Multiple studies find that Americans and the British trending toward mobile and multi-platform online news access By Jerry56 and Rachel21

After leaving traditional news platforms behind, the world of digital news remains exceptionally dynamic. The increasing popularity of mobile devices in Western nations has created disruptions in how the news is accessed and presented.

The use of individual and multiple smartphones and tablets in the consumption of news has significantly increased between 2013 and 2014
The use of mobile devices for the accession of news has increased significantly in the UK and US. Between 2013 and 2014, smartphone usage has increased 3% in the US and 4% in the UK. Similarly, tablet news usage has increased by 3% and 7% in the US and UK, respectively. At the same time, the number of survey respondents reporting the computer has their primary source of news has dropped by 23% in the UK. More so, consumers of digital news have expanded their news reception across multiple platforms. Single platform access of news in the US and the UK decreased by 1% in the same time period.




With the increasing usage of mobile devices for news came an increase in the exclusive use of single news sources and the use of news apps as a whole
The greater prevalence of mobile devices in the news sphere has also resulted in a shift from the browser to apps. In the UK, 47% of those surveyed (up 6% from last year) reported mainly using apps on their smartphones and 37% (up 9% from last year) reported the same on their tablets. Additionally, the technical limitations of mobile devices has also limited the breadth of news sources accessed. 55% of British smart phone users reported accessing only one news source compared to 45% among computer users. This shift toward single news apps has disproportionately favored companies such as BBC who have strong app presence over less mobile-oriented sites such as Yahoo!.

Mobile limitations has resulted in a disfavor of video relative to traditional static texts and graphics
The technical limitations of smartphones has also changed the nature of news presentation. Users have grown to favor static visual and textual presentations over video which is often racked with inconvenience and technical difficulty. Basic lists and stories reigned supreme in the UK and US (72 and 68% respectively) far above that of video. Indeed 24% of US respondents noted the small screen and 19% reported the load time as the primary inhibitors to greater video use.

Younger users have tended to favor online news viewed from smartphones and older users favor older digital news and tablets
In 2012, 21% the UK’s young population (aged 18-24) accessed information via their smartphone. This percentage has skyrocketed to 36% in a mere 2 years! However, both the 2012 and the 2014 data reveals that tablet usage is much more common in 30-40 year olds. A variety of explanations could be valid as to why, including the fact that tablets provide much larger screens and therefore, larger text. Regardless of whether tablets or smartphones are more popular, it is evident that the Internet is becoming an increasingly popular substitute for televised news. The 18-24 age group uses online sources significantly more than television, and about the same number of 25-34 year olds use the Internet as TV to obtain information. This Internet epidemic is also causing to isolation while on devices, which could potentially lead to problems in the future.

Digital media from rachelfeidelman