Online outlets overtake TV as main source of news for Irish people, report finds

Mon, 17 Jun, 2024 - 12:20

Online news has become more popular than television news in Ireland for the first time, according to a new report.

The annual Digital News Report Ireland, undertaken by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and published on Monday by Coimisiún na Meán, also reveals that the number of Irish news consumers who paid to access news content increased in 2024.

This was especially true for 18–24-year-olds, where an increase of seven percentage points was recorded compared to last year.

The Irish section of the report – compiled by DCU's Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society – found that 33 per cent of people surveyed said online outlets, excluding social media, are now their main source of news.

This compares with television (31 per cent), social media (21 per cent), radio (12 per cent) and newspapers (3 per cent).

BreakingNews.ie remains one of the most popular sources of online news in Ireland, with 23 per cent of respondents saying they visit the site every week.

The study also found that there is evidence of real concern about what is real/what is fake online, with the number of people expressing concern up seven percentage points since 2023 (now at 71 per cent).

Some 88 per cent of respondents said they were either ‘extremely’, ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ interested in news. This was higher than in the UK (82 per cent), the US (84 per cent), or when measured against the European average (85 per cent).

Trust in news was down slightly overall in the study, but selected outlets saw a rise in their percentage points. RTÉ and The Irish Times remain the most trusted outlets.

The study was commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to understand how news is being consumed in 47 markets.

In Ireland, 2,034 people were surveyed online using representative quotas for age, gender, region, and educational level. The data were weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data.