PARSONS MFA Design and Technology Thesis Project — Week3 (9.9, 2018)
All about Research
Domain Map:
Media& Journalism, Digital Product Design, User Experience Design, Data Analysis, Data Visualization, Democracy
Design Question
As data becoming a powerful tool, how designers can leverage big data to provide 18–30 years olds with a more engaging NEWS experience?
Research source
1.Investigating the News Seeking behavior of Young Adults
“According to the statistics compiled by YouTube, it has been found that YouTube’s lion share of viewers is audience falling in the age group of 18 to 34 years.”
4. 5 Ways Big Data Plays a Major Role in the Media and Entertainment Industry
5. Identifying, engaging the not-so-different print and digital audiences
6. Stories Format: News Media’s Next Social Opportunity
7. How the Connected Consumer Is Redefining News Media
8. News Media Outlook 2018: The New Economics of Content
9. How Americans Encounter, Recall and Act Upon Digital News


Just as individuals tend to favor one digital pathway over others, certain topics in the news are more likely to be learned about through one method over another. Business and finance news, for example, is more likely to be accessed by going directly to a news website. About half of business and finance news instances (53%) occurred through an individual going directly to a news website or app, compared with just 12% that came through social media. Community news, on the other hand, was much more likely to be discovered through social media (53%) than on a news website (22%).
Social media, search engines and friends’ emails and texts all succeed in engaging news consumers within the bounds of each venue. About a quarter (23%) of the instances in which news came through a search engine resulted in searches for additional information, a higher share than any other pathway. Similarly, 14% of news instances from friends or family led to sending news via email or text, compared with 5% or less of the instances from any other pathway. And when people got news through social media, they went on to re-share that news on social media one out of four times. On the other hand, no single digital action stands out for news that came from a direct connection with a news organization.
Younger and older online news consumers follow news links at the same rate, but younger adults are less likely to remember the source. When 18- to 29-year-old online news consumers clicked on news links, they remembered the source about half the time (47%), at least 10 percentage points less than their elders (57% for 30- to 49-year-olds and 61% for those 50 and older). And these younger online news consumers got their news through social media 47% of the time on average, about double the rate of those 50 and older (23%), and about on par with those ages 30 to 49 (42%). Those 50 and older, on the other hand, stand out for their heavier reliance on news organizations’ emails, texts and alerts. (source: http://www.journalism.org/2017/02/09/how-americans-encounter-recall-and-act-upon-digital-news/)
11. News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016


12. Interesting Social Media Datasets
14. News Datasets