Which media do Canadians trust most?
A new Canadian study, commissioned by Apex Public Relations, finds that mainstream media sources in general are still far more trusted than social media such as blogs and social networking sites.
According to the APEX PR Influencer Report, conducted by Leger Marketing, TV and radio top the credibility scale. In fact the top five most credible information sources were all traditional media: radio (67 per cent); television (66 per cent), national newspapers (66 per cent), regional newspapers (62 per cent) and national business magazines (52 per cent).
Interestingly, the traditional news channels also beat out friends and family, who had a credibility rating of 55 per cent, and co-workers with a rating of 38 per cent.
While traditional media has not drifted into obscurity as some pundits had predicted, consumer-generated and other new media, such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networking sites, are definitely on the charts, as consumers choose from the ever expanding array of information channels. In fact, one in three consumers is using a social networking site per week and 19 per cent are visiting blogs. Not surprisingly, new media was considerably lower on the credibility chart with blogs, for example, having a 10 per cent credibility rating and podcasts garnering a 7 per cent score.
Taking into account age differences, it’s not surprising that young people were more likely to trust news websites or blogs, but here’s one that did surprise me: “78% of consumers who are 18 to 24 view national newspapers as a credible source (national average is 66%)”.
Simon Wakeman makes an interesting observation in his discussion of this study:
The important factor here could well be that with “old” media I think there’s trust in the channel - people trust their usual newspaper - whereas, taking blogging as an example of “new” media, people don’t trust blogs per se, as there are thousands of blogs they are exposed to, but they trust bloggers instead. And this trust takes time to build up, just like it would in a face to face friendship.
Posted: November 6th, 2007 under Technology and Media Interviews.