Sweden – (F2) Patterns of news media use (consumption of news)

In previous media and communication studies, Swedish citizens claim that they receive most of their information about what is going on in society from the news media. Personal communication and personal experiences are regarded as less powerful information channels (Nord & Strömbäck 2009). Generally speaking, media reach a huge majority of the population on a daily basis.

Table 2. Daily news media reach 2007-2009

Source: Holmberg & Weibull 2010.

Sweden is, together with Norway, Finland and Japan, among the most newspaperreading countries in the world. 75 % of the population (9-79 years) read the news in a newspaper everyday in 2009. The average newspaper reader spends about 30 minutes everyday with the paper, but there are great differences across age groups. Teenagers spend only 15 minutes on newspaper reading, while senior citizens spend around 45 minutes with their paper (Carlsson & Facht 2010). The most read sections in newspapers are local news, domestic news and foreign news. However, the same patterns with regard to age categories appear when consumption of newspaper content is compared (Mediebarometern 2009). radio news listening is not particularly high among the population, neither on regional nor on national levels. 27 % of the population (9-79 years) listen to radio news everyday. Public service regional listening figures have been about the same in recent decades, despite increased competition from new local commercial radio stations. In 2008, both public and private channels on the local/regional level reached about 30 % of the population in the area (Mediebarometern 2009).

Television news reaches 51 % of the population everyday. The habit of watching TV is highly concentrated to the evening peak hours between 19:00 and 22:00, and the average time spent with TV everyday is about 160 minutes (Flisen & Harrie 2010). The audience market share of public service TV is 33 %, a figure that is gradually declining because of the number of news channels, domestic and international, instantly introduced on the Swedish TV market. Daily news is only offered in the main public service channels and in the biggest private channel, TV4. More television viewers have also moved to the Internet, and all leading national TV channels offer web TV services. The most popular service, SVT Play (public service), has nearly two million viewers every month (SVT Annual reports).

online news media use is growing rapidly. The outstanding online news service is provided by the tabloid Aftonbladet, whose website aftonbladet.se was successfully established in the early stages of the Internet era and has maintained its huge popularity in the audience.

Table 3. Top ten online news media

Source: KIA index 2010, week 40.