Mind the Gap! Journalism on Social Media and News Consumption Among Young Audiences

Abstract

Social media have become the main gateway to information for young people, helping to determine and shape the young’s visions of the present, which is also conditioned by news sharing among users. News media are tasked with remaining relevant to these young audiences and are trying to reach the places where they are digitally most active. By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, two perspectives were analyzed in this study. The first was the news use on social media of young Spanish, French, and British people (N = 1,528) aged 18–25. The second was the content dissemination strategies implemented within social networking sites by the 30 most consumed media in these European countries. The results confirm the pre-eminence of social media as channels of information and as alternatives to traditional media, with distributed, incidental consumption throughout the day. Meanwhile, the news media are implementing strategies to get integrated into the platforms that most engage new audiences.