Findings from first India Digital News Report surveying media habits of English-speaking online news users.

1. #IDNR | @risj_oxford
Reuters Institute Digital News Report
By Zeenab Aneez, Taberez Ahmed Neyazi, Antonis Kalogeropoulos,
and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen.
Full report available here:
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/india-digital-
news-report

2. Methodology
2
Polling by Supported by
• The India Digital News Report was produced by Zeenab Aneez, Taberez Ahmed Neyazi, Antonis
Kalogeropoulos, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen based on a survey conducted by YouGov used an online
questionnaire in early January 2019.
• The sample is reflective of the English-speaking population in India that has access to the internet. It is
not representative of the wider Indian population and does not necessarily reflect the wider market.
• The data were weighted to targets on age and region based on the online population of India.
• Overall, we surveyed 1,013 individuals.

3. India Digital News Report - Key findings
A mobile first
market, with far
greater reliance on
smartphones than
personal
computers.
Widespread
concern over
various kinds of
“fake news” and
disinformation
both online and
offline.
High use of social
media but majority
concerned over
possible
implications of
expressing their
political view online.
Distributed
discovery via
search engines,
social media, and
messaging
applications
dominant.
Low trust in news
both overall and
when found via
social media (but
some brands are
trusted).

4. Key findings
#IDNR | @risj_oxford

5. 5
31% uses only a
smartphone or
tablet to get news
India far more mobile-dominated than other markets

6. Gateways to news
6
Distributed gateways (e.g.
Search, Social Media) are more
popular gateways to news in
India than most other countries.

7. Use of social networks for news – selected markets
7
Facebook (52%) and
WhatsApp (52%) are
widely used for
news with 35%
using both

8. Main source of news by age
8
Younger (U35) Indians
more likely to get news
online and via social media
than via TV and print

9. News and
participation on
social media
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10. Overlap in use of social networks and messaging
apps for news
10

11. Proportion that agree each attribute is important
when deciding to click through a news story on
social media
11

12. Proportion that use Facebook & WhatsApp for each
activity
12

13. Proportion concerned about different consequences
of openly expressing their political views online
13

14. News use
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15. News brands used last week
15

16. Groups of news users based on interest and access
16

17. Proportion that are aware of and used partisan and
alternative news websites in the past week
17

18. Proportion that used partisan and alternative news
websites in the past week by political allegiance
18

19. Trust in news
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20. Trust in news
20

21. Proportion that trust most news most of the time by
political allegiance
21

22. News brand trust (0-10)
22

23. News brand trust by political allegiance
23

24. Disinformation
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25. Concern and exposure over “fake news”
25

26. Proportion who thinks that each actor should solve
the misinformation problem
26

27. Future trends
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28. Proportion that wants to see more online news
video – selected markets
28

29. Proportion that say each reason would encourage
them to use news alerts
29

30. Proportion that uses an ad-blocker – Selected
Markets
30

31. Proportion that would pay for online news in the
future – selected markets
31

32. Proportion that would donate to an outlet
32

33. @risj_oxford
See more here:
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-
research/india-digital-news-report