more diverse voices and perspective tips and for stories that don't depress and upset them. 111 00:11:51,720 --> 00:11:59,970 And I think this desire for diversity reflects a lot of opportunity for news organisations in offering a variety of formats and media, 112 00:11:59,970 --> 00:12:09,960 an array of topics and niche content, a range of voices in terms of who they're hearing the news from and in spaces for casual versus serious tones, 113 00:12:09,960 --> 00:12:14,460 as well as impartial versus advocacy centred approaches. 114 00:12:14,460 --> 00:12:23,400 So I think where we see great examples of innovation is when organisations are connecting with the broad range of topics that young people care about, 115 00:12:23,400 --> 00:12:28,620 where they're developing multimedia and platform specific content, 116 00:12:28,620 --> 00:12:33,690 and particularly when they're aligning that content and tone with the format they're using, 117 00:12:33,690 --> 00:12:41,520 rather than simply replacing what they already do or just expecting young people to kind of eventually come around to what's always been done. 118 00:12:41,520 --> 00:12:48,690 And I think the former piece of that is particularly important because we do see there is value in what news brands already offer. 119 00:12:48,690 --> 00:12:54,900 We see that in moments like the pandemic or the war in Ukraine, where they feel they need to know what's happening. 120 00:12:54,900 --> 00:13:00,550 Many young people do value and turn to mainstream news brands. 121 00:13:00,550 --> 00:13:04,930 Christine, thank you so much for joining us for a very insightful podcast. 122 00:13:04,930 --> 00:13:15,150 Thank you for having me. Our guest today was Kidston A-D, first doctoral research fellow at the institute and co-author of the digital news report. 123 00:13:15,150 --> 00:13:20,460 Thank you all for listening to this episode of Digital News Report. 2022 podcast series. 124 00:13:20,460 --> 00:13:24,660 You can catch up on other episodes on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 125 00:13:24,660 --> 00:13:31,560 If you want to read the report in full, you can find the online and digital news report dot org slash 2022. 126 00:13:31,560 --> 00:13:33,840 And if you don't want to miss any news from the institute, 127 00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:39,960 subscribe to our weekly newsletter by clicking the link on our Twitter bio or on our homepage. 128 00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:55,272 This was featured of Journalism, a podcast by the Writers Institute and Digital Academy and Live Action.