Tuesday 25 November 2008

BBC research shows newspapers, radio, tv, web and mobiles create "news ecosystem"

BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann has an interesting blog here looking at research into how people get their news at different times of the day, especially when they are on the move, and how likely they are to use their mobiles to access information. The results showed:
• Most people were getting their news and information in a variety of different ways and from different places in the course of a day or a week
• Researchers described each person as having a "news ecosystem", where an individual might read several papers, hear news on the radio, look at various websites and/or TV channels for news
• The habits of the modern news consumer were described as "increasingly eclectic and multiplatform"
• As for mobiles, people were typically using them for headlines, major stories and areas of specific interest
Herrmann says: "As mobile devices get smarter and connectivity better it seems reasonable to expect that people will increasingly be using them to do some of the things they already do on a desktop PC... For the BBC's mobile services overall, there are currently about 3.2m UK users a month, and this has grown by 25 per cent over the past year. But that number is still very small compared with those accessing the BBC website overall (22m unique users per week)."
The BBC has just launched a campaign to publicise how to get the BBC News website on a mobile phone.

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