Where we get our news part one

Wednesday, 25 September 2013 12:01 | Written by Graham Young

Political campaigns and the media engage in giant feedback loops, particularly in the course of a campaign. Some media give you better access to certain demographics than others; some media are more critical than others; and whatever is in the media demands a response, even if that response is to do nothing, which influences what you do in your campaign.

We asked our respondents about their media usage, and it gives some really interesting insights into what politically informed voters do when they want news. I wouldn't rely on this information solely for planning a campaign, because we don't get any disconnected voters (the vast majority) contributing to our surveys. But I would rely on it in terms of what media I should be reacting to, and how to broadcast to as many of my supporters as possible.

Here is a dot point summary of some of our findings.

Media consumption is very diversified with no one medium having anything like a monopoly on opinion leaders.
Newspapers are overall the preferred medium for news, but by the time you get the the fourth most preferred medium Public TV has just about caught up.
There is a lot of diversity in media choice for news. While newspapers are the most popular, they are only the first choice of 34% - just more than one-third. Public TV (20%) and Public Radio (19%) come next.
Commercial TV is not initially regarded favourably as a news source, but it still has support. Commercial Radio ranks behind blogs and social media for reliability for news.
ALP voters prefer Public radio (28%) and public TV (27%) as their first source of news. Greens are more heavily skewed towards Public radio (32%) and prefer Public TV (24%) and newspapers (24%) evenly. Liberal Party voters are the biggest supporters of newspapers with 46% listing them as their first source for news. This was 33% for non-Greens minor party voters.
Social media are a minor source of information for all types of voters. As first choice for news they rank at 10% (ALP), 6% (Greens), 3% (LP), and 6% (minor). They are a bit player in news.
Blogs do not fare much better than social media, with an overall average of 8% as first choice, but this is significantly higher for non-Green minor party voters where it is 14%. This may represent their disillusionment with establishments in general.
It seems that one of the reasons Fairfax newspapers seem to be in more trouble than News Corp's is because their demographic is less interested in reading their product.
If Labor wants to talk to the faithful, then it needs to get on Public Radio and TV. The same advice applies to Greens. For Liberals newspapers are the obvious channel. If they want to try to convert voters, then they need to cross over.