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The twelfth Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 93,000 online news consumers in 46 media markets The report provides evidence that news audiences are becoming more dependent on digital and social platforms, putting further pressure on both ad-based and subscription business models of news organisations at a time when both household and company spending is being squeezed. The report documents how video-based content, distributed via networks such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are becoming more important for news, especially in parts of the Global South, while legacy platforms such as Facebook are losing influence. Both interest and trust in news continue to fall in many countries as the connection between journalism and much of the public continues to fray.

In this report, we use survey data collected in April 2021 to document and understand how people in eight countries (Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the UK, and the US) accessed news and information about COVID-19 more than a year into the global pandemic. We examine how they rate the trustworthiness of the different sources and platforms they rely on, how much misinformation they say they encounter, and how they see vaccines. For six of the countries (where we have comparable data from April 2020), we track changes over the last year.

In this Reuters Institute factsheet, we analyse the gender breakdown of top editors in a strategic sample of 240 major online and offline news outlets in twelve different markets across five continents. Building off work started in 2020, we find in 2021 that only 22% of the 181 top editors across the 240 brands covered are women. In 2020, this percentage was 23% across the 200 brands covered. We find that men make up the majority of top editors eleven out of twelve markets and that while there is a positive correlation between the percentage of women working in journalism and the percentage in top editorial positions, there remains unequal representation. We also find large variation in the number of people who get news from outlets with a female top editor, along with no meaningful correlation between greater gender equality in society and the percentage of female top editors. Findings indicate no clear overall trend towards greater gender equality in top editorial positions from 2020 to 2021.

The ninth Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 80,000 online news consumers in 40 markets including Kenya and the Philippines for the first time. The report looks at the impact of coronavirus on news consumption and on the economic prospects for publishers. It looks at progress on new paid online business models, trust and misinformation, partisanship and populism, and the popularity of new curated editorial products like podcasts and email newsletters.

In this RISJ Factsheet we examine changes in attitudes towards the coronavirus pandemic response in the UK from mid-April to the end of May. This is the fourth in a series of ten factsheets based on an ongoing online panel survey of a representative sample of the UK population, fielded from 21 May to 27 May 2020. We find that: (i) trust in the UK government as a source of information about coronavirus has declined substantially, and that trust in news organisations has also decreased, (ii) the percentage of people who say they are concerned about false or misleading information about coronavirus from the UK government has increased, and (iii) the proportion who say that the UK government is doing a good job responding to the coronavirus crisis is down 21 percentage points since April, with a fall of eight points for news organisations.

In this RISJ Factsheet we examine news avoidance during the coronavirus pandemic in the UK. This is the third in a series of ten factsheets based on an ongoing online panel survey of a representative sample of the UK population, fielded from 7 May to 13 May 2020. We find that: (i) there has been a significant increase in news avoidance, with 22% saying they often or always actively try to avoid the news (up from 15% in mid-April), (ii) women (26%) are more likely to avoid news than men (18%), compounding existing gender inequalities in news use, (iii) the vast majority of those who always or often avoid news (86%), say they are trying to avoid COVID-19 news at least some of the time, with most primarily worried about the effect it has on their mood (66%).

In this Reuters Institute factsheet we analyse the gender break-down of top editors in a strategic sample of 200 major online and offline news outlets in ten different markets across four continents.

In this RISJ factsheet we analyse 720,799 news-related tweets from a larger dataset of 4.4 million tweets collected during the 2017 German Federal Election to examine the role of digital-born and legacy news media in online political discussions in Germany. The authors Sílvia Majó-Vázquez, Jason R. C. Nurse, Felix M.Simon, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen show in this study how news audience attention took shape on Twitter during the weeks ahead of the polling day and up to the day after of the celebration of this major political event in Europe. Their findings suggest that legacy news media – especially the main public service media organizations and the most important weeklies – figured very prominently in political discussions on Twitter. According to the authors this results speaks to the audience preference for quality journalism and video. Their results also show that that a number of new digital-born brands, including several aligned with national conservative political positions, saw far wider engagement on social media than their size would suggest. In contrast, many established media, especially regional and local newspapers, saw little engagement on Twitter. Among the main findings the authors highlight that the major public service media organisations, ARD and ZDF, alongside weekly news publications, especially Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, which featured very prominently during the German campaign. All four had wide reach and higher levels of audience engagement than other news providers. Secondly, they also found that coinciding with increased popular support for far-right parties in Germany, some news outlets with a clear national-conservative political position, including several digital-born brands and one newspaper, played an important role on Twitter. Notably, they generated much more engagement than their posting activity and generally limited audience reach would suggest. Finally, their data suggests that despite their offline reach, considerable editorial resources, and historical importance, regional newspapers generated overall very little engagement on Twitter during the German Federal election.

