Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019 Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019 Nic Newman with Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Supported by Surveyed by © Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Digital News Report 2019 4 Contents Foreword by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen 5 3.14 Italy 94 Methodology 6 3.15 Netherlands 96 Authorship and Research Acknowledgements 7 3.16 Norway 98 3.17 Poland 100 SECTION 1 3.18 Portugal 102 Executive Summary and Key Findings by Nic Newman 9 3.19 Romania 104 3.20 Slovakia 106 SECTION 2 3.21 Spain 108 Further Analysis and International Comparison 33 3.22 Sweden 110 2.1 Paying for News and the Limits of Subscription 34 3.23 Switzerland 112 2.2 Groups and Private Networks – Time Well Spent? 38 3.24 Turkey 114 2.3 The Rise of Populism and the Consequences AMERICAS for News and Media Use 42 3.25 United States 118 2.4 What do People Think about the News Media? 49 3.26 Argentina 120 2.5 How Younger Generations Consume News Differently 55 3.27 Brazil 122 2.6 Podcasts: Who, Why, What, and Where? 60 3.28 Canada 124 3.29 Chile 126 SECTION 3 3.30 Mexico 128 Analysis by Country 65 ASIA PACIFIC EUROPE 3.31 Australia 132 3.01 United Kingdom 68 3.32 Hong Kong 134 3.02 Austria 70 3.33 Japan 136 3.03 Belgium 72 3.34 Malaysia 138 3.04 Bulgaria 74 3.35 Singapore 140 3.05 Croatia 76 3.36 South Korea 142 3.06 Czech Republic 78 3.37 Taiwan 144 3.07 Denmark 80 AFRICA 3.08 Finland 82 3.38 South Africa 148 3.09 France 84 3.10 Germany 86 SECTION 4 3.11 Greece 88 References 152 3.12 Hungary 90 Selected Publications 153 3.13 Ireland 92 4 / 5 Foreword Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) Journalism exists in the context of its audience, and if journalists As with previous reports we shed light on the questions these (and those who care about journalism) are to understand and developments raise through a combination of survey data, navigate the changing environment around news, it is critically qualitative research, and intelligence from expert contributors important that they have access to relevant, robust, independent across all of our countries. We have also looked in much more evidence and analysis on how people across countries engage detail at the news and media habits of younger people who with and use news. have grown up with digital media and products and services like Facebook and YouTube and differ in important ways from older That is what we aim to provide in the Reuters Institute Digital generations. We conducted a series of in-depth interviews and News Report, here in its eighth annual iteration. The report tracking studies in the United Kingdom and the United States provides important new insights into key issues including that we draw on in the relevant sections here and we will publish people’s willingness to pay for news, the move to private a full report on the topic later in the year. messaging applications and groups, and how people see news media around the world performing their role. A report of this scale and scope is only possible due to collaboration from our partners and sponsors around the world. We are proud to The report is based on a survey of more than 75,000 people have the opportunity to work with a number of leading academics in 38 markets, along with additional qualitative research, which and top universities in the report, as well as media experts from together make it the most comprehensive ongoing comparative the news industry itself. Our partners have helped in a variety of study of news consumption in the world. different ways, from preparing country profiles to in-depth analysis Europe remains a key focus, with 24 countries included, but we of the results. also cover seven markets in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Given the richness of the research, this report can only convey Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia) along with four a small part of the data collected and work done. More detail Latin American countries (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico) is available on our website (www.digitalnewsreport.org), which as well as the United States and Canada. We are also delighted contains slidepacks and charts, along with a licence that to include South Africa for the first time this year, following on encourages reuse, subject to attribution to the Reuters Institute. from our first stand-alone India Digital News Report, published On the website, there is also a full description of our survey earlier this year, part of our effort to make our research more methodology, the full questionnaire, and an interactive charting truly global. feature, which allows data to be compared across countries, and The report has expanded more than sevenfold since its creation, over time. Raw data tables are also available on request along with from five countries in 2012 to 38 this year, and as we work to make documentation for reuse. the report more fully global, we are proud to have been able to Making all this possible, we are hugely grateful to our sponsors: add more from the South this year. As we use online polling and Google, BBC News, Ofcom, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, need to make meaningful comparisons, we continue to focus on the Dutch Media Authority (CvdM), the Media Industry Research countries with high internet penetration and which are either Foundation of Finland, the Fritt Ord Foundation in Norway, the broadly democratic or generally compare themselves to countries Korea Press Foundation, Edelman UK, as well as our academic with a democratic tradition. (We have kept India separate from sponsors at the Hans Bredow Institute, the University of Navarra, the main Digital News Report for this reason – internet use is not the University of Canberra, the Centre d’études sur les médias, yet widespread enough there to make our online sample directly Québec, Canada, and Roskilde University in Denmark. The Open comparable to the countries covered here.) Society Foundations has joined as our newest sponsor, allowing This year’s report comes amid a complex set of challenges for us to expand the report to cover South Africa (and has committed the news industry specifically and for our media environment to supporting the inclusion of additional countries in the global more broadly, including the ongoing disruption of inherited south next year). business models for news, constant evolution in how people We are also grateful to YouGov, our polling company, who did use digital media (and the ways in which we are constantly everything possible to accommodate our increasingly complex reminded of how some of the information they come across is requirements and helped our research team analyse and untrustworthy and sometimes spread with malicious intent), contextualise the data. and social upheaval associated with the rise of populism and with low trust in many institutions. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Digital News Report 2019 6 Methodology This study has been commissioned by the Reuters Institute • It is important to note that some of our survey-based results for the Study of Journalism to understand how news is being will not match industry data, which are often based on very consumed in a range of countries. Research was conducted by different methodologies, such as web-tracking. The accuracy YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/ of these approaches can be very high, but they are also subject beginning of February 2019. to different limitations, meaning that data can also be partial • Samples in each country were assembled using nationally or incomplete. We will often look at this data to sense check representative quotas for age, gender, region, and education.1 our results or help identify potential problems with our survey The data were also weighted to targets based on census/ data before publication. On occasions we will include industry industry accepted data. data as supporting evidence with appropriate attribution. • Each year we also commission some qualitative research to • As this survey deals with news consumption, we filtered out support and complement the survey. This year, we worked with anyone who said that they had not consumed any news in the Flamingo, an international market research company, to look past month, in order to ensure that irrelevant responses didn’t in detail at the habits and behaviours of younger groups in the adversely affect data quality. This category averaged around 3%. United States and United Kingdom. The methodology included • We should note that online samples will tend to under- tracking actual online behaviour of 20 participants for several represent the consumption habits of people who are not weeks, in-depth interviews, and small group discussions with online (typically older, less affluent, and with limited formal their friends. Insights and quotes from this research are used education). In this sense it is better to think of results as to support this year’s Digital News Report but will also form representative of online populations who use news at least a separate report to be published in September. once a month. In a country like Norway this is almost everyone • Along with country-based figures, throughout the report (99%) but in South Africa this is around half (54%). we also use aggregate figures based on responses from all • These differences mean we need to be cautious when comparing respondents across all the countries covered.