The US and the UK have varied use of news, including the type of news they access, how interested the are in political news, how often they read news vs watch news and their access of news on smartphones and tablets.

By Stephanie23 and Brian58


News and access to news can be viewed as a part of a country's culture than will vary between each certain country. In this article, many surveys were done to discover how different types of people engage in news. Although many conclusions about various types of people were drawn, one comparison that stands out is how US citizens and UK citizens access news. Conclusions that were drawn were that in the US people tend to watch news more often rather than read, people in the UK and US have similar interests in types of news, people in the US have a greater interest in politics, and that both countries have a rapid growth in accessibility to news via tablets and smartphones.

Reading news compared to watching news is the more popular in the UK than it is in the US. 

With the invention of the television, watching news on video has become a more popular way of obtaining information. This is compared to reading news on paper in sources such as newspapers, magazines, etc. There are differences in which way people prefer to access news depending on their country of residence. In the UK, 49% of a population sampled stated that they mostly read news in text. Meanwhile, only 32% of the US population samples stated that they mostly read news in text. This concludes that reading news in texts such as newspapers is still the a mainly popular way of accessing news in the UK, but is less popular in the US where watching news in the form of videos is becoming more favorable.

People in the US and the UK have similar types of news that they are interested in being informed about. 

There are many diverse types of news that can be shared in newspapers, TV news shows, magazines, on the web, and other news sources that are available to people. People who read news are most likely to read what they are interested in rather than random news or the first thing they see. The type of news that most people are interested in varies between countries around the world. However, between the UK and the US there are many similarities in the type of news people are interested in. For example, in both the UK and the US, people find the most interest in news about their country and the least interest in news about arts and culture. Furthermore, 28% of the interest in news in both the US and the UK were in news about Health and Education. This concludes that people in the US and the UK have similar types of news that they are interested in being informed about.

People in the US are more interested in politics than people from the UK. 

Political news is one type of news that many people may not find as interesting as other types of news. This may be due to the fact that younger generations who are reading news via technology are less interested in politics or simply do not understand them the way older generations do. Political interest in is another factor that varies between countries. Specifically between the US and the UK, more people would consider themselves "extremely interested" or  "very interested" in politics in the US rather than in the UK. Percentage wise, 55% of the US sampled population considered themselves either extremely or mostly interested in political news while only 33% of the UK sampled population considered themselves extremely or mostly interested in political news. This concludes that people in the US are more interested in politics than people from the UK are. This may be a reason why political news is a more popular type of news in the US than it is in the UK and could potentially effect the popularity of other news types accessed in the UK. If people in the UK do not have interest in politics, it is likely that they won't be accessing news about politics.

Smartphone and tablet use for news purposes is growing both in the US and the UK.

Across a global sample, we can see a clear trend of increasing digital news consumption. This is even more evident in a younger half of the population, which are more dependent on smartphones for news. Globally, one-third- of 18 to 34 year-olds say the smartphone is their main way of accessing digital news. When looking at the US, 17% of people use their smartphone as the main device for news, which is relatively low when compared to other countries like the UK at 24%. In contrast, the tablet's larger screen size and greater simplicity makes this device more appealing to older age groups. This trend can be seeing in the UK, where the age group of 45 to 54 year-olds have the highest use of news apps on tablets at 10%. However, while the digital news platform is growing rapidly, it is still far from replacing traditional platforms. Across all countries, an average of 50% of those who access news on a tablet say they also read a printed newspaper at least once a week. Furthermore, 86% also watch TV news, with a similar trend seen in smartphone users. New digital devices are changing consumption patterns particularly amongst the young, but traditional platforms still remain relevant today.