Social Inequalities In News Consumption

F A C T S H E E TOctober 2018Social Inequalities in NewsConsumptionAuthors: Antonis Kalogeropoulos and Rasmus Kleis Nielsendistributed than offline news consumption. Onein four individuals do not consume any newsonline (25%), while only 13% of respondents donot consume any news offline.Social inequalities have always shaped newsconsumption, and as we move from a relatively lowchoice offline media environment to a high choiceonline media environment with more intensecompetition for attention, social inequalities in newsconsumption may increase. There is greater social inequality in online newsconsumption than in offline news consumption.Whereas higher social grade individuals and lowersocial grade individuals use the same numberof sources offline on average, lower social gradeindividuals use significantly fewer online sourceson average.Previous studies have shown that the expansionof media choice often results in the (information)rich getting richer while the (information) poor getpoorer as those who are most interested consumemore news, whereas those who are less interestedincreasingly tune out of news (Prior, 2005). Researchhas also found that the choices individual news usersmake are related to their social status (Lindell, 2017). A key difference between how higher social gradeand lower social grade individuals access newsonline is in terms of direct discovery (going to thewebsites or apps of news organisations). Lowersocial grade individuals are significantly less likelyto go direct to news providers, whereas lower andhigher social grade individuals are equally likely torely on distributed forms of discovery (relying onsocial media, search engines, and the like).This factsheet focuses on social inequalities in newsconsumption in the UK to address the question ofwhether inequality is increasing as we move to a moredigital media environment. Based on survey data onoffline and online news consumption and taking intoaccount individual differences in social grade, we findthat: Comparing the reach of individual brands offlineand online across different social grades, anumber of UK news organisations, includingtabloid newspapers and some television channels,have significantly higher reach offline with lowersocial grade individuals than with higher socialgrade individuals, just as others, like up-marketnewspapers, have higher reach amongst highersocial grade individuals than lower social gradeindividuals. Strikingly, however, none of the News consumption is more unequally distributedin the UK than income is, measured on the basisof the number of news sources used on a weeklybasis. According to the OECD, the Gini coefficientfor income in the UK was .36 in 2015. For offlinenews consumption, we calculate it at .42, and foronline news consumption an even higher .55. Online news consumption is more unequally 1

