A special report from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 State of the News Media found 72 percent of Americans commonly receive their news from their friends and family.
“Word-of-mouth has been popular ever since man exited the cave,” said UF journalism assistant professor Norman Lewis.
Surprised the number wasn’t higher, Lewis said news is who people are; it’s something they constantly share in conversation.
And Americans are doing so, but revamped throughout the digital platform. Fifteen percent of Americans said they receive their news from family and friends on social media, and 7 percent said they do so by email.
UF public relations sophomore Lauren Yockey said she is learning a lot about the value of social media to the news industry.
“Because [social media] is in our lives so much, it’s really easy to ‘click’,” the 19-year-old said. “It’s like instant gratification, but the information has the potential to be false or misleading.”
Although the majority of news people receive may come from a short conversation or tweet, more often than not, they eventually seek out the full story.
The study found about 70 percent of Americans follow up their news very or somewhat often, especially if it was sent via email or social media.
For the news industry, this is an exciting but difficult step.
“It’s all an undiscovered country,” said Ronald Rodgers, a UF journalism associate professor. “This is their opportunity to start discovering how these things can be used, to create a symbiotic relationship between the publication and the conversation.”
