DIGITAL NEWS REPORT – POLITY
News: News consumption falls in India, says study
What is in the news?
●
Recently, the 12th edition of the digital news report,
produced by the Reuters institute in collaboration with the Asian College of
Journalism, was released which surveys the news consumption habits of consumers
across 46 markets.
Key takeaways from the news:
●
Fall
in overall news consumption:
○ Overall
consumption and sharing of news declined in India from last year’s figures,
along with a sharp decrease in access to online news (-12 percentage points),
while television, too, saw a 10percentage point decline as a news source.
●
Decrease
of trust in news:
○ India
registered a small decrease of 3 percentage points in overall trust in news (38%) from last year’s figure, and was ranked 24th among 46 countries in this
regard.
○ Finland
remained the country with the highest
levels of overall trust in news (69%), while Greece had the lowest levels
(19%), globally.
●
High
importance to public news media:
○ Among
individual news brands, public broadcasters like DD India, All India Radio, and
BBC News retained high levels of trust among survey respondents in India,
emphasizing the importance of public
service media.
●
Social
media domination in news access:
○ YouTube was the most
preferred social media platform for news with
56% of the respondents accessing it.
○ WhatsApp
(47%) and Facebook (39%) were the next two preferred social media platforms for
news in India.
●
Declining
trend of direct visit to news website:
○ The
report noted that “stated preferences by audiences to directly visit news
websites continue to decline”.
○ Globally,
“the proportion that say their main
access point is via a news website or app has fallen from 32% in 2018 to 22% in
2023”, while dependence on social media access for news has grown from 23%
to 30%.