Social media is the newspaper, TV of the future: report

There has been a great shift from traditional news platforms to online and mobile news sources in the last couple of years.

Having your dog bring you the freshly delivered copy of the latest newspaper headlines seems like a memory from the past in today's word where social networks such as Twitter can provide instant updates in the event of breaking news.

The wider availability of nearly instantaneous micro newsfeeds has changed the very notion of our news consumption. Younger generations and technological savvy individuals are relying on news sources that are delivered in the form of community-sourced information. These "news sources" are often supplied in the form of friends status updates, blogs, trending topics and retweeted news headlines.

Consumers are also branching out from the one newspaper subscription model to become better informed about current events.

According to a report published by Pew Internet on March 1, 92 percent of Americans use multiple platforms to get their news during a normal day. Only seven percent turn to one single media platform to read their news.

In the digital era, humans have turned to news platforms that let them customize information according to their personal tastes. Twenty-eight percent of internet users have created a personalized homepage that delivers news and information about topics that interest them.

They also expect to be able to access news headlines from their mobile phones when they are away from their computer. More than 30 percent of mobile phone owners use their device to read news headlines.

"In this new multi-platform media environment, people's relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized, and participatory," explained Pew Internet.

The study shows that people are becoming increasingly interested in participating in the news. 37 percent of internet users surveyed said they had either contributed to the creation of news, posted a comment about current events or helped spread news headlines via social media sites.

"To a great extent, people's experience of news, especially on the internet, is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news stories in their Tweets, and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads. For instance, more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails," said Pew Internet.

2,259 US-based respondents took part in the survey from December 28, 2009 to January 19, 2010.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News/Summary-of-Findings.aspx?r=1