New Delhi: More than half of internet users in India are consuming news online, and close to half of them consider trust to be a key driver for increasing news consumption, a Kantar-Google report said on Thursday. The report found that interest in news consumption is higher in rural India (63 percent or 238 million) compared to 37 percent of internet users in urban centres. According to the report, 52 percent or 379 million internet users in Indian languages get their news online through various news apps/websites, social media posts, message forwards, YouTube etc.
“48 percent say online is more popular than traditional TV channels,” the report said.
The report estimates that there are 729 million Internet users in India. Kantar said it conducted over 4,600 in-person interviews and 64 qualitative discussions across 16 cities to understand the news consumption habits of Indian language digital news consumers aged 15 and above in 8 languages across 14 states Could Video is the preferred format of news consumption for online news consumers after text and audio.
Video demand is highest for Bengali content (81 percent), followed by Tamil (81 percent), Telugu (79 percent), Hindi (75 percent), Gujarati (72 percent), Malayalam (70 percent). ), Marathi and Kannada 66 percent each.
The text consumption is 20 per cent for Gujarati and Kannada content and 18 per cent for Marathi. Audio news content is in high demand in Marathi and Malayalam, with 16 percent of online news readers interested.
YouTube topped the charts for accessing news online with 93 percent interest, followed by social media 88 percent, chat apps 82 percent, search engines 61 percent, publisher news apps or websites 45 percent, audio news 39. percent, OTT or connected TV 21 percent etc.
According to the report, 80 percent of online news consumers have come across news that seems suspicious and difficult to tag as real or misinformation. People use their own methods to detect misinformation. 43 percent consider it misinformation if they received news through WhatsApp or word of mouth and did not find it on a news website, and 40 percent consider news about a major event to be misinformation.
Repetition or regurgitation of old news as a current event accounts for 38 percent and 37 percent of sensational news is misinformation. At least 70 percent of respondents read summaries of less than 60 words, 67 percent of top story headlines, and 48 percent of longer content.
Nearly 25 percent of online news consumers prefer clips of less than 60 seconds and 19 percent prefer to watch in-depth clips.
73 percent of online news readers prefer hyperlocal content. In the core news segment, entertainment leads the charts with 76 percent of the 379 million online news consumers. This was followed by crime, and city and area safety news with 72 percent interest, and 71 percent interested in updates on events related to national, state, and city headlines.
People watching news in Bengali preferred sports news, followed by weather and air quality updates and national, state and city headlines. Online news readers who consume content in Malayalam prefer foreign news followed by education and entertainment news.
In the non-core news segment, health and fitness topped the list with 71 percent interest, followed by technology with 61 percent interest and fashion with 56 percent. People reading news in Hindi, Kannada and Tamil prefer spiritual and astrology in the non-core segment. In the case of Bengali and Malayalam, news readers preferred travel-related news, and Marathi news readers preferred arts and culture. Tamil online news consumers access an average of 6.19 platforms, Gujarati 5.73, Kannada 5.68 and Hindi 5.21 platforms.