Young people’s news orientations and uses of traditional and new media for news

Abstract This article reports on Flemish college students’ news orientations and their uses of traditional and new media for news within a public service media environment. We used five homogeneous focus groups that covered variation in news media use. The analysis of the focus groups revealed major differences in news behaviors and attitudes between participants who mainly depended on traditional media for news, and those who also went online for news. While a growing body of research reports on young people’s increasing use of online media for news, particularly among those that are most disengaged with traditional news media, our findings indicated that only the most eager news-users were motivated to gather information online. Additionally, we found that traditional media, in particular national quality papers and the Flemish public service newscast, were still the main reference points for public affairs information among our participants.