A major survey of our media habits confirms the inexorable shift to mobile devices – a YouGov poll of 18,000 online consumers of news commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows a 23 per annual drop in the number of people mostly using a computer as their source of news online.
Smartphones are now the main way to access digital news for 24 per cent, up 11 percentage points in the same period, and tablets for 16 per cent, also up 11 percentage points.
The survey looked at online news consumers in the UK, US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, Denmark and Finland.
Another important finding from the research is that users tend to use a narrower range of news sources on a smartphone than they do on a desktop or tablet. Across all of the countries looked at, over one-third (37%) use just a single source each week on a smartphone – compared with 30% on a desktop or laptop.
In some countries the difference is even starker, with 55% of UK smartphone users saying they use one news source each week compared with 45% of computer users.
Dr David Levy, director of the Reuters Institute, said: ‘In some countries such as the UK the established news brands have retained their loyalty in the more competitive online environment but the rapid growth of social media as a way of discovering and consuming news has a range of possible ramifications.
‘While choice proliferates, consumption may narrow; reliance on recommendations from like-minded friends could mean people are less exposed to a broad news agenda.
Tags:Mobiles, tablets
