The highest level of trust in the media is in Finland
Finland remains the country with the highest level of overall trust in news (69%).
It has increased by four percentage points compared to 2021, and by 13 percentage points compared to 2020. Finland’s media market is one of three where more than 60% of the surveyed population indicated that they “trust most of the news most of the time.” The other countries with such figures are Portugal and South Africa.
On a global average, only four in ten respondents (42%) said they trust most of the news most of the time. Trust in news is lowest in the U.S. and Slovakia (both at 26%). These countries are followed by Taiwan and Greece (27%).
The average age of an online news subscriber is almost 50 years old
Getting young audiences interested in news, let alone getting young people to pay for news, is a huge challenge for today’s media.
This problem has been made clear by a study that found that the average age of those who pay to access news on digital platforms is 47. In the US, people under the age of 30 make up only 17% of news subscribers, and in the UK, just 8%.
However, the percentage of young subscribers in the US is also in line with the average of the 20 countries where the practice of paying for news is relatively widespread. Norway continues to be the world leader in paying for digital news (41% of users paid for online news content last year), followed by Sweden (33%), Finland (19%) and the US (19%).
While there has been a steady increase in the number of users willing to pay for access to news, there is also cause for concern: “long-term trends suggest a slowdown in some of the markets that have been the earliest adopters of pay-per-view. This raises the question that perhaps they are moving into a more mature phase.”
Younger audiences do consume news differently
According to the study, younger audiences are more likely to intentionally avoid news. They are also less attached to news brands because they can use other ways to get content: through social media, search engines and mobile aggregators.
The concept of journalistic impartiality is also less important to young people, in part because they grew up in a world of a social, participatory internet. At the same time, the report notes that “fear of facing bias sometimes discourages young people from consuming news at all.”
YouTube is a more popular news source than you might think
On average, more than half of digital news consumers in the Philippines (57%), Thailand (55%) and India (53%) use YouTube for news.
One reason for this user behavior is that news consumers prefer video content. Another factor influencing audiences’ preference for video may be the format’s contrast with more traditional information channels – in terms of style, tone and content. For example, the report notes that in Thailand, “a combination of low mobile Internet rates and greater freedom of expression online has led to the emergence of a large number of independent video programs that are distributed via cell phones.”
Email newsletters are probably less popular than you think
While YouTube’s popularity as a news channel is underestimated, it’s possible that the importance of email newsletters, which many newsrooms have been keen on in recent years, is overstated.
While newsletters can be a key tool for attracting subscribers and engaging with audiences on a regular basis, fewer than one in five (17%) online news consumers receive regular updates via email. People who pay more attention to newsletters tend to be older, better educated and often more interested in news than the average consumer.
Those who use e-mail as a news source cite convenience (65%), a diverse range of stories (30%) and the tone/style of the newsletter (24%) among their reasons for choosing it. The authorial tone, which can often be very different from other news channels, was highly valued by users in India (55%) and South Korea (40%).