Arab youth are changing the way they look at media and are increasingly going digital while paying less attention to print media.
Sixty three per cent of respondents said they got their news from television, followed by online sources (45 per cent), and social media (32 per cent), according to the survey results.
Only 17 per cent said they scanned the pages of a newspaper and 6 per cent said they got their news from magazines.
The latest numbers point to a decline of print media.
The previous survey in 2011 found that 62 per cent of respondents claimed they read newspapers.
This year’s survey also found 52 per cent of this year’s respondents said they shared news articles via Facebook – an increase of 11 per cent from 2015.
Thirty two per cent of respondents said they read news online every day, compared to 29 per cent for television.
“This preference to digest news digitally, and often on the move, is only likely to increase as smartphones become increasingly affordable,” said Damian Radcliffe, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon who analysed the survey’s findings.
The survey found WhatsApp, at 62 per cent, beat Facebook with 55 per cent, YouTube 33 per cent, Twitter and Instagram 28 per cent each as the most used social media platform on a daily basis.
“Many young people are on social networks for several hours a day, and these channels can dominate and massively influence their online experience,” said Prof Radcliffe.
“For some audiences, social media is the primary means by which news and information is both discovered and distributed, a trait which is only going to become more prevalent.”
esamoglou@thenational.ae
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