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. Eight 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 26 countries. Increased support from Google, co-sponsors of the initiative since 2013, allowed the Institute to extend the report’s coverage of Europe to 20 countries in 2016. The new countries to included were Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. These were added to the countries covered in the 2015 report; UK, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Japan and the US.

Other sponsors for the Digital News Report 2016 were: the BBC, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Edelman UK, Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland, Hans-Bredow-Institut, Korea Press Foundation, Laval University, The University of Navarra, Ofcom, the University of Canberra and the Fritt Ord Foundation.