As computers and mobile devices have grown increasingly popular in America, practically every news outlet in the country has begun to post news content on their websites and anyone with access to internet has a myriad of choices at his or her news-seeking fingertips. Recent research indicates that how people decide what news to look at online may be influenced by their level of education.
A study conduced by University of Maryland senior journalism major Christopher Grady examines how education level affects how frequently people use the internet to find news on politics, sports, business, entertainment and local news.
The research showed that regardless of educational level, the internet has become a vital means for people to receive their news, as 40 out of 46 subjects stated that they read news online at least once time per day. None of the respondents stated that they read news online less than two to three times per week.
Politics and educational level have strongest relationship
The research also indicates that those who have more advanced education are more likely to utilize the internet to find out about current events involving pressing worldly issues, such as politics.
Given that level of education did not create large differences in read news online, none of the correlations between education level and a how frequently subjects looked at a particular topic of news were found to be significant.
However, two of the larger insignificant correlations found that after survey data was reverse coded there was a correlation of .150 between how frequently subjects read political news and educational levels and a correlation of .130 between education level and interest in politics, which suggests that those who only attended high school or college read less political news than their more educated counterparts.
More educated people less interested in sports and entertainment news
The only two significant correlations between subjects’ level of education and how much interest they showed in a particular topic came as correlations of -.317 and -.310 were found for an item that asked how much subjects looked at sports news compared to other topic and how high they rated their interest in sports respectively.
The study also found a reverse scored correlation of -.193, which indicates that educated subjects are less likely to be frequent readers of sports news. There was also a -.907 correlation between subjects reported interest in politics and sports, which was found to have a strong statistical significance.
More educated participants were also less interested in entertainment news as well as the research found that was a -.118 correlation between education level and how much subjects went online for entertainment news compared to how much they looked at other types of news online. Unlike the negative relationship between sports and politics, the study found that interest in entertainment and politics had no correlation. This finding indicates that interest in politics and entertainment are not as mutually exclusive as sports and politics.
In general, subjects are not interested in using the internet to view local news as there was essentially no correlation between education level and any of the items asking about local news. In total 31 out of 46 subjects stated that they were either significantly or slightly less interest in local news than other subjects.
A possible explanation for this is that these subjects are using the internet to fully explore what is going on in the world that they would have difficulty finding out about otherwise.
There is much that is still unknown about why people pursue different types of news online
Given that this study involves correlational data it is impossible to definitively state that someone’s level of education will dictate how frequently someone seeks out news on a particular subject via the internet. A confounding variable of the study could be that difference in interests exists between age groups, according to Grady.
Grady, who was the sole researcher in the study, relied on a convenience sample, as he sent the survey to friends at the university, his family members as well as his colleagues at Education Week.
The biggest limitation of the study was that the sample overwhelmingly favored those who did not pursue their education any further than their undergraduate career. Of the 31 male and 15 female participants in the study, 34 were either pursuing an undergraduate degree or had completed it, but did not continue their education.
Only four subjects ended their educations at high school, six attended a masters program and one subject had a doctorate.
No comments:
Post a Comment