{"id":111597,"date":"2019-07-01T14:38:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T19:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/decoded\/\/\/lessons-learned-from-more-than-20-years-of-asking-about-americans-online-habits\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:10:43","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:10:43","slug":"lessons-learned-from-more-than-20-years-of-asking-about-americans-online-habits","status":"publish","type":"decoded","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/decoded\/2019\/07\/01\/lessons-learned-from-more-than-20-years-of-asking-about-americans-online-habits\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons learned from more than 20 years of asking about Americans\u2019 online habits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
(Illustration by Kim Arias\/Pew Research Center)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At Pew Research Center, we\u2019ve been asking Americans about their online news habits since the mid-1990s. Since then, the ways people get news online have changed a lot \u2014 and so have the ways we ask about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1996, for example, we asked Americans whether they got news about that year\u2019s presidential campaign from \u201ccomputer on-line sources.\u201d Today, with more Americans often getting online news through mobile devices than computers<\/a>, that question wording sounds dated (and clunky). (For more on why question wording matters, watch our Methods 101 explainer<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post explores two common challenges we\u2019ve faced in measuring online news use over more than two decades: Identifying the many different ways that Americans get news online and understanding what survey respondents mean when they tell us about their online news habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Challenge #1: Identifying the variety of ways people get online news<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The internet is a relatively new source of news for Americans, compared to, say, TV or radio. As a result, it can be hard to design surveys that get at the uniquely complicated nature of online news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many different organizations publish news online. Most established newspapers and TV networks have websites, for example, but there are also independent blogs that were founded online, social media accounts run by news organizations or members of the public, and search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of our earliest surveys about online news use focused on how traditional media organizations were dispersing their content online by asking about \u201cthe websites of the broadcast TV networks,\u201d \u201cthe websites of national newspapers,\u201d and \u201cC-SPAN\u2019s website.\u201d As the number of online news sources grew, we needed to add additional questions that reflected sources not<\/em> linked to a TV network or print newspaper, like when we asked about sources like \u201cnews blogs on the internet\u201d in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a survey after the 2006 midterm election, we tried to categorize all the forms of online news into four groups: newspaper websites, TV news websites, \u201cInternet news sites such as Google news or Yahoo news,\u201d and \u201cother.\u201d In that survey, the \u201cother\u201d category got as many responses as any of the other three categories, which is not something you usually want to see in an \u201cother\u201d response<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lesson was clear: There was a large section of online news sources that didn\u2019t fit neatly into the buckets we had initially tried to use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Challenge #2: Understanding how Americans think about their online news use<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Online news is often associated with a legacy brand, like that of a print newspaper or television network. That can make it hard to understand what Americans are thinking about when they\u2019re answering survey questions about their online news habits. For example, when a respondent is getting news from nytimes.com, does she primarily remember getting news online or getting news from The New York Times newspaper brand, whose flagship product is a print newspaper?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get at these complicated answers, we sometimes ended up with complex, multi-step questions. Consider this example from a 2008 survey:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The phrase \u201cONLINE through the internet\u201d makes clear how new this idea was at the time. While we wouldn\u2019t use this phrasing today, one of our main concerns when asking about a new concept is making sure that respondents clearly understand what we\u2019re asking. That\u2019s why, in 2008, we walked respondents through multiple questions that set up the new concept \u2014 getting news online \u2014 only after asking about something more familiar, like getting news from a print newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking through past surveys, there are other questions that now seem too blunt, or unnecessarily spelled out. In 2012, for instance, we defined a mobile app very thoroughly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Today, we would no longer put the word \u201capp\u201d in quotation marks. But defining a mobile device for people can still be tricky. When people are getting news from an app without opening up a browser, for instance, do they still consider that getting news \u201conline?\u201d When they get news via email, or a Twitter app, do they think of that as \u201conline\u201d in the same way they might think about a newspaper\u2019s website?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Over more than 20 years of fielding these surveys, there have been big changes in the way that Americans get news online. For example, we tracked the increase in internet news use from 1999 to 2013<\/a>, and reported when the internet overtook newspapers as a news source<\/a>. Now, the share of U.S. adults who get news online is approaching the share who get it from TV<\/a>. And social media sites have now surpassed print newspapers<\/a> as a news source for Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We currently have two sets of questions that get at people\u2019s overall online news use. First, we combine the news people get on websites, apps, or social media sites \u2014 focusing on the platforms where people are getting their news. Second, we ask about the physical devices where people get news online \u2014 on desktops, laptops and mobile devices. These are the questions that we think best represent how people are getting news online at this point in time. But in the future, these questions may need to continue to change, to best represent people\u2019s evolving online news habits and perceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been asking Americans about their online news habits since the mid-1990s. 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