This report has been produced by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to help better understand how news is consumed in different countries.
The coronavirus pandemic crisis has not only had a very deep impact on our health and on societies, but has also had a large impact on news media. Much of the research presented in this report had been conducted before the outbreak of the coronavirus, but the research team's findings in recent months show there is a strong likelihood that this crisis will accelerate the structural changes in the media environment, which is moving toward a more digital, more portable, and more platform-centric space.
Most of this report is based on data collected through a survey of more than eighty thousand people in forty different news-consumption markets and shows media use in the months of January and February, just before the outbreak of the coronavirus. Important items documented from the data obtained include a change in the way news is viewed, people's low trust in news, and growing concern about false information, which is the backdrop against which journalists, editors, politicians, and official health organizations are struggling so they can get important and accurate messages to ordinary people.
Based on the information obtained, this crisis has considerably increased the volume and frequency of news consumption and has affected some attitudes toward news media, at least for the time being.
At a time when many companies are enjoying record audience figures, news fatigue is settling in, and the short- and long-term economic effects of the coronavirus crisis are that huge advertising budgets are being fragmented and an economic recession is emerging. This recession threatens news media, some of which were already struggling to adapt to the new world. Against this background, the report also focuses on the shift toward paying online for news.
Statistics and information examined in more detail in the report:
- Research methodology
- Social media and the crisis
- Examining the downward trend in trust in news media
- Misinformation and disinformation
- Changes in the business model and the growth of paid content
- The growth of podcasts and audio content
- The volume of video consumption worldwide
- Examining dependence on smartphones
- Why and how people pay for online news
- The revival and importance of email newsletters
- How people want politics to be portrayed in the media
- Problems of regional and local media
- How people access news about climate change
- A review of news media market data for more than 40 countries
Download the original report (PDF)
Machine-translated from Persian by Namafar; the Persian original is authoritative. Read the original in Persian