How young people get their news
I am sitting now in Paris at a conference on New Media and the Press Freedom Dimension. The conference which is coorganised by the World Press Freedom Committee, the World Association of Newspapers/World Editors Forum and UNESCO - where the event takes place - features a session on 'How Young People Get Their News'.
On the panel are Chris Schuepp coordinator of Young People’s Media Network at UNICEF, Roxana Morduchowicz, Director of Media Education, Argentinean Education Ministry, Evelyne Bevort, Associate Director, Centre de Liaison de l’Enseignement et des Moyens d’Information in France, Robert Barnard, Founder of D-Code, Canada. The moderator of the event is Aralynn McMane, Director, Young Readership Development, World Association of Newspapers.
read more in the extended entry
Aralyn started by presenting a background document for the session which brings together 60 studies on how young people access news, the background document is available here. She stressed that young people are exposed to media younger than ever before. This is why the Newspaper industry and the WAN have been promoting programmes such as 'Newspapers in the classroom' or the 'Young Journalists Projects'.
A consensus among the presenters was that young people's media access and media use is strongly influenced by their environment. This was highlighted by Roxana Morduchowicz from the MoE in Argentina who pointed out that in her country there are clearly two groups according to high or low income of parents. Low income tend to turn to TV to access information while higher income adopt internet and ICT .
Similarly, Robert Barnard from D-Code Canada pointed out that difference in usage of the media is also strongly influenced by the time in which young people live in. "If you are in your twenties and you live in 1960, new media for you is more likely to be Instant cameras, colour television, cassette recorders, in 1996, it is videos games, cable tvs, VHS. What we call new media now are Blogs, internet, ipods... This is not new media, this is their media, he says."
For Robert Barmand, new technologies are above all formative technologies which forms generation personalities.
Young people have access to many different technologies and sources of information to create and distribute their stories, as this generation enjoys more freedom than any other generation on the planet in the past, what are they going to do with this freedom? Are they going to get involved in the fight for freedom of the press, are they going to use the multiple sources of information available to them? "Press freedom is an aspect where this young generation will have to make a choice" he concludes.
Evelyne Bevort, Associate Director, Centre de Liaison de l’Enseignement et des Moyens d’Information in France gave the account of a European-funded research, on how young people get their news and what information they are looking for. She mentioned that the notion of information strongly differs among young people. "If you ask 10 young people information about an event, it is likely that you you will have ten different accounts of this event".
The EU study shows that 97 per cent of young people know internet, they use internet in combination with other media most of the time in a multitasking environment to inform themselves, communicate or a combination of the two:
When they use in combination:
Interest:
The study shows that the topic young people are most likely going to search information for on the internet is entertainment, sports, environment and international politics linked to current events... Business news is the topic with less interest for children. Another finding of the study shows that the more young people are interested in the topic, the more sources they will use (TV, magazine, internet). When the topic is less linked to their person interest (such as a teacher assignment), young people will more likely trust a single source.
... to be continued