Poll shows Portugal’s youth (like peers in other western countries) get their news from Youtubers and instagrammers
An inquiry carried out by the YOUNDigital project concluded that young people in Portugal consider the news to be “biased” and “boring,” especially when it comes to politics.
The YouNDgital digital citizenship project surveyed 1,362 young people living in Portugal, aged between 15 and 24, and identified four different groups based on how they view the news.
The first group, called “Leisure-Centred Digital Explorers”, has 50.27% male respondents who are interested in news about sports, technology, health, and entertainment. The young people in this group look to the media to chat and pass the time because the news is “biased” and “boring”, especially political news.
This group identified “Youtubers” as a way of finding out “what’s going on in the world”, and their main sources of information are social networks, with less demand for newspapers, radio and/ or teachers.
The “Digital Explorers of Varied Themes” group includes 59% of female respondents and revealed that they are interested in topics such as health, entertainment, technology, society, education and the economy, although they look to “instagrammers” to find out “what’s going on in the world”.
The young people in this group consider the news to be “biased” and to have “a negative impact” on their “life and state of mind”. They access social media to talk and do schoolwork, with family members as their main source of information.
The third group “News is not my thing” has a higher proportion of male responses, around 61%, and sport and entertainment stand out among the low levels of interest in the media.
In order to find out what’s going on in the world, this group also accesses “YouTubers”, although to a lesser extent than the first group. They share the same perspective on the news as the previous group, adding that news is boring, especially about politics.
This group also revealed that they access social media to talk and do schoolwork, but with lower overall values than the second group, and that they have this media as a source of information, but to a lesser extent than the two groups already defined.
The last group the study identified is “Old-Fashioned Media Glimpse” and has shown an interest in sport, entertainment and some attention to technology.
It is a more diverse group than groups one and two, but broader regarding news than group three. It is made up of 50.69% female respondents and the rest male.
This group considers that “journalists are more prominent (compared to digital influencers, who appear more in groups one and two)”, and they also share the opinion that the news “has a negative impact” on their lives and their state of mind”, describing the media as “biased”, as in the other groups.
This group mainly uses social media for conversations and schoolwork, and their sources of information are social networks and family members.
Thus, the inquiry concluded that “the emphasis on news was not evident in the groups, with a focus on the interests of the individual rather than the collective”, emphasising the important role played by school and family.
YouNDigital is a project developed by the Lusófona University research centre (CICANT) and is funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology.
But it perfectly explains why you will be hard pressed to find a young person ever reading a newspaper (unless it is to quickly consult a horoscope), and why the generation gap has become so marked when it centres on conversation topics. Try talking about Ukraine to a young person in Portugal, and many will look surprised and say: “You mean, the war is STILL going on…wow! That’s crazy…” ND
Source material: LUSA
