The Digital News Project marks an expansion of the Digital News Report into a full‐scale series of research pieces, thanks to the support of Google via the Digital News Initiative. More than a dozen new reports were released in 2016. The new series builds on the success of the Digital News Report as the world’s largest comparative international survey of changing news habits, and will continue to track the transition of the news industry towards an increasingly digital and multi‐platform future.

The Digital News Project sees expanded team of researchers, sponsors and collaborators explore trends and developments across 36 countries. Increased support from Google, co-sponsors of the initiative since 2013, have allowed the Institute to extend the report’s coverage of Europe to 23 countries in 2016. The new countries to be included were Romania, Croatia and Slovakia.

Other sponsors for the Digital News Report 2017 were: the BBC, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Ofcom, Edelman UK, Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland, Hans-Bredow-Institut at Hamburg University in Germany, the Korea Press Foundation, Laval University, The University of Navarra in Spain, Roskilde University in Denmark, the University of Canberra and the Fritt Ord Foundation in Norway.