Tablets Drive Deeper News Consumption [STUDY]

 By 
Lauren Indvik
 on 
Tablets Drive Deeper News Consumption [STUDY]
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Seventy-eight percent of respondents said that they read more news stories and follow a greater variety of news topics. More than three-fourths said that tablets make the overall news experience more enjoyable, and more than a third said they spend more hours per day with media because of their tablets.

The findings were derived from six informal, in-depth interviews and a 1,100-person survey of people in the U.S. ages 15 to 54, 88% of whom were already in possession of a tablet. All identified themselves as consumers of news content.

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The study also found that two in three tablet owners frequently use their devices while doing other things, such as watching TV or spending time with friends, a habit that was even more frequent among those who had owned a tablet for seven months or longer. (Said behavior has already fueled the development of a variety of tablet apps designed to be used while consuming content on a second device, namely television sets.)

Additionally, respondents tended to gravitate more toward established news brands on their devices over "news aggregators" -- a statistic the BBC will no doubt enjoy touting to advertisers. Significant numbers of respondents also said, amusingly enough, that they would sooner give up sports (47%), coffee (44%) or Facebook (44%) before giving up their tablet news apps.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, arakonyunus

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