SOCIAL INEQUALITIES IN NEWS CONSUMPTIONbrands we analyse here have higher reach onlinewith lower social grade individuals, while manyhave much wider reach with higher social gradeindividuals.Our analysis suggests that social inequality in newsconsumption is already high, that it is likely to increaseas we continue to move to a more digital mediaenvironment, and that distributed forms of discoveryare currently particularly important for newsdiscovery amongst lower social grade individuals,whereas going directly to news organisations online ismore the province of higher social grade individuals.Even as there is growing attention to the increasinglyvisible political polarisation in some people’s newsuse, we would suggest it is at least as important to payattention to the less visible but at least as importantgrowing social inequality in news use.ApproachTo measure social inequalities in news consumption weuse data from the 2018 Digital News Report survey in theUnited Kingdom. Research was conducted by YouGovusing an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2018. The data were weighted totargets based on census/industry accepted data on age,gender and region to represent the total population ofthe UK. The sample is reflective of the population thathas access to the internet. More details on the methodare reported in Newman et al. (2018).1To examine social inequality in news consumptiononline and offline, we focus on the number of newssources respondents say they use on a weekly basis,as an indicator of the volume and variety of their newsuse, and on respondents’ social grade. We focus on theUK as an example of a media environment historicallycharacterised by a combination of strong privatepublishers and widely-used independent publicservice media, and as a market with several prominentdigital-born news providers with significant reach. Thesocial dimensions of news use will differ from countryto country, but we would suggest social inequality maybe even greater in countries with less of a traditionof popular tabloid newspapers and less widely usedpublic service media (previous research has suggestedespecially the latter can reduce information inequality,see e.g. Aalberg and Curran (2012)).12For news consumption, we created two variablesmeasuring the number of news sources used onlineand offline. For the UK, there are questions for theuse of 28 offline news brands, and two questionsabout ‘other local/regional newspapers’, as well as‘other newspapers or foreign brands’. For the onlineenvironment, we use questions on 32 online newsbrands in the UK, as well as two broader questionsabout ‘other local news websites’, or ‘other onlinesites from outside the UK’. Respondents also hadthe opportunity to write-in offline and online newssources that were not on the list.For social grade, survey respondents from YouGov’spanel are classified based on the Market ResearchSociety (MRS)2. Social grade is a widely usedclassification in market research and social scienceresearch in the UK. The classification is based onthe occupation level. Respondents were askedapproxinately 15 questions about the occupation ofthe chief income earner in their household. Basedon these answers, respondents were classified toA – E categories, where A classification is ‘highermanagerial, administrative and professional’ and Eclassification denotes ‘state pensioners, casual andlowest grade workers, unemployed with state benefitsonly’. For the purposes of this study, we groupedrespondents into two classifications, denoting ‘higher’(ABC1) and ‘lower’ (C2DE) social grade.It should be noted that while social grade is animportant classification on the socio-economic level, itonly reflects some aspects of social inequality. Beyondoccupation and its relation to status and income,we hope further research will examine inequalitiesassociated with, for example, age, gender, or ethnicity.ResultsTo provide an overall estimate of social inequalities inoffline and online news consumption, we use the Ginicoefficient, a measure of statistical dispersion whichis typically used to measure income inequalities in apopulation. Higher Gini coefficient denotes higherinequalities. A Gini of 1 denotes maximum inequality(e.g. an individual having all the resources in a countrywhile the rest have none) while a Gini coefficient of 0denotes equality to the point where all subjects havethe same values (e.g. the same income for everyone).It should be noted that the Digital News Report survey screens out people who say that they have not consumed any news online oroffline during the past month. In the UK, the share of respondents that were screened out was 7.7%. Given that news avoiders tend to bedisadvantaged individuals from lower social grades (Toff & Nielsen, 2018), inequalities in news consumption based on social grade are likelyto be even larger if these individuals are taken into account.https://www.mrs.org.uk/ 2

SOCIAL INEQUALITIES IN NEWS CONSUMPTIONUsing the Gini coefficient to measure inequalities inthe number of sources UK news users consumed, wecalculate it at .55 for the number of the online sourcesand .42 for the number of offline news sources3. Thesefindings suggest that the online news environmentis more unequal than the offline one, and that newsconsumption is more unequally distributed in theUK than income is. (The Gini coefficient for incomeinequality in the UK in 2015 was .36 while in the USit was estimated at .394.) While the analogy to incomeinequality is imperfect (it is easier for an individual tochoose to use more sources of news than it is to makemore money) we, in line with other researchers (e.g.Hindman, 2008), find it a useful measure for capturingthe overall distribution.Table 1. Gini coefficient in UK news consumptionNumber of offline news brands used0.42Number of online news brands used0.55As with income, overall distributions and averagessummarise a situation characterised by considerablevariation. The differences in the number of sourcesUK news users use offline and online are illustratedin Figure 1 below. More than half of online news usersin the UK use zero or one news source online, whileoffline it is most common to use two or three newssources per week. The median number of sources usedonline in the UK is 1, whereas offline it is 2. Around afourth of UK news users do not get news online, while87% of news users consume news from at least oneoffline news source per week.Differences in how many sources of news people useonline are based on individuals’ interest in news, butalso clearly associated with their social grade. Whilethere are no significant differences between thenumber of news brands consumed by higher socialgrade individuals and lower social grade ones offline,we find much greater differences online, as illustratedin Figure 2 (see p.4). Higher social grade individualsuse significantly more online news sources (2.11) thanlower social grade respondents (1.6)5.Share of UK respondentsFigure 1. Number of news sources used offline and online in the UK30%Online25%Offline20%15%10%5%0%012345678910 Number of news sources usedQ5a. Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)?Please select all that apply. Q5b. Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps,social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply. Base: Total Sample in the UK (2117).345The Gini coefficients were calculated using the ineqdec0 STATA package by Prof. Stephen tion-database.htmt -5.27, p .001. 3