INTERNET USERS STILL RELY ON ‘OLD MEDIA’

Online, offline Canadians studied - Webheads seem to be better read

Tyler Hamilton – Toronto Star

Hey, Google — you're not so tough.

The belief that the Internet is pushing aside traditional media as a source of news and information may be mistaken, according to a new study profiling online Canadians.

The study, one of the largest and most comprehensive ever conducted on Internet users in Canada, found that those who use Google, Yahoo! and other online sources to get their daily dose of news are more likely to pick up a newspaper, read a book or flip through a magazine than non-users of the Internet.

Newspapers were cited by 59 per cent of Internet users as an important source of information, compared with 50 per cent for non-users, while books were important for 55 per cent of Web surfers compared with 38 per cent for non-users.

A similar trend could be found for magazines and radio, with television the only medium valued more by offline Canadians than their online counterparts.

"While Internet use has a measurable displacement effect — with some time that might have been spent watching television, listening to the radio or reading magazines and newspapers instead devoted to the Internet — our data support the general conclusion that, for most users, the Internet serves more as a supplement to traditional media than a replacement," the study concluded.

"Internet users, it would seem, are simply more media-oriented than are non-users."

The results are based on a survey of 3,014 Canadians at least 18 years old who answered questions in a telephone interview in May and June of last year. The margin of error is 1.8 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

The study is the first to come out of the Canadian Internet Project, an ongoing research initiative led by a consortium of universities and supported with provincial, federal and private-sector funding.

It's Canada's contribution to the World Internet Project, a global research effort involving more than 25 countries.

Jeff Leiper, an analyst with technology research firm the Yankee Group in Ottawa, said the findings make sense, given that traditional media play an editorial role largely absent on the Web.

"Google News does a great job of bringing you stuff from the traditional media, but without the editorial controls," said Leiper, adding that the same goes when it comes to online Web logs, known as blogs.

"The main characteristic of a newspaper is not that it's delivered on paper. It's the role of the reporter, how news is gathered, and the role of the editor. Until bloggers talk to the guys responsible for setting my water rates, and post that online, I'm still going to rely on traditional media and the function it has."

Concern about the quality of information on the Internet did emerge in the study. While 62 per cent of Internet users cited the Web itself as their most important source of information, only 37 per cent of those users perceived the information as reliable and accurate.

Dr. Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenberg School in Los Angeles, founded the World Internet Project six years ago. He said the Internet is no longer an emerging technology — it's here, and it's staying.

"We're getting to the point where most of the people who want to be online are online," he told an audience at Ryerson University, which took part in the study. "The fact you can call up a search engine, enter a question and get the answer in seconds means we now rely on it."

He said people now surf the Internet to kill time, rather than using it selectively for a particular purpose, such as email. Part of this change in behaviour is the embrace of high-speed Internet services that, in addition to being fast and supporting broadband applications such as video streaming and music downloading, are always on and just as accessible as the television or radio.

Broadband services have also encouraged Internet surfers to bring their own content to the Web, reversing what Cole called a 450-year history of spoon feeding by the media.

"The audience is now posting huge amounts of content," he said, pointing to the rising popularity of blogs and peer-to-peer file trading networks.

Among the study's other key findings:

• Of non-users of the Internet, one in three have previously been online but decided later they didn't want to use it.

• The vast majority of non-users cited a general lack of interest in and usefulness of the technology. Privacy, spam and social concerns were also cited. Only 7 per cent of non-users said they were offline because it's too expensive, suggesting the existence of any digital divide is not based on financial barriers.

• Internet users watch an average of 3.7 fewer hours a week of television compared with non-users.

• Internet users spend nearly twice as much time online looking for information (6.1 hours a week) as they do looking for entertainment (3.3 hours).

• Farmers, fishers and unskilled workers are less likely to be online, while business owners, office workers and professionals are most likely to surf, and more often.

• Two-thirds of online Canadian households use a high-speed connection.

• Canadians are the most experienced Internet consumers in the world, with 60 per cent of users saying they've been online for more than 5 years. The United States came second at 58 per cent, followed by Sweden at 55 per cent.

Project co-director André Caron, a professor at the University of Montreal who studies emerging technologies, said the biggest disappointment out of the study is that Canadians don't go on the Internet with the purpose of accessing Canadian content.

Another concern is the 28 per cent of those surveyed who described themselves as non-users — an "invisible minority" being excluded from our knowledge society, Caron said. "We shouldn't think that 100 per cent is the magic number, but we have to decide what to do with these non-users."

Leiper said the study doesn't give a full view of Internet use because it excludes people who tap in via non-PC devices, such as cellphones, video-game consoles and digital media players.

The Canadian survey is expected to include some of these alternatives in next year's study.

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