Investigating people's news diets: How online users use offline news

Damian Trilling, Klaus Schoenbach

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

The question how offline media use is related to online media use has been heavily debated in the last decades. If they are functionally equivalent, then advantages like low costs, rapid publication cycles, and easy access to online news could lead to them displacing offline news. Data from a large-scale survey with detailed questions about media use in the Netherlands show that, interestingly, the functions that online and offline media are used for are often the same: Those who use online media to gain a broad overview of the news, for fast updates, or for background information use offline media for the same purpose. There are some differences, though: For many citizens, the need of a broad overview of the news seems to be fulfilled by repertoires consisting of several outlets of different types, while they seem to have favorite specific outlets for news updates or background information, respectively. This suggests that outlets can especially focus on the latter two functions to distinguish themselves.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)67-91
Number of pages25
JournalCommunications
Volume40
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 2015

Keywords

  • complementarity
  • functions of news
  • news diets
  • news use
  • online news
  • substitution

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Communication
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

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