The Modern News Consumer
Digital innovation has had a major impact on the public’s news habits. How have these changes shaped Americans’ appetite for and attitudes toward the news?
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Digital innovation has had a major impact on the public’s news habits. How have these changes shaped Americans’ appetite for and attitudes toward the news?
On cellphones, longer news stories get about twice the engaged time from readers as shorter pieces do. They also get roughly the same number of visitors.
For more than a decade, as the desktop/laptop era of computing took hold, news organizations were at a severe disadvantage competing against a raft of financially and technologically stronger tech companies. Now, the rapid advance of the mobile era threatens a whole new level of upheaval, as both the costs and technological challenges of keeping up in the swiftly evolving news ecosystem multiply.
The migration of audiences toward digital news advanced to a new level in 2011 and early 2012, the era of mobile and multidigital devices. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults own laptop or desktop computers, a number that has been stable for some years.1 Now, in addition, 44% of adults own a smartphone, and the number of tablet owners grew by about 50% since the summer of 2011, to 18% of Americans over age 18.
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