In this report, we examine seven internationally oriented digital-born news media based in the US (or opening newsrooms there), with a presence in four different European markets: France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. The organisations covered include long-established digital players, newer entrants, and recently launched European enterprises. We find: First, several of the internationally oriented digital-born news media have used a combination of on-site and off-site distribution to build large audiences across multiple countries, generally on the basis of a much leaner organisation than most legacy media. Second, the business model of most internationally oriented digital-born news media is based on digital display advertising, an increasingly challenging market. Pay or member models are rare. So far, most internationally oriented digital-born news media remain in investment and growth mode, and have not been consistently profitable. Third, while expansion has enabled internationally oriented digital-born news media to expand their audiences, there are tensions between globalising and localising pressures, decisions about whether to partner or go alone, maintaining consistency in branding and tone across multiple editions and languages catering to sometimes very different markets, and the challenges of coordinating global newsrooms – challenges to which several of our case organisations are in turn developing technological responses.

In this report, we analyse how local and regional newspapers in Europe are adapting to an increasingly digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment. Local news organisations play a particularly important role in terms of serving their communities. The challenges and opportunities they face are partly similar to those of national news organisations (declining legacy reach and revenues, shrinking newsrooms, new chances to connect with audiences online) but also partly distinct (most have fewer opportunities to pursue scale and more limited resources to invest in digital media but also less direct competition in their local markets).

Digital-born and legacy news media are competing to control the most central positions in the flow of online news. In this RISJ Factsheet, we examine how this competition unfolds during the French presidential election. We analyze a sample of 2.96 million news related tweets from a larger dataset of 43.5 million messages collected during the 2017 French elections. We find that legacy media, most notably newspapers and broadcasters, figure very prominently in the political discussions on Twitter. Legacy media generated more than seven times as much activity and engagement as digital-born news media during the election. Our results suggest that some newspapers and digital-born news media have much lower levels of engagement than their general audience reach, follower count, and their frequent tweeting would lead one to expect. According to our analysis audience attention and engagement is very unevenly distributed and it is not always proportional to the level of media activity.

This report reveals new insights about digital news consumption. Based on a representative survey of online news consumers across twelve countries – UK, US, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Finland, Ireland, Australia, Urban Brazil and Japan – the report tracks the changing digital news behaviour of consumers.

This factsheet compares the prevalence of third-party web content and cookies on a selection of European news websites one month before and one month after the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To understand how news organisations may be adapting to the new privacy framework, prominent news websites in seven countries (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK) were analysed during the months of April and again in July 2018. While there is no change in the overall percentage of pages from news providers which contain some form of third-party content (99%) or third-party cookies (98%), we find a 22% drop in the number of cookies set without user consent and an observable decrease in third-party social media content.

This report presents an analysis of news and media use in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan based on a survey on online news users. It compliments the 2016 Reuters Institute Digital News Report with additional data from these highly developed markets that differ in some ways from other Asia-Pacific markets as well as those in Europe and North America. Our data indicate that these markets are mobile-oriented markets with a wide use of social media and search engines for news. However, across all these markets, news media organisations with strong brands and developed strategies using channels like newsletters and mobile alerts still retain a strong connection with a large number of users. The level of trust in news and perceptions of whether news is subject to undue political and commercial influences vary across these markets in ways that bear no simple relationship with freedom of the press.

This report explores how public service media (PSM) across six European countries are developing new projects and products to deliver digital news. PSM face various external challenges, including discussions around the funding, remit, and role of public service media, pressure from private sector media competitors, the rise of platform companies, and continued changes in media use. Our focus here is specifically on how they respond to these challenges, and on the internal factors that those involved in developing new forms of digital public service news see as influencing the process of product development. Based on 36 interviews with both senior editors and managers as well as people directly involved in each project or product, we identify four foundational factors that our interviewees suggest are necessary for the successful development of new forms of digital news in PSM, and three additional factors that seem to facilitate it.

Commissioned by the Council of Europe, this report reviews challenges and opportunities for news media and journalism in today’s changing media environment. As more people get news via mobile devices and rely on social media and other intermediaries for accessing and finding news, legacy media are becoming relatively less important distributors of news and are under growing pressure as existing sources of revenue decline or stagnate. Instead, a limited number of large technology companies play an increasingly important role both in the distribution of news and in digital advertising. Domination by these new players together with consolidation and cost-cutting elsewhere in the media landscape can reduce media pluralism by undermining the diversity of news production. The move to an increasingly digital, mobile, and social media environment also means that forms of policy intervention designed for twentieth century media environments will need reform to be effective and efficient in this century.

We examine twelve digital-born news media organisations across France, Germany, Spain, and the UK, focusing on funding models, distribution strategies, and editorial priorities. We find that European digital-born news media are clearly rooted in the profession of journalism. Producing quality journalism or having social impact are more prominent goals than delivering digital innovation or building lucrative new media businesses. New journalistic ventures seem most successful where old ones are weak, rather than where digital media are most widely used or online advertising markets are most developed. European digital-born news media organisations are similar in many respects to legacy media; this reflects their focus on journalism over business and technology. Digital-born and legacy news media face similar challenges online, especially around funding and distribution. We find that digital-born organisations are trying similar approaches – video, native advertising, various pay models, and commercial diversification – as their legacy counterparts.