Longitudinal Changes in News Consumption Patterns since 2004

The final session at ECREA 2014 today starts with Irene Costera Meijer, whose interest is in the changing patterns of news consumption – from consumption in fixed places and at fixed times through the customisation of news and the active contribution to the news to the foregrounding of the social experience of news. Research into these changes has largely been based on survey or diary research, or on Web metrics.

How may be able to further examine such changes over a longer period of time, though? The project engaged in a ten-year programme of multi-mode investigations that focussed on exploring actual news use practices rather than on encouraging respondents to offer their opinions only.

This identified a change in the meaning of terms such as reading and watching the news, from referring specifically to print and television to including engagement with online news and hand-held devices. Time-shifted reading through apps such as Pocket and Instapaper, as well as on-demand news watching, also emerged as new practices. Viewing and listening have also become practices that generate feelings of companionship and connection with the outside world.

Checking the news was dependent on connectivity and provided a moment of pause in 2004; in 2014, apps facilitate continuous checking and enable quick checking even in micro-periods of waiting. This has also led to the development of practices such as news snacking (similar to zapping throough channels or flipping through a magazine) and news scanning (to explore specifically whether there are any news for a specific field of interest. Similarly, monitoring actively surveys an informational environment relating to a specific issue or story for new developments. And there are many more new terms which are still emerging...