The overwhelming majority of Irish people are now consuming their news online. Niamh Kirk, writing on thejournal.ie, points to research showing that 83% of the population in the Republic access news digitally in the course of a week.
The study, by the Institute for Future Media and Journalism (FuJo) at Dublin City University in conjunction with the BAI and the Oxford Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, also reveals that the Irish are at the forefront of smartphone device use and are above average users of social media.
Evidently, traditional (newsprint-based) news outlets have made the transition from print to screen rather well. Kirk thinks this is due in part to their reputations as producers of quality journalism.
“It is premature to write the obituary for print media just yet”, she writes. “The traditional news market in Ireland and internationally is still strong and newsprint has a long reach in Ireland”.
She adds: “The decline in newsprint is nothing to celebrate, nor is the rise of digital unproblematic. If print were dead the landscape for Irish news would be somewhat bleaker; more than half the population buy a newspaper in a given week”.
Source: thejournal.ie
