60 How Young People Consume News and The Implications For Mainstream Media Appendix 61
[The Guardian] is a newspaper that does more or less
align with my politics. The things it highlights or brings
up are things that I want to know about. You know,
I’m not the typical Vice reader, who’s like young,
and drinks a lot, really cool and edgy. I’m not that person.
I’m not The Times, either. It just feels like it’s more the
things I’m interested in. It has a real focus on culture,
whereas in some other newspapers and publications,
they don’t have that. For example, Dolly Alderton writes
sometimes in The Guardian. She also used to write in the
Times. I like the way she writes. It’s an anecdotal way
of writing... It has ‘A letter to,’ where people write a letter
to their dead dad or something, I like to consume those,
it’s not fun, but human level things… I feel like at least
it’s trying to do something good for the world. It doesn’t
always get it right.
In terms of, just, pure aesthetics, I think the way the [BBC]
app looks, I just like the way its set out, I like the colour
and set out of it, the headlines always seem to be quite
concise, like it doesn’t feel like a misleading headline,
so it’s a decent headline, and eye-catching headline, but
it’s not one that you would sit there and go ‘oh, I’ve been
misled by that headline’…I don’t nd it is telling me their
opinion as opposed to just telling me what the actual
news story is.
I was particularly interested in looking at international
news from, like, not a western, biased perspective.
So, for those purposes I really liked Al Jazeera, because
I feel like it spoke of the United States news in a way
that wasn’t highly biased, and it was just the facts laid
out. Even for national news, using Al Jazeera as an
outsider’s perspective to read it.
New York Times and Washington Post are usually
reliable. Obviously, something like the Wall Street
Journal is usually ne.
Quotes on different formats
Video
I’m on Instagram, for example, and there are videos on
there, that could send me to a link to somewhere else…
It depends what I’m looking for, but if I’m scrolling that
could be anything from a post on Facebook to a video on
Instagram to an article on BBC News or something. So, it
sort of depends where I am and what I’m looking for.
I would say video [is my favourite type of news]. Basically,
snippets of TV but not actually accessed through TV but on
digital… I don’t like how this one [Vox exercise] is made…
I would watch the video if this woman was just there and
some experts, but not with some stupid, archival bits and
stupid music.
I like the fact I can watch a video and then stop the video
and then it’ll save my place in case I want to go back to
that video.
Visual story-telling with images
Okay, that’s cool, like a Snapchat story. I think it’s better
for young people so they don’t have to read as much and
get confused. It’s really short. It’s not paragraphs. I like
that. Then whenever you click you can share it to social
media and that. That’s interesting…. You could probably
put it on Snapchat as well where we’ll get it easier.
The text feels quite BBC Bitesize… But really helpful for a
quick top up of knowledge… This would be great if it was
about a self-assessment tax return.
Comic strip
Adele: If the comic strip [long form article as comic strip]
is the news I’d probably give up on it. Is this for trying to
make young people be interested in what’s going on in the
world?
Clive: That’s annoying… Feels like it goes on forever.
Yes, look at The Guardian, cartoon-like story. It’s, like,
‘What is this?’ I would not even start this if I came across
this. The New York Times had a great one this summer
about climbing Everest. I think that’s what it was, and it
had cool 3D videos embedded into it, great infographics, it
had some awesome testimonials. But there’s a difference
to this, which, to me, is hard to read...
Expander formats
Clive: Yes, I agree. I think this is very good for a younger
audience.
Adele: It starts educating them in a different world of
what’s going on.
Clive: I remember growing up with news and just thinking
I’ve got to look up so much stuff that I don’t understand.
And if it was there, then I’d hope it wasn’t biased in any
way.
Clive: It’s almost like a dictionary or thesaurus and you just
click on a word and it comes up with that, it’s quite cool.
I like that because you’re not too daunted by the whole
article. You can educate yourself and if there’s gaps of
information missing for you personally…
Because honestly, if you saw the whole article, this huge
long thing, you might not read it.
Appendix 4: Further Quotes
Quotes on brand perception
Daily Mail is my go-to…It would probably be someone
that is antagonising, looking for a problem, but straight
forward, to the point…It’s quite funny, cos you have
certain personalities, like Piers Morgan, that sometimes
argue between each other, between different points of
view. It can be quite comical day to day… It’s something to
unwind with. I am very sceptical of what they write, at the
same time. I think they’re one of the rst to come out with
a breaking headline, which always sparks my interest.
But it’s not always accurate.
[The Daily Mail is] Funny, outgoing, someone who doesn’t
take themselves too seriously. But also someone who
might curb the truth, who may tell a few porky pies to get
attention…I really like the tone. Light-hearted and easy
to understand, which is really important for things like
politics and natural disasters. Tells stories in an easy way.
I like BuzzFeed. They have cute videos. I feel like, when I
think of BuzzFeed I don’t think of their more serious stuff,
I think of ‘We told three people to try really long nails
for a week, and this is what happened.’ I don’t really
take it too seriously.
I like CNN simply because it’s convenient. When I wake
up in the morning I open CNN and it has a news brieng
and I see everything that’s going on. It’s easy to stay
up-to-date on current events.
What’s great about NPR is not only do they have really
great local sources for news, you feel like you’re getting
a great view of what’s happening locally, especially at NYC,
they really cover all of the issues. But when you hear about
stories from something happening in Texas, you hear
from the Texas NPR reporter, and it’s not really a political
stance, it’s more about the actual news. It’s what’s
happening without a political slant. [New York Times has]
a really great standard of reporting, great reporters,
they break a lot of stories, just the overall setup of the
website and the actual newspapers. Really professional
and, what you expect from a newspaper… It really comes
down to the reporter and the journalism level; you feel
like they’re actually embedded with the story, they’re living
the story. They’re not just seeing the story happen,
you know, 100ft away.
Clive, 25-30, UK
Ed, 25-30, UK
Courtney, 21-24, US
Michelle, 31-35, US
Mark, 31-35, US
Clive, 31-35, UK
Alex, 31-35, UK
Alex, 31-35, UK
Maggie, 21-24, US
Victoria, 25-30, UK
Courtney, 21-24, US
Amy, 25-30, UK
Ruby, 18-20, UK
Sophie, 21-24, UK
Adele & Clive, 25-30, UK
Sam, Christopher & Ryan, 25-30, US
Adele & Clive, 25-30, UK
Michelle & Temple, 31-35, US