Emre Kızılkaya, Mustafa Kuleli, and İrem Gül of Journo prepared a report to provide the media industry with the most comprehensive data resource on news consumers in Turkey.
As part of the study, an extensive survey with 1,000 participants that represent the Turkish population at the national level was conducted in cooperation with İstanbul Ekonomi Araştırma, a leading market research company. The Journo team also organized in-depth interviews with media executives, communication scholars, and the audience to investigate the underlying reasons behind the numbers.
The complete report, titled “Journo Turkey News Consumer Research 2022,” is available in Turkish at the following link.
Here are some of the key findings from the report:
- 69% of the Turkish audience watch, 50% listen to, and 47.8% read the news.
- 68% of the participants find it “crucial” or “important” to follow the latest news.
- The majority of respondents use television and mobile phones to access news, with websites (40.9%) and Google (34.3%) being the most popular news platforms.
- The other two platforms that exceed 20% usage are both on social media: Instagram and Twitter.
- The most preferred traditional medium is television (76.9%), while print media has an 8.3% readership. Additionally, 17.6% of the participants say they follow local news media.
- 69% of the participants believe that independent journalism is essential for democracy.
- 55% of respondents say they are willing, or at least would tolerate, to see information that contradicts their opinions in the news outlet they follow.
- The audience’s trust in journalism does not exceed 40% in any medium.
- 69.5% of the participants in the survey said that they have never paid for news. In contrast, 13.2% reported paying for news within the last month, with almost all of them purchasing a print newspaper.
- 18.6% said they do not want to pay for news because they believe today’s media fails to fulfill their expectations, while 10.1% justify this decision by citing their distrust of the news media.
- 40% of participants believe that news is supposed to be free of charge. 26.7% of participants stated that they can already access all Turkish news online for free.
- 29.2% said they may pay for news in the future.
- From the perspective of the audience in Turkey, the key aspects that would make news worth paying for are the quality of the content (69.9%), as well as the impartiality and accuracy of the journalist (26.9%).
- The potential market for ad-supported news media is predicted to be approximately 44 million adults.
- The market for subscription or membership revenue-focused news media is predicted to be approximately 18 million adults.
And here are two charts from the report:
