This study has been commissioned by the Reuters Institute to understand how news is being consumed in a range of countries. This research was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2013.
- The data was weighted to targets set on age and gender, region, newspaper readership, and social grade to reflect the total population of each country. The sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet.
- As this survey deals with news consumption, we filtered out anyone who said that they had not consumed any news in the past month in order to ensure that irrelevant responses didn’t adversely affect date quality. This category was between 2% and 4% in most countries but as high as 9% in the UK.
- A comprehensive online questionnaire was designed to capture all aspects of news consumption.
- Core questions were asked in France, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Japan, Brazil, and the US, as well as the UK, to a nationally representative audience to provide an international comparison.
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| Country | Starting sample | Non-news users | Final sample | Total population | Internet penetration* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 2308 | 9% | 2078 | 63m | 84% |
| Germany | 1099 | 3% | 1062 | 81m | 83% |
| Spain | 1016 | 4% | 979 | 47m | 67% |
| Italy | 1003 | 4% | 965 | 61m | 58% |
| France | 1016 | 4% | 973 | 66m | 80% |
| Denmark | 1024 | 2% | 1007 | 5.5m | 90% |
| US | 2170 | 7% | 2028 | 314m | 78% |
| Brazil** | 1003 | 2% | 985 | 194m | 46% |
| Japan | 1004 | 2% | 978 | 127m | 80% |
** Please note that Brazil is representative of an urban population rather than a national population as such the internet penetration is likely to be higher than stated above, which must be taken into consideration when interpreting results.
This is an online survey – and as such the results will under-represent the consumption habits of people who are not online (typically older, less affluent, and with limited formal education). Where relevant, we have tried to make this clear within the text. Going forward, these issues will become less of a factor as online penetration grows. In any case, the core purpose of this survey is not to deliver absolute numbers, but rather to track the activities and changes within the digital space – as well as gaining understanding about how offline media and online media are used together.