Göteborg: Experts study young readers in digital native habitats
By Leah McBride Mensching, Tuesday 3 June 2008 at 20:03 :: Young Reader :: #1731 :: rss
Göteborg, Sweden - “If you want to study 'digital natives,' you need to be with them, otherwise you will not understand what they are doing,” said Katarina Graffman, PhD of Cultural Anthropology at Inculture AB in Sweden said Tuesday at the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress in Göteborg, Sweden.
Observing young people and how they consume media is better than asking them, because many times, they will not be accurate in what they tell you, and you will also be able to observe habits they have that they don't even realise about themselves, she said.
Graffman said that based on her experience, however, “I don't think young people will start reading newspapers when they get old. It's not just about having a defence position, hoping they'll interact with newspapers when they grow up and settle down. They live in a media world where everything is integrated, and they don't make differentiation.”
Robert Barnard, partner and founder of Decode in Canada, said that a survey of 3,500 young people ages 15 to 29 in the Netherlands, United States and Finland, found that young people prefer television over newspapers by far, and rank television ahead of newspapers when it comes to credibility, relevancy, convenience, enjoyability and popularity with their peers.
However, newspapers do have a chance to learn from this research, he said, telling the audience to forget about age-based segmentation of young readers and think more about segmentation by stage of life. Barnard's three tips for newspapers is to: 1.Start earlier to establish “the newspaper difference.” Send newspapers into the schools and help students learn what's different from TV, radio and the Internet. Help them understand that it's not about the format, and accentuate the content difference. 2.Start early with reading newspapers - most started using mobile after they started reading newspapers. 3.Parents influence future readership of their kids, so influence parents, and you can influence future readership.
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