The next panel on this marathon day at ECREA 2014 starts with Sascha Hölig, whose interest is in patterns of online political engagement in Europe. Democracy depends on structures that enable finding information, exchanging opinions, and negotiating decisions; the news is one key source of such information.
The Reuters Digital News Survey studies news consumption patterns across 10 European nations, drawing on surveys with some 19,000 users. There is a high interest in news, and frequent access to news, across Europe; more than 80% of users access the news at least once a day, especially from television.
Predominant Internet news usage is largely through established providers, less so through social media (where Italy and Spain are leading), and even less through news aggregators. Italy and Spain also lead in sharing news through social media; Germany is particularly low.
Some common assumptions may explain such patterns: for example, the average age of users (but there is no strong age effect evident in the data for Italy and Germany); the levels of education (not evident either); levels of interest in the news (evident in Germany, but not in Italy); average trust in the mainstream media (which was found to be a possible explanation for the patterns found across Europe); the Internet penetration rate in each country (another possible factor).
So. Participation and engagement in social media sharing seems to be inversely related to trust in mainstream media, and to the make-up of the online audience (countries with lower adoption, where social media users remain a Netizen elite, tend to engage more in social sharing).
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