Commentary
New Research Charts How Digital News Consumption Eclipsed Traditional Channels
- by Tony Silber , Staff Writer, November 10, 2021
Digital media has massively disrupted the ways in which Americans receive news over the last two decades, pushing TV, radio and print into a subordinate role. Now, new data from Pew Research Center explores the contours of that disruption, indicating just how much has changed.
For example, a large majority …
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Tony, as I have pointed out before, it really matters what kind of "news" the respondent is thinking about when answering such questions. Is it about the respondent's family or friends---then, yes, I would expect social media to place vey high. But if it's about the stock market taking a tumble or some warlike crisis involving the U.S overseas I would bet that the first thing that many people would do is turn on their TV set and go to CNN, MSNBC, etc. Of course there are many gradations between these extremes---but all "news"isn't equal in terms of personal relevance to the consumer or urgency. Also, the term,"often" in this type of study can mean different things to different respondents and this also applies to the various "news" items and sources. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if a person who claims that he/she "often" gets "news" from TV devotes 7-10 hours a week to TV news. But a respondent who claims to often get "news" from digital venues may spend only 2 hours hours per week doing exactly that.
All of that news that I and everyone else is reading/watching on their phone, computer, or tablet: who produced it? A high percentage was reported, written and edited by staff members at newspapers and magazines, or was disseminated by AP, Reuters, etc., who got it from newspapers and magazines. Computers, tablets, and smartphones are just delivery platforms; they are not actually producing any journalism. Pew writes as if print publications can simply go away because supposedly no one reads them in print anymore (which also is not true) and their journalism can go with them. But that's still most of the journalism produced in the US.