Half of UK adults still get their news from newspaper brands; BBC One most important - Ofcom

OrangeRKN wrote:If information presented as fact about current events isn't news, what is it?

OrangeRKN feels up pensioners.

This is news.

GRcade is a news source now.

Knoyleo wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I think twitter gets a pass on this, and maybe Facebook and instagram to a lesser extent. But WhatsApp is entirely just a private messaging service - nobody is writing and sharing original "news" content on that platform!

Unfortunately they are

false rumours spread on WhatsApp

Yeah, that's not news.

False rumours spread over WhatsApp are still more legitimate news sources than 99% of the Sun newspaper (the 1% is the date and title which they usually managed to print correctly).

Knoyleo wrote:Twitter is not a source of news. They don't publish their own articles.
Just because people aren't clicking through, doesn't change the fact that the news source is still external.
If people are publishing news content on those platforms, then the individuals or organisations doing so are the source, not the platform they're shared on.

Agreed, although I don't think it's that clear-cut. Analogously a newspaper could be seen as a platform on which individual journalists are the news source. Yes there is an editor playing a prominent role. One could argue that social media algorithms at least partly play the role of "editor" in individual's news feeds.

I think the survey is more accurately "what platforms do you receive news from" rather than "who are the sources of your news", if you want to understand why social media is there.

I don't read the news, because I can't read.

Knoyleo wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:If information presented as fact about current events isn't news, what is it?

OrangeRKN feels up pensioners.

This is news.

GRcade is a news source now.

If the Daily Mail's headline tomorrow was "OrangeRKN feels up pensioners", would it be news? What's the difference?

I don't think news is defined by the source it comes from. News is just a factual report. It's information on current events. Most commonly it is disseminated through the media, but regardless of whether I read something in a newspaper or hear it from a friend, it's still news.

Knoyleo wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Dual wrote:How is WhatsApp a news source?

That's what always baffles me about these surveys. WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, they're not sources of news, they're places where people share links to news sources.

They're both. Plenty of people read the headline without clicking through to the link on those posts, and there are people posting Original News Content there too.

I mean Twitter is often the source of US political news...

Twitter is not a source of news. They don't publish their own articles.
Just because people aren't clicking through, doesn't change the fact that the news source is still external.
If people are publishing news content on those platforms, then the individuals or organisations doing so are the source, not the platform they're shared on.

I don’t totally disagree with you, but I think the lines are very blurred.

There isn’t really much difference between reading a newspaper and reading a Twitter thread.

If you follow several journalists on Twitter and pick up your news from that, I think it is perfectly accurate to say you get your news from Twitter. In the same way that the newspaper is where you get your news from if you buy a newspaper and read columns by those same journalists.

It is too unwieldy to say “I get my news from @Fatbloke3442225, @Mslicksass34222, @thesun, @VladPutin696969 and @bigbouncyjubblies2”. Much easier to say “Twitter”.

OrangeRKN wrote:...News is just a factual report...

I do tend to think that's what news should be, Orange, but I'm not sure that's the case. I feel that many news sources - and folk who subsequently share the report onwards - present it with a framing borne of their own perspective, interpretation and beliefs. Facts can often be hard to ascertain when being slightly obscured in this way.

Sure there is a spectrum of news and opinion. In this context what I'm saying is that if there is a factual report of something, it is news.

More news. OrangeRKN really upset about the Orange Raccoon now being Brown.

You're right Jawa, I would go as far as to say that it's impossible to get "really-factual" information about anything. Almost all information we learn is relayed through other people, who will add their own biases to how they present that (even if they try hard not to). Then our understanding of that information is integrated into our consciousness, but how that happens is down to our own instincts and prior hypotheses (even if we try hard to think critically).

To be fair though I think maybe the thrust was more that news is anything purporting to be factual information about current affairs. Funnily enough, news sources that acknowledge their biases and admit they aren't 100% factual (as nothing is), are probably more useful as a heuristic for fact than news sources that purport to be The Truth without any meta-narrative.

When are you changing your name and updating your avatar with the Remake Raccoon?

OrangeRKN wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:If information presented as fact about current events isn't news, what is it?

OrangeRKN feels up pensioners.

This is news.

GRcade is a news source now.

If the Daily Mail's headline tomorrow was "OrangeRKN feels up pensioners", would it be news? What's the difference?

I don't think news is defined by the source it comes from. News is just a factual report. It's information on current events. Most commonly it is disseminated through the media, but regardless of whether I read something in a newspaper or hear it from a friend, it's still news.

Moggy wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Dual wrote:How is WhatsApp a news source?

That's what always baffles me about these surveys. WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, they're not sources of news, they're places where people share links to news sources.

