The psychology of digital media audiences—the lack of engagement; the perceived inferiority of digital content

In Chyi (2015), the idea of digital natives are discussed. Even though many think that the future is online due to the rise in the number of digital natives, many still prefer print newspapers. The stats provided in the paper support what I wrote about last week. I argued that print newspaper will still be consumed by older generations mainly due to habit and being a laggard in the technology adoption model. The baby boomers, are aging and this large group of people are non-digital natives. Chyi (2015) offers that 46% of people aged 65+ report reading print newspaper yesterday while only 7% of those aged 18-24 read print newspaper. Baby boomers make up the largest group of people in the United States (until this year - Millennials will outnumber them). They will support the use of print newspaper even if digital natives do not. 

It was also surprising to find the preference for print over online newspapers for college newspapers. This may be attributed to availability, on-campus promotion, entertainment as well as it being offered for free. Since younger generations do not find newspapers enjoyable or entertaining, as the paper stated, they will not intentionally go to an online college newspaper site but would be open to consuming printed newspapers that are handed out on campus.

The point of online advertising revenue is interesting. Especially, mobile advertising is something that has been growing vastly in the last 5 years. I was surprised to hear how low the revenue off of web ads and mobile ads were (1% of total revenue). If paywall exists, then perhaps it would benefit mobile newspapers to get rid of advertising all together to increase audience engagement.