In thinking about different news sources, I thought before asking about online news that it would be important to see what people used on a regular basis.
That was my first question. An overwhelming percentage (77.1%) of the survey takers said they use online sources on a regular basis, followed by television (54.3%), newspaper (45.7%), radio (34.3%), magazines (17.1%), and tabloids (5.7%). My second question asked to rate each of the above sources by opinion of reliability. On a rating of 1-5, with 5 being extremely reliable, the average ratings came in as follows: newspaper came in first with a 3.82 rating, followed closely by television (3.63), radio (3.57), and online news (3.26). Magazines and tabloids fell short at 2.71 and 1.23 respectively. My third question asked which categories of news people checked most often. Each category can be checked through different sources, which I thought was important to know. 74.3% of survey takers checked national news most often followed by local news at 68.6%. These were followed far behind by regional news at 9%, international news 17.1%, and both sports and entertainment news tied at 22.9%.
In section two, I asked solely about online news. When it comes to online news, we can pick and choose what we view. I asked what forms of online news people were drawn to for my forth question. As I expected, plain articles came in first (71.4%). Photos accompanying articles came in second although far behind (42.9%). Videos were third (25.7%), and videos accompanying articles last (14.3%). I think the most telling question of this survey was my question five, which was how often do you check news online? Not a single person said that they never check news online, while 68.6% said they check it daily. Weekly and monthly made up the remainder. This next result confused me because it repeated a part of a previous question. For question six, I asked how reliable people felt online news sources were on a whole. Previously, the result came in at an average of 3.26 out of 5. In this question, however, the result came in at an average of 3.43 out of 5. I’m not sure if this result was different because I had them thinking solely about online news or if they were comparing the sources in the first question about this. Question seven was mostly for my own benefit. I asked which major online sites people use for getting their news online. I use some of the choices that I gave, but I was curious about other peoples’ preferences. I also set an option to write in something that wasn’t listed. yahoo.com and cnn.com both tied at the top with 42.9%. msnbc.com (31.4%), foxnews.com (22.9%), npr.org (22.9%), huffingtonpost.com (22.9%), reuters.com (14.3%), abcnews.com (11.4%), ap.org (8.6%), theonion.com and c-span.org tied with 2.9%, fsrn.org, newsbusters.org, azcentral.com, usatoday.com, change.org, and northcountrynow.com (not major) were all write-ins totaling 8.6%.
In section three, I thought it would be extremely important to find out the demographics of those taking my survey. Question eight asked whether the survey taker considered himself or herself a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or something else. If they chose something else, I asked them to specify. 31.4% considered themselves Republicans, 34.3% said they were Democrats, 22.9% Independent, and the remaining 11.4% were made up of write-ins of Green, “Small D Democrat” meaning not partisan, Communist, and dependent on the issues. Question nine I figured was also quite important. Considering how much we rely on technology now, I was curious to see the age ranges of the survey takers. No one aged 15-20 took the survey. The following categories came in with the following number of takers: Ages 21-24: 11 people, ages 25-29: 3 people, ages 30-34: 4 people, ages 35-39: 2 people, ages 40-44: 4 people, ages 45-49: 2 people, ages 50-54: 4 people, ages 55-59: 1 person, and age 60 or older: 4 people. My final question, question ten, separated male from female. Those who took my survey were 23 females and 12 males.
I kind of thought it was interesting that even those older than 50 checked online news so often, females especially. I think it is kind of assumed that the baby boomer generation and those old than that try to steer away from technology as much as possible. That may be true for some, but for those who took this survey for me, it didn’t seem that way… not for news anyway. With what I collected, I learned a lot about how important news is, and how reliant people are on how easy it is to get their news from more modern sources. They still use traditional sources, albeit not as much.
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