In the first survey, conducted by Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, the results show that Americans say newspaper importance continues to decline as both a source of information and a source of entertainment. Yet, another result of the survey found that a growing number of Internet users do not believe that information they find online is reliable.
The second survey provides an in-depth analysis of the female Internet user, highlighting key trends by Internet activity, worldwide region and digital channel. From advertisers to publishers and from content producers to agencies, nearly everyone can benefit from understanding Web usage patterns through a gender-specific lens. This global report and paper is organized into 7 main content sections, including:
The Gender Divide/Women and the Social Web/Women and Retail/Content for Women
Search Activity/Entertaining Women/Mobile Women
social media graphic courtesy of onesocialmedia.com
Newspapers Hit New Low as an Information Source
Posted by Matthew Ingram at www.gigaom.com, one of the founders of mesh, Canada’s leading Web conference and an award-winning journalist writing about business, technology and new media as a reporter, columnist and blogger.
The number of Americans who say that newspapers are an important source of information continues to decline, according to a
survey by the The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.
To view highlights of The Center for the Digital Future survey, click HERE (PDF)
Only 56 percent of Internet users surveyed agreed with the statement that newspapers were an important or very important source of information, while 68 percent said that television was, and 78 percent said that the Internet was. The findings are part of the Annenberg School’s ongoing Digital Future Project, which has been surveying Americans on their views and behavior related to the Internet for 10 years.
To make matters worse for the industry, the Center’s survey also found that newspapers are continuing to decline as a source of entertainment as well - only 29 percent of those surveyed said that newspapers were an important source of entertainment, down from 32 percent in 2008. Almost 20 percent of users said that they had canceled a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online, and 59 percent said that if the print edition of their newspaper stopped publishing they would read the online version. Only 37 percent said that they would read the print edition of another newspaper.
In an interesting counterpoint to the numbers on newspaper readership, however, the Annenberg survey also found that a growing number of Internet users do not believe that information they find online is reliable. A majority of users said that less than half of the information they get from the Internet is reliable, a new low for the 10-year-old study, and 14 percent of users said that only a small portion of the information they find online is reliable. Less than half of those surveyed said that they had some trust or a lot of trust in the Internet in general.
In other words, Americans increasingly see the Internet as an important source of information, despite the fact that they view much of that information as unreliable. Depending on how you feel about Internet users in general, that’s either a baffling example of contradictory behavior, or a sign of healthy skepticism about online media.
Social Networking Sites Reach a Higher Percentage of Women than Men Worldwide
source:
comScore Releases Report, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet (via PR Newswire)
To download a copy of Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet, please visit:
www.comscore.com/WomenOnTheWeb
See also:
In mobile, Women Rule Social Networking
PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, released a global report on women's online usage titled,
Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet, which provides an in-depth analysis of the female Internet user, highl
ighting key trends by Internet activity, worldwide region and digital channel.
Among its results, the report found that social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men globally, with 75.8 percent of all women online visiting a social networking site in May 2010 versus 69.7 percent of men.
"Understanding gender-specific differences in Web usage is valuable to any digital stakeholder looking to successfully reach and engage both women and men in the online environment," said Linda Boland Abraham, comScore chief marketing officer and executive vice president for global development. "We have seen that women across the globe share some similar usage patterns online, such as strong engagement with social networking sites, but it's also important to understand gender differences on a regional, country and local level, where cultural differences are continually shaping online usage and content consumption."
Women Spend 30 Percent More Time on Social Networking Sites Than Men
Globally, women demonstrate higher levels of engagement with social networking sites than men. Although women account for 47.9 percent of total unique visitors to the social networking category, they consume 57 percent of pages and account for nearly 57 percent of total minutes spent on these sites. Women spend significantly more time on social networking sites than men, with women averaging 5.5 hours per month compared to men's 4 hours, demonstrating the strong engagement that women across the globe share with social sites.
Latin America and North America Display Strongest Social Networking Reach Among Women
Across each global region, Social Networking reached a higher percentage of women online than men. Social Networking's reach among women is highest in Latin America where it reached 94.1 percent of females online, and in North America where it reached 91.0 percent of females. Europe saw 85.6 percent of its female online population visit a social networking site in May 2010, while in Asia Pacific, where parts of the region still face low broadband penetration and site restrictions, reported a 54.9-percent reach.
Additional findings from the report include:
• Although men are in the majority across the global Internet, women spend about 8 percent more time online, averaging 25 hours per month on the Web.
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Globally, women spend 20 percent more time on Retail sites overall than men. Among the various retail sub-categories, Comparison Shopping and Apparel sites reached the highest percentage of women at 24.8 percent and 18.7 percent, respectively, in May 2010.
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In the U.S., women are more avid online buyers than men, with 12.5 percent of female Internet users making an online purchase in February 2010, compared to 9.3 percent of men.
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Health sites show some of the largest overall differences in reach between female and male, with a nearly 6-point gap between global women and men.
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In most countries women spend far less time watching online video than men, but women spend a much higher share of their time watching videos on YouTube than men.
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In both the U.S. and Europe, smartphone usage is dominated by men with both markets experiencing close to a 60/40 split in smartphone adoption between the genders.