Linking younger generations to the news through social networking sites

Posted by Marion Geiger on April 9, 2009 at 10:46 AM

According to Pew's State of the News Media 2009 report, the younger demographic, between 18-24 and 25-34 have the lowest levels of daily newspaper readership and 49% said they get their news online. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg, owner and founder of Facebook, announced the 200 millionth active user on the networking site, one third of which are in the young age group that has limited exposure to news on a regular basis. That said, there are two new experiments in action to get the news to young Facebook users: mndaily.com and Hot Dish. Both efforts are funded by the Knight Foundation and are powered by NewsCloud, a news sharing website.

"It could revolutionize the way young people engage and interact with news through their social network," said Vadim Lavrusik, editor in chief and co-publisher of The Minnesota Daily.

The mndaily.com application is called The Daily on Facebook and is a part of the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota. The stories are campus related and users have the opportunity to sign up to take part in challenges to win prizes.

"But there is also a potential business model for news organizations that are struggling to make money on the Web," said Lavrusik, "News organizations could use the incentive-based model to make revenue by working with businesses to post challenges for users that they would gain points toward prizes."

Hot Dish a branch of the environmental news site Grist, has similar incentives by inviting users to collect points through several actions like sharing stories and environmental activeness. The users can win art, electronics or even a trip to the Arctic.

A research group led by Christine Greenhow at the University of Minnesota will survey their Facebook news site to collect data on how online social network sites can bring the headlines to the 16-25 year-olds, and involve them in world affairs. The study should be published in the Fall of 2009, according to a Knight Foundation press release.

Although both of the websites are rather "nichy", they serve as a test for all kinds of news sites to create similar applications. By analyzing the most effective strategies and types of news sites for social networks, papers could potentially use the function for all kinds of audiences and demographics.

Sources: Knight Digital Media Center, Pew, Knight Press Release