The vibes in the Australian news media industry right now are rancid. We’re still waiting to see if we’re getting kicked off Instagram; certain broadcasters seem to be committed to embarrassing the entire journalism profession; and at the big publishers, redundancy season has begun. Is this mess having an impact on how Australians view the role of news and the value of the industry? The 2024 Digital News Report is here to deliver the verdict.
And it’s especially exciting for Zee Feed this year, as Dr. Sora Park and Caroline Fisher invited me to contribute to this year’s edition with insights on the relationship between Australian news and social media. You can read my commentary in Chapter 5 of the report, ‘Social Media and Emerging News Trends’.
QUICK RECAP: The Digital News Report is an annual, global study on news and media consumption run by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The 2024 instalment was conducted in 47 counties, in partnership with universities in each location. The Australian survey is run by the University of Canberra. The same online survey is delivered to around 2000 people in each country. While this piece will focus on the local findings, the report also makes comparisons to other countries and ranks Australia in certain categories. You can read the full 2024 Digital News Report here.
There is lots of useful information in the news report, but I want to hone in on one insight that is most relevant to the Zee Feed audience. Truthfully, I cannot stop thinking about it:
Young women are more likely to read the comments on social media news posts than any other group. Almost half (47%) of Gen Z women do this, followed by 36% of Millennial women.
On the other hand, men are more likely than women to read comments on news websites – and this is true for every age demographic. Millennial and Gen X men are the most avid readers of news site comments.
Why is this happening?
Men (older, wealthier) are being very well-represented in the news, they have more trust in the news overall than women do. In the past two years, women’s distrust in news has jumped 15% with more than one-third of women saying they distrust the news. While 47% of Gen Z men say they are interested in news, only 23% of Gen Z women say the same – this is the biggest gender gap of all generations.
That impacts news consumption: men consume more news than women, across all demographics. Again, this isn’t necessarily surprising. Why would women – especially younger, diverse women – trust and frequent media publications that aren’t giving them what they need?
Which brings us to arguably the most influential metric of all: Men are twice as likely to pay for news than women (27% vs 14%).
People who pay are more likely to say that there is enough news on the topics they are interested in. With the exception of the ABC, news is a business; publishers and broadcasters will always create the product (the news) that will bring in the most paying customers. The issue becomes cyclical: Publishers make news for older, wealthier men; which builds more news interest and trust among those men; which encourages those men to pay for news; which encourages publishers to make more news for older, wealthier men (and those like them).
As a very early-stage media startup founder, I read and listen to a lot of media industry business content – the advice given is almost exclusively to target audiences that have high disposable incomes. Which is all well and good, except it assumes that anyone who isn’t rich doesn’t deserve high quality, thoughtful journalism; that those of us who can’t afford it should be left to snoop around in comment sections to find scraps of insight and analysis from our peers.
There is no straightforward way to fix this issue, especially in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. In the short term, the answer is to financially support news publications that you find valuable in any way you can. If you can’t afford that, support those publications in non-financial ways: subscribe to free newsletters, share their content, and recommend them to your friends and family.
What does this mean?
There are serious implications for the news leaving young women to rot in social media comment sections.
The media industry’s focus in the past five years of getting young people engaged with news has mostly targeted news reporting. The emergence of the ‘explainer’ format and projects like The Daily Aus bringing straightforward news production to platforms like Instagram, so that younger audiences could see a version of the news directly on the app. It’s been important work. But the reporting of events is only one element of the news – interpretation, analysis and commentary is also essential for a healthy news industry.
When it comes to perspectives and interpretation of news reporting, there is a gender gap. Both men and women think it’s equally important for the news to provide different perspectives on current issues but men are more likely to think Australian news outlets are doing a good job of this. Why would that be? Previous studies from other other organisations have found that Australian media tends to focus on the issues that matter most to wealthy, white men, and mostly includes men’s perspectives on the news. They’re so well catered to that they don’t notice whose perspectives are being left out.
Because young women are not being given relevant news commentary by media outlets, we’re being forced to go hunting through comment sections for analysis and interpretation that will help us make it make sense. We deserve to have our perspectives published as part of the news itself (and I’m very proud that Zee Feed is one of the only publications in the country that prioritises this).
I’ll leave you with this: 21% of people under 35 say they only get their news from social media. What happens if these platforms cut off our access? We can’t be content with keeping diverse news commentary and analysis on social media only. We have to get out of the comment section.
Other Interesting Stats From the 2024 Digital News Report:
- TV is still the most popular news source… just. In 2024, 56% of people use TV as a news source (-2 percentage points), followed by online sites (53%, +2pp) and social media (49%, +4 percentage points)
- The #1 news source for Gen Z is social media (75%) and for Millennials it’s online news (59%)
- Only 21% of people pay for online news; and of the rest, 57% say they will never pay for news
- Young people are more like to pay for digital news than older generations, but they are willing to pay the least
- Every generation says local news is their #1 interest, but 40% of people say there isn’t enough local news available
- Women are more likely than men to want news that is practical and makes them feel better about the world; men are more likely than women to want ‘entertaining’ news
- On TikTok, users pay attention to news from ordinary people the most (53%). This was ranked higher than any other source, including influencers (41%) smaller news brands (39%) or mainstream news brands or journalists (39%)
- On Instagram, users pay attention to mainstream news brands the most (46%), then smaller news brands (40%) and ordinary people (37%)
- On YouTube, users pay attention to mainstream news brands the most (48%), then smaller news brands (35%) and ordinary people (31%)
- Young men are more likely to listen to podcasts than young women
Comments are closed.