Older people’s news dependency and social connectedness

Abstract

Social isolation has become a growing issue, particularly among older citizens. The ‘digital divide’ has been identified as one of the contributing factors leaving many older citizens behind. While increasing digital literacy among seniors has been identified as one of the remedies, less attention has been paid to the role of news media on the wellbeing and connectedness of older people. Through the lens of the uses and gratifications theory, this article reports on the findings of a survey of 562 news consumers aged 50 years and above who live in Canberra, the capital city of Australia. The analysis highlights the important role of news in reducing feelings of social isolation, particularly for those who spend more time alone and older people with cognitive impairment. Older participants who had difficulty concentrating and learning new tasks were also more dependent on news. We suggest this is due to the habitual, predictable and concise nature of news. These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of news in the wellbeing of older people and point to the need for policymakers and those in the aged care sector to ensure access to news for older citizens to improve the quality of life.

Regional news audiences’ value perception of local news

“…This supports the logic that local news has both a democratic and community function to audiences (Ali et al, 2020) and that people are more invested in their local news offerings. The fact that trust was related to the willingness to pay is different from that of national or general news, where the relationship between trust and pay is not always clear (Fisher et al, 2019). Trust in news has been found to be one of many factors influencing the willingness to pay but not necessarily the main factor (Fletcher and Nielsen, 2017).…”

“…Dou (2004) found a significant positive impact of online credit card experience on the payment intent for digital content in general. Others found a link between digital subscription and the willingness to pay for news (Fisher et al, 2019; Fletcher and Nielsen, 2017; Goyanes, 2014).…”

“…Some of the non-monetary costs that influence the willingness to pay include encountering unwanted paywalls (Fisher et al, 2019) and wanting to avoid advertising by using ad-blocking software (Park et al, 2018). This means that there are factors not related to the news content per se that influence perceptions of the overall value of news and the willingness to pay for it.…”

Keeping on top of the world: Online news usage in China, the United States and five European countries

“…While the DNR includes average figures about news use for each country studied, as well as the sociodemographics of news use across all countries surveyed, the study does not break down the sociodemographic characteristics of news users for each country individually, and unfortunately, it does not cover China. Some of the participating countries publish reports with more detailed information about specific subpopulations, for instance, in Australia (Fisher et al, 2019), Germany (Hoelig and Hasebrink, 2019), Norway (Moe and Bjørgan, 2019) and Spain (Vara-Miguel et al, 2019). The typical pattern is that while older people tend to rely on legacy news media, such as television, radio and newspapers, younger people prefer online news media, especially via social media.…”

Gamifying Online News in a Senior Online Community: Insights from Designing and Assessing the Readers’ Experience

“…In terms of the target group, most of the gamification studies tend to focus on a young audience (e.g., Toscani et al 2018;Cesário et al 2017;Duarte-Hueros et al 2020;Guardia et al 2019), while only little published data has been available on how older populations tend to access news (e.g., Bergström 2020;Fisher et al 2021) and gamified systems (e.g., Altmeyer et al 2018;De Vette et al 2018;Moser et al 2015;Kappen 2015).…”