The PEW Research Centre recently conducted an in-depth study designed to understand how readers navigate the digital news environment.
The study examines where news consumers go for news, how they get there and what lures them away. Findings reveal that there various types of online news consumers with casual users (viewing a site only a few times in a month) accounting for most of the visitors. The study also shows that while search aggregators remain the most popular way users find news, social media sites are becoming a competing driver of traffic.
Steve Buttry, director of community engagement for TBD, has identified a number of problems with the study which he claims is heavily skewed towards national news sites and ”has too many holes and indications of bias.”