They're both. Plenty of people read the headline without clicking through to the link on those posts, and there are people posting Original News Content there too.

I mean Twitter is often the source of US political news...

Twitter is not a source of news. They don't publish their own articles.
Just because people aren't clicking through, doesn't change the fact that the news source is still external.
If people are publishing news content on those platforms, then the individuals or organisations doing so are the source, not the platform they're shared on.

I don’t totally disagree with you, but I think the lines are very blurred.

There isn’t really much difference between reading a newspaper and reading a Twitter thread.

If you follow several journalists on Twitter and pick up your news from that, I think it is perfectly accurate to say you get your news from Twitter. In the same way that the newspaper is where you get your news from if you buy a newspaper and read columns by those same journalists.

It is too unwieldy to say “I get my news from @Fatbloke3442225, @Mslicksass34222, @thesun, @VladPutin696969 and @bigbouncyjubblies2”. Much easier to say “Twitter”.

I see where you're coming from, in that it's totally possible for news to "break" on twitter or Facebook. I first saw about Rutger Hauer having died, on twitter, in a tweet that just said "RIP Rutger Hauer". It's definitely news that he died, and that was my first exposure to it, but my next action was to go to Google and search for verification from actual news sources. Anyone can tweet any old bollocks, and me tweeting "RIP Jim Davidson" doesn't make it news, even if I want it to be, because its not even unverifiable, it's just false.

I guess people just have their own personal level of what requirements need to be met before something becomes news. For some people, seeing something presented as fact is news, for me, I'd want to be able to see that an organisation or individual I trust has looked into whatever it is and verified it.

Part of my irritation also boils down to the general pisspoor nature of attributing credit for things online. People who provide a source for things that just say "Reddit" rather than the actual creator, or do something like attribute the source of something that they read and are repeating as a Google search.

Jenuall wrote:This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a lo-fi filter.

A lot of people are getting their news indirectly from places like The Sun and Mirror perhaps without even realising it. Tom Newton Dunn, Stig Abell (before he left) and Kevin Maguire are very popular on Twitter for example.

The most read English language newspaper website in the world is http://www.dailyfail.co.uk which gets over 185 million unique visitors per month and (I can't remember the exact figures) a high percentage of those readers return back 3+ times per day and read at least 5 stories per visit. It also has strong growth in the USA. More people in the UK get 'informed' about what's happening in the world from the Daily Mail headlines then any other news platform! I wonder what Boris is up to now...

Venom wrote:The most read English language newspaper website in the world is http://www.dailyfail.co.uk which gets over 185 million unique visitors per month and (I can't remember the exact figures) a high percentage of those readers return back 3+ times per day and read at least 5 stories per visit. It also has strong growth in the USA. More people in the UK get 'informed' about what's happening in the world from the Daily Mail headlines then any other news platform! I wonder what Boris is up to now...

I always find it weird how smutty the Daily Mail website is compared to the paper.

Mafro wrote:

Venom wrote:The most read English language newspaper website in the world is http://www.dailyfail.co.uk which gets over 185 million unique visitors per month and (I can't remember the exact figures) a high percentage of those readers return back 3+ times per day and read at least 5 stories per visit. It also has strong growth in the USA. More people in the UK get 'informed' about what's happening in the world from the Daily Mail headlines then any other news platform! I wonder what Boris is up to now...

I always find it weird how smutty the Daily Mail website is compared to the paper.

The Daily Mail caters to (mostly) middle England. MailOnline has a younger and international audience that is interested in a lot of the celebrity stories. They have different editors.

Reminds me somewhat of the difference between Metro's paper and website, the paper is pretty decent, but the website often displays some of the shoddiest journalism i've seen.

Vermilion wrote:Reminds me somewhat of the difference between Metro's paper and website, the paper is pretty decent, but the website often displays some of the shoddiest journalism i've seen.

Same company, same office. Metro print newspaper is made by right-leaning traditional journalists. Metro Online is mainly left-leaning 20-30 somethings. The news like most online outlets is churnalism but there is, occasionally, some interesting original lifestyle content. Again, two different editors.

Venom wrote:

Vermilion wrote:Reminds me somewhat of the difference between Metro's paper and website, the paper is pretty decent, but the website often displays some of the shoddiest journalism i've seen.

Same company, same office. Metro print newspaper is made by right-leaning traditional journalists. Metro Online is mainly left-leaning 20-30 somethings. The news like most online outlets is churnalism but there is, occasionally, some interesting original lifestyle content. Again, two different editors.

I read the Metro on the train every morning. It doesn't feel right-leaning. The readers' letters section is usually a page full of people bemoaning Brexit, the Tories, Farage, Trump etc, with one comment reserved for an alt-right weirdo, who will be pounced on in the same section the following day.