On June 17th the Reuters Institute published its 2024 Digital News Report on the global production, distribution and consumption of digital news media and the attitudes to it.
The interesting report contains a hefty 168 pages of information and makes clear that in covering six continents and 47 markets its results are not always evenly distributed.
UKOM’s Insight Director Julie Forey picks out a handful of the report’s key findings at a global level and examines UKOM data from Ipsos iris to see how they chime, or not, with the UK online audience for news media.
News still matters to the UK online population
For context it is worth noting that online news consumption in the UK remains high with a broad range of online news organisations delivering significant audiences that are spending a good amount of time consuming their content:
· In May 2024, 48m people visited news websites and apps online – that’s 96% of all internet users aged 15+. They spent an average of 5 hrs 32 mins viewing news content in the month.
· 42.4m (85% of all internet users 15+) viewed content from newspaper brands online.
· Despite the perceived dominance of the larger US platforms, six of the top 20 largest online organisations in terms of monthly audience are still UK based news centric organisations: the BBC, Reach Plc, Sky, News UK, Mail Metro Media and The Independent and Evening Standard all feature in the top 20.
· In terms of online brands, The BBC (39m), The Sun (23.9m) and Mail Online (23m) make the top 20, with the Mirror (22.1m) just outside at no. 21.
TikTok & Twitter
The report notes the global growth of TikTok as a source for news and the fact that it has overtaken X (formerly Twitter). UKOM data shows how audiences for both brands are changing similarly:
· 25.7m people aged 15+ visited TikTok in May 2024, a growth of 13% y-o-y. Over half (52%) the online population now use TikTok. This is much higher among 15-24s (74%) and reach declines with increasing age to only 33% among 55+. However, highest growth is now from older audiences. Whilst growth was 13% among all internet users, it was much higher among those 55+ at 28% compared to only 4% for 15-24 year olds.
· Twitter’s UK audience has declined by 1.9m y-o-y from 25.3m in May 2023 to 23.4m in May 2024. Time spent (minutes) has declined by 18%. The average time users spent on the service in the month has also declined by 35 minutes y-o-y.
Election news is big news everywhere
Reuters note that nearly half the world’s population goes to the ballot box in 2024 in national or regional elections. Breaking news around elections drives UK online audience:
· 4.4m visited the ‘News-Politics’ online category on Wednesday May 22nd, the day Rishi Sunak announced the early UK general election in a rain-soaked speech outside 10 Downing Street. This is more than three times the 1.4m who visited the category on the Wednesday before.
Politics is not the only driver of UK news consumption
While in May the biggest single day for online news was around the Local and Mayoral elections, in February and March the biggest days for audience of the General News category of online content followed the breaking news of cancer diagnoses and treatment for King Charles and Princess Catherine respectively.
We can be confident that, along with the inevitable and ongoing election coverage, England and Scotland’s performances in the 2024 Euros finals will play a big part in driving news consumption across June and July.
We’ll report back!
