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The Impact of the Internet on traditional news media Lingyan Chen Fairleigh Dickinson university May 6th. 2013 Abstract The study discusses the impact of the Internet on traditional media over time. Media research suggests that Internet would be allowed to exist with traditional news media at the same time, rather than killing off the traditional news media. The competitively relationship between use of the Internet and traditional media for news while managing for such demographic factors as gender and age, Is also examined.
A positive, rather than negative relationship was found between Internet use and newspaper reading, television watching and radio listening. Theory, s specifically uses is discussed in terms of how consumers decide to spend time on news media and then how they change those decisions as Internet appears. Results of respondents showed that rising use of traditional media even as they used the Internet more often for news. 2 There has been enormous increase in the number of Internet users since 1995. That’s why 1995 is often considered the first year the Internet became popular.
No matter when a new medium comes out, a basic question to ask is what impact it has on traditional new media. Do people choose the new medium to tradition media and decrease their use? Do people spend more time using a combination of new medium and traditional media in their daily life? According to a research by Rebekah V. Bromley, it displays that use of traditional media remained the same during the startup period for use of the Internet, the lack of a longitudinal viewpoint included its fatidic ability.
As spread of using the new medium goes on, is there growing impact n traditional media use? With the improvement of the Internet, and as it goes accessible for more people, these questions definitely should be asked about television, print, and other traditional media forms. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the super-speed Internet connection with a good economy promoted the Internet to grow dramatically in America. More and more people spent reading online news from 1998 to 2006. There are about 60 percent American people getting news from both online sources and offline sources.
Moreover, about 80 percent of Internet users ave obtained news from the Internet and 44 percent of them use Internet to read news everyday. A lot of research scholars have been attracted by the massive growth of the Internet. They are afraid that the Internet would be a threat to the traditional news media. Media have always played a significant role in news transmission. Traditional media use is anticipated to have a positive relationship with the Internet, in spite of the general fear that the occurrence of a new media will lead the death of an older form. The traditional news media contained television, 3 newspapers, radio and so on.
Media research scholars have found the effects of traditional news media use, most finding that newspaper achieves news more effectively than television in the past three decades. According to a recent survey, in newspaper stories and watching television news stories were the second and third useful news formats, and magazines served as the fourth most useful news mode among voters (Dautrich, 2000). Base on BEV study, newspaper subscribers were 48 percent and nonsubscribers were 52 percent, which means users were almost equally divided between newspaper subscribers and nonsubscribers.
Around 92 ercent of the subscriptions subscribed two local newspapers. The study showed that users who read a newspaper spent averagely 29 minutes on reading a newspaper, more than typical U. S. newspaper readers. There were 47 percent who spent 30 minutes or more with a newspaper per day comparing with 30 percent who spent 15 minutes or less each day reading a newspaper, and 22 percent spent 17 to 29 minutes per day with a newspaper among BEV users who reported reading a newspaper.
With specifically low usage rates by those younger than 30 years old (Kohut, 2002), newspaper use is positively related with age (Somerville, 2001). According to 2004 Consumer Power User Study, newspaper use is more frequent in demographic groups, especially with individuals ages 18 through 34 (Power User 2004, 2004). Also, most of respondents showed that newspaper reading was a welcome habit among the students and professionals in all the regions. Whereas, newspaper trust by readers has dropped from 80% in 1985 to 59% in 2003 (The state of the news media, 2004). The BEV study reports that users likely choose to obtain news from television rather than from newspapers. Approximately 53 percent of users adjusted TV news rogramming more than once per day. The role of television in specialist news media should not be neglected, because it is a trusted source of news. Television does mediatize for real. It produces a new discourse, which would be able to be known by a common public as soon as possible, more than Just simply summarizes an old discourse.
What’s more, television depends on ideas of news connected to people’s lives and environment. Nowadays, base on time spent, television use is more frequently with personals ages from 25 to 34 watching the least sum of the age groups (Whitehead, 2005). Gender differences are also found with regards to attention to television. According to the findings by Grabe and Kamhawi (2005), it showed that positive news were more attracted by women, and negative news were more retained efficiently by men.
Whereas media researchers have begun to pay The tremendous increasing use of the Internet for acquiring news; nevertheless, has grown attention to the quality and credibility of the news (France, 1999; Tucher, 1997). Since people trend towards not using a source that they do not trust, credibility is of extraordinary importance to the Internet (Gaziano, 1988). Even though online information sources are numerous and easily accessible, some critics pointed that biased and misleading information is an important problem as well, calling the Internet’s credibility into question (Newhagen & Levy, 1997; Andie, 1997).
Majority of discussions are about whether the Internet might exceed traditional media and turn into the main source for news are upon a “zero-sum” conception: 5 people who spend more time using the Internet trend to also spend more time on traditional media, as broadcast television and printed newspapers. “One of the by- roducts of this radical transformation is a fragmented media environment characterized by an exploding number of media alternatives wing for people’s time. Unfortunately, people still have only 24 hours in a day’, which is beneficial to multitasking (Pilotta & Schultz, 2005, 20).
There was an increasingly decline in the time spent on other traditional media when television was first brought in public; however, the reduction was unlikely relative: each person spent more time watching television, but decreased time on other traditional media (Gutman, 1978). Base on a ecent study, researchers found that treat the use of the Internet as a news source is positively connected with reading newspapers, but is not related with watching television news, which shows that the Internet appears not to minify use of traditional news media in essence (Althaus & Tewksbury, 2000).
Oh the other hand, a rival replacement effect was found (Dimmick et al. , 2004). Comparing the use of the Internet with traditional news media, the finding showed that as individuals spent time on the Internet for news, they used television and newspapers less frequently. Anyway, because of the tendency of multitasking, the argumentum on the use of the Internet wiping out traditional news media is not united; individuals are expected to consult more broadcast television and printed newspapers as their Internet use is enhanced.
Individuals who are fond of news use different kinds of media, which will be able to provide various viewpoints on similar news. The results of BEV survey showed that within per 24-hour period, individuals spent, on average, almost 5 hours each day with printed newspapers, the electronic network and broadcast television. Almost no one showed an growth n the amount of time use with traditional media after starting to spend time on Internet. Respondents in the survey reported individuals averagely spent 32 minutes watching television news, 26 minutes on listening to radio news. And newspaper cost them about 23minutes.
This research reported that there is a generally positively relationship between Internet and traditional news media, even when managing for demographics. There is not any important support for the assumptions that users of the Internet, is going to spend less time on printed newspapers and broadcast televisions than they did before using the Internet. Individuals who read newspapers and watch television seem to choose the Internet to be another choice for news. The replacement effect is significant for the role of the Internet as a new source of news for Individuals to be accepted by media researchers.
By using the Internet today, newspaper publishers and Television companies have the chance to improve their product and to set their products as leaders with available free public access in their communities. Individuals hold that expense of traditional news media was reflected by use of the Internet. Future research should focus on understanding the elationship between the Internet and traditional news media. As mentioned before, consumers are not corresponding with the duration of multitasking with news media and the individual use of the Internet.