How young people are getting news and information (in the time of the coronavirus crisis)
When the Public Radio Incubation Lab set out to interview 10 young people, we were focused on how they discover audio and connect to their communities. By the time we were conducting the interviews, our country was in the throes of sheltering for COVID-19, and we coincidentally learned a bit about how our participants got news and information in a pandemic.
Study background
As mentioned in our previous post, our Lab is curious about how young and diverse listeners learn about news and information, and in turn how they share that information in their communities. We talked with 10 people between the ages of 22–45, half of which were under age 35. Seven of our ten participants were people of color.
Our 30-minute interviews were conducted over video conference on March 16–18, when a number of participants were already sheltering in place due to government requests
Audio discovery
COVID-19 is primary in people’s minds, and has brought passive consumers into a state of higher consumption, but that didn’t stop participants from still engaging with other general interests. When asked what topic they once followed closely in the media, half cited the coronavirus. Those that didn’t cited favorite sports or musicians whose schedules were impacted by the coronavirus regardless.
“I try to keep up with mixed martial arts news. … A bunch of my friends do also, so it’s something that we can all do together. With how crazy things are all over the world right now, we’re just keeping our eyes on [an upcoming sports] event.”
It was common for the younger cohort (under age 35) to go to Twitter or Facebook to learn about new developments. Participants acknowledged there is a lot of misinformation to sift through, but that they have identified sources that they feel are trustworthy. Picking up information in a digital environment mixed with hard hitting news and entertainment is an expected experience, if not a desired one.
“One of my favorites to listen to right now is Joe Rogan. … He’s bringing on a doctor to talk about some of the concerns of the coronavirus.”
Also mentioned with surprising frequency was the value of smart recommendations. Participants actively clicked on content generated from YouTube’s personalization algorithm because the recommendations consistently reflected the participants’ interests.
Community
Digital communities are important, but participants often self-identified as belonging to certain demographics, physical locations, and career categories before any general interests. It would be interesting to know if this would change should sheltering in place persist for an extended period.
When it comes to engaging with their community, participants would take national-level events and talk about them in a digital space with a private, personal circle on platforms like on Facebook and WhatsApp.
Participants didn’t exclusively use any one source for news, but relied on local television networks for news of their nearby community. They followed the development of the coronavirus on many media fronts, adding in new resources as they became available, starting with local ones.
No news consumption before COVID-19
“I’m going to trust the local authorities and local media to relay that information (about coronavirus.) KTLA is a local TV station. I check there.”
Active local news consumer before COVID-19
“Before the virus I’d say I’d listen to more local news. Right now it’s a bit of both. Whatever the president says, the governor comes round and says ‘Here are the new orders.’”
Active local and national news consumer before COVID-19
“For the coronavirus the news has been overloaded, but for my local municipality, I was on the mayor’s newsletter. There was a website to look at and keep monitoring.”
Payment and giving
This category of findings was least affected by the ongoing crisis, but we conducted our interviews right before the massive layoffs. Money was carefully monitored by many of our participants long before their towns began closing schools and businesses. Four participants had school-age children. Seven of our participants earned less than $70,000 a year, and three earned less than $40,000. They were highly motivated by deals, often sharing passwords or using family plans managed by others, and navigated paywalls by limiting their consumption to the qualifying threshold.
“I was subscribing to Los Angeles Times … but I no longer pay for it. I guess it was a cost cutting thing. They allow you to read five to six articles a month, and that’s enough for me.”
For participants who had reached the edge of the paywall and wanted more content, they would pay for it. It helped if the content felt ‘high-quality’ to them, such as a movie or heavily-researched podcast. Unscripted conversation or low-budget clips available on a site like YouTube or casual talk podcasts weren’t things they thought were worth their own money. They expected those to be funded by ads, which they tolerated without complaint.
Next steps
The world is changing daily. We are still committed to exploring the potential of creating pathways to audio discovery and local engagement by a younger, more diverse listener group. We also recognize that in spite of the current situation, we can learn about what our potential audience needs now, and apply that to whatever we build when we are able to emerge from our new normalcy.
We are taking ideas gleaned from this research and testing two concepts with more participants, with the goal of iterating quickly to the best possible solution. Stay tuned.
