Foraging for News: News Gathering as a Social Act

Anyone who has read this blog over time (IS there anyone who has read it over time?) knows I have an academic crush on the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which is constantly releasing interesting studies about how the public uses the Internet. I also have crushes on Michelle Obama, Kate Winslet and Congressional Oversight Panel chair Elizabeth Warren, but that is a whole other blog entry.

My crush with Pew Internet was rewarded yet again recently when they released the study Understanding the Participatory News Consumer.

Among its most interesting findings:

*About half (46 percent) of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms a day and just 7 percent get their news from a single media platform in a typical day. Six in 10 Americans (59 percent) get news from a combination of online and offline sources and slightly more (65 percent) say that do not have a single favorite website for news.

*People’s relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized and participatory. A third of all cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones. Almost 3 in 10 (28 percent) people have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them. More than a third (37 percent) of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

Probably the key finding of the study is that news is often an important social act. Almost three quarters (72 percent) of American news consumers say they follow the news because they enjoy talking with others about what is happening in the world and 69 percent say keeping up with the news is a social or civic obligation.

How people are getting news with the rise of a more interactive online environment is becoming more of a social act. We have become more news foragers, not just news consumers. Three quarters of online consumers get news forwarded through e-mails or posts on social network sites and more than half (52 percent) say they share links with others via those methods. Half of social network site users who are also online news consumers say on a typical day they get news items from people they follow and another 23 percent of this cohort follows news organizations or individual journalists on social network site. Some 37 percent of Internet users have contributed or disseminated news via social media through commenting on stories (25 percent), posting a link on social network site (17 percent), tagging content (11 percent), creating their own original material or opinion pieces (9 percent) or Tweeting about the news.

I know that with the rise of social networks, my newsgathering process has changed. I do rely on a variety of offline and online forums for news. And I rely a lot on my friends to pass on interesting and important stories via Facebook. Unfortunately, I do little to improve the intellectual development of my friends and colleagues, preferring instead to send links like the most deranged snowmen of all time, The funniest headline fails of all time and my picks for best and worst Oscar gowns .

I want to know how you feel. Do you agree with Pew that newsgathering has become more of a social act and do you see yourself more as a news conduit rather than just a news consumer?