RTÉ NEWS ONLINE and The Journal are the two biggest sources of online news in Ireland, according to the annual report on the state of digital news media in the country.
It is the seventh year of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report for Ireland, which gives an authoritative view of news consumption patterns across Ireland.
The report measures what news sources are used by the population and how often they use them; trust levels in news media; how people see the role of journalists and news organisations; what news is paid for; and where users access it.
This year, as in 2022 and 2021, RTÉ News online and The Journal are accessed most frequently (on three days or more in a week) of any digital outlets in Ireland.
RTÉ was cited by 24% of those surveyed as a frequent destination for online news and The Journal was cited by 16% of respondents. Both were down slightly on previous years as the report reveals evidence that “there is less interest in news, and there is also selective news avoidance”.
The Irish Independent online was in third place, with 15%, and The Irish Times online and breakingnews.ie on 10% each.
Most organisations are down between 1-3% over the past year, apart from the BBC and the Irish Mirror online, which remained steady. Sky News is the only brand to show any increase (1%) in digital audiences over the past year. However, the report warns that differences of one or two percentage points may not be meaningful given the methodology.
The report also examined attitudes towards trust in news brands. It found that almost half of the participants (47%) either strongly agree or tend to agree with the statement that they can trust most of the news most of the time. This is down from 52% in 2022.
Males aged 18-24 exhibit high levels of mistrust in the news media, with 44% disagreeing with the statement that you can trust most of the news most of the time compared to 27% of women in the same age bracket.
The report also found that YouTube is the most popular source of news for the 18-24 age group, and that men turn to YouTube for news more than women. “It may be that younger men are exposed to content on YouTube which undermines their trust in traditional news media,” the report’s authors say.
Levels of trust in Ireland are slightly higher than in the rest of Europe, and considerably higher than in the UK and the US.
Irish news consumers are also more concerned by the rise of misinformation and ‘fake news’ than those in Europe. While 50% of EU respondents to the report are worried about misinformation, 64% of Irish people surveyed said this was a concern.
In the US, 64% of respondents also said they were worried about misinformation, while UK news consumers are the most concerned about ‘fake news’ and misinformation online, with 69% saying the issue is concerning.
As well as concern over misinformation, the report also sought to examine the frequency of hearing criticism of the news media or journalists.
In Ireland, a sizeable 44% of participants said they come across such criticism quite or very often. However, this figure is low compared to 51% in Europe, 53% in the UK and 58% in the US.
A higher number of Irish participants (46%) also said they never or rarely encounter media criticism than is the case in the US (30%), the UK (32%) and Europe (38%).
“Taking into account the generally high levels of trust in the media in Ireland, these findings suggest there is a more healthy debate about the performance of the media in Irish society,” the report reads.
In terms of sources of news, the report found that TV and online (excluding social media and blogs) tie at 32% as the main sources of news for survey participants.
Social media now stands at 20% compared to 18% last year. Radio remains unchanged at 11%, while 5% of participants cited newspapers as their main source of news, up from 3% last year.
Smartphone use to access news has levelled off this year, down to 67% from 72% last year. However, it remains the most used device for this purpose by far. Smartphone use for news is highest in Ireland (67%), and lowest in the US (59%).
The percentage of people going directly to a news website has also fallen and now sits at 41% compared to 45% last year, with consumers increasingly accessing news indirectly via social media (38%) or via search engines (32%).
Irish consumers’ interest in news, while remaining relatively high, has fallen. The categories of ‘extremely interested’ and ‘very interested’ in news peaked during 2021 (70%) in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic but have since fallen to 52% this year.
The ‘somewhat interested’ category shows a growing number are engaged at some level
(37%), but the report states that “this more nonchalant view reflects examples of selective avoidance of news seen in the report”.
The age bracket that had the highest number of respondents say they were not very or not at all interested in news was the 18-24 cohort, at 20%.
“Nonetheless, 77% of this age cohort are still extremely, very, or somewhat engaged with news and it will be important for news providers to continue to find novel ways to engage with this demographic,” Coimisiún na Mean Broadcasting Commissioner Celine Craig said.
The report states that following on from last year, what Ireland is seeing now is “a distinct case of selective news avoidance among some of the population – in particular regarding news about Ukraine, Covid-19/health but also regarding other more surprising subjects”.
For Irish consumers who are avoiding news, top of the list of topics for avoidance are the war in Ukraine (41%), followed by social justice news (32%). Further down the list sits health news including Covid-19 (26%), and climate change and environmental news (21%).
Participants were also asked which areas of public interest journalism they thought should be prioritised if the government was to provide financial assistance.
It found that climate change and environment news topped the poll (44%) of subjects seen as worthy of extra government resourcing.
“This is a key area that can be expensive in terms of news resourcing. Many news
outlets grapple with how best to make this coverage relevant and readable,” it read.
As part of its focus on climate action issues, The Journal publishes a climate change newsletter called Temperature Check every month, and reporter Lauren Boland is assigned specifically to cover climate issues throughout the year on the site.
In terms of news avoidance, the report found that Ireland does compare favourably with the UK and US regarding climate change, with 21% saying they are avoiding this news category, compared to the 29% in the US and 27% in the UK.
According to DCU Associate Professor Dr David Robbins, the negative framing by the media of climate change topics is “a factor” in the avoidance that is present.
“The benefits of climate action – societal, health, economic, and environmental – receive less attention,” Robbins wrote in the report.
“This year’s report shows that solutions journalism – coverage that critically investigates and explains how people are trying to solve widely shared problems – could be part of the answer.
“Almost all of us (85%) across all age cohorts are either very or somewhat interested in journalism that focuses on solutions and not just problems.”
The percentage of Irish participants that reported paying for news has fallen from 16% last year to 15% this year. This is on par with Europe.
21% of US participants reported paying for their news, while the UK remains low on 9%.
In Ireland, the highest percentage paying for news are 25-34 year olds (21%). “This group is largely finished with their student or apprenticeship years and are in employment
and consequently they have more disposable income,” the report reads.
Over half (51%) of those who choose to pay for news in Ireland do so through a ongoing subscription service, with 19% then choosing to do so through a print-digital bundle.
Of those with subscriptions, the largest number of respondents cite payment as a means of securing ‘better quality’ than from free sources (37%).
Unsurprisingly, during a cost-of-living crisis, the main reason people might take out a news subscription would be if the price were to come down (24%).
Respondents were also asked to rate the importance of publicly funded news services for both themselves personally and then for society, with more people reporting that it is ‘quite’ or ‘very’ important for society (58%) than it is for themselves (48%).
The global report survey was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2023. In Ireland, 2,035 people were surveyed using representative quotas for age, gender, region and educational level. The data were weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data.
The full report can be read here.
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