News consumption in the UK: 2013 report

Introduction

This summary report provides the findings of Ofcom's 2013 research into news consumption across the four main platforms: television, radio, print and online. Further detailed information is available in the chart pack which accompanies this document. It is published as part of our market research range of publications that examine the consumption of content, and attitudes towards that content, across different platforms. The aim of this report is to inform an understanding of news consumption across the UK, and within each UK nation.

An initial summary of this research was published as part of Ofcom's Communications Market Report 2013.

The report details various findings relating to the consumption of news; the sources and platforms used, the perceived importance of different platforms and outlets for news, attitudes to individual news sources and an overview of local media consumption. It also provides details of our cross-platform news consumption metric - 'share of references'.

This report uses a variety of data sources. The primary source is a news survey commissioned by Ofcom and conducted by Kantar Media in April 2013, comprising an omnibus survey of 2,862 people across the UK, including boosts of 350 in each devolved nation. This is the default source unless otherwise specified. Other sources used include:

• an omnibus survey of 2016 people across the UK, commissioned by Ofcom and conducted by Ipsos Mori, about local media;
• metrics on television viewing from the industry currency BARB;
• newspaper readership figures from the National Readership Survey; and
• online consumption metrics from UKOM/comScore Any direct comparisons between the quantitative research we have commissioned and data from the industry measurement systems should be made with caution because of:
• methodological differences e.g. claimed or measured consumption, face-to-face surveys or diary based methods, and differing sample sizes and data collection periods;
• time period differences e.g. "nowadays" is used in the Kantar Media survey, compared to real-time recorded consumption (BARB) or recency (average issue readership) for newspapers; and
• differing definitions of news e.g. set by the provider (as in BARB) or self-defined by the people we questioned.