Today, social media is used not only for communication and entertainment, but also as one of the most important platforms for receiving news. A lot of young adults take part in news through social media and in many cases social media is the only source for socially important information. The new role as a news provider, which social media has adopted, is examined from an audience perspective with a focus on habits and opinions. This study examined the digital news habits of Generation Z. The study is based on two research questions: one about how Generation Z take part in news via social media and one about how they are critical of the source. The study had a quantitative approach with additional qualitative elements and implemented a web survey as a method. The web survey combined open questions, multiple-choice questions and one-answer questions, the combination gave us both a broad overview with numbers to measure, but also qualitative and deeper answers that the respondent themself had formulated. There were three theories applied to the study, the theories are electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM), Uses and Gratification theory and Social Network theory. These theories provided the basis for the design of the web survey and were implemented in the analysis and discussion of the study result. The result of the study showed that all respondents receive news via social media daily, but that receiving news is usually not an active choice. News finds the audience without them looking for it, this is mostly due to algorithms and social networks. A lot of the respondents answered that they do not trust news that are published on social media, nevertheless they continue to take part in news via social media. The result also showed that the respondents believe that a lack of source criticism is one of the biggest disadvantages of news on social media.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-121175 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Strand, Erika, Reyelts, Janne-Marie |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för medier och journalistik (MJ) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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