News information is amply available in Australia from a wide variety of sources. As Figure 2 shows, instead of traditional news sources, consumers are turning to online and social media for news (Fisher et al., 2020). TV is the most-used general source of news by Australians (63%), but its popularity has declined. News consumption through traditional news media (e.g., newspapers, magazines, and radio) has fallen. Print is the least-mentioned main source of news (6%). On the other hand, using social media for news has increased from 46 per cent in 2019 to 52 per cent in 2020. Online news has remained stable at 53 per cent.
Source: Graphs from Fisher et al., 2020: 50
The Digital News Report: Australia 2020 indicates that men continue to be heavier consumers of news than women (for heavy users, 61% compared with 50%). Gen Z are the lightest news consumers (39%) (Fisher et al., 2020) (see Figure 3).
Source: Graph from Fisher et al., 2020: 48
