The migration of audiences toward digital news advanced to a new level in 2011 and early 2012, the era of mobile and multidigital devices. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults own laptop or desktop computers, a number that has been stable for some years.1 Now, in addition, 44% of adults own a smartphone, and the number of tablet owners grew by about 50% since the summer of 2011, to 18% of Americans over age 18.

Each of these technologies offers a separate set of features, conveniences and potential uses. But less is known to date about how people use these devices — whether they behave differently on different platforms and what the move to mobile might mean for news and journalism and the notion of a common experience or public square. Past research found much of the desktop news experience was built around search — people looking for what they need or want to know right now, which tilted influence (and revenue) toward aggregators such as Google. To what degree is that true in mobile? Have apps (or applications) and social media networks altered that? And do consumers favor one way of accessing news on their tablet, another their desktop and yet another on a smartphone?

A new survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that rather than gravitating toward one device, a growing number of Americans are becoming multiplatform digital news consumers. These “digital mavens” get news on all their devices — and even more so if they own all three types of devices. In other words, digital devices appear to be an additive experience.

The data also find that the reputation or brand of a news organization, a very traditional idea, is the most important factor in determining where consumers go for news, and that is even truer on mobile devices than on laptops or desktops. Indeed, despite the explosion in social media use through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, recommendations from friends are not a major factor yet in steering news consumption.

There are some signs that the way people interact with news on mobile devices is quite different than news behavior on the desktop/laptop computers. Data from Localytics, a client-based mobile analytics firm, analyzed by PEJ reveals that people spend far more time with news apps on the smartphone and tablet, visit more pages at a sitting, and return more frequently than they do on conventional computers. That data reinforce findings from previous PEJ research in 2011 that people read more long-form news articles and go to new news sources on tablets.

Taken all together, the growing body of data suggests that the move toward mobile holds some promising options for news producers, including increasing the amount of overall news being consumed.

To capitalize on that potential, however, the industry will need to do a better job than it did in the desktop realm of quickly coming to understand audience behavior and developing technology and revenue models to adapt to it.

Among the major findings of this research:

The majority of Americans now get news through at least one digital, web-based device. While the desktop or laptop computer remains the primary digital platform for news (54% of Americans get news there), the number of consumers who get news on multiple digital devices is growing. Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults, 23%, now get news on at least two devices–a desktop/laptop computer and smartphone, a computer and a tablet, a tablet and a smartphone, or on all three.
The most common way that people get news is by going directly to a news organization’s website or app. About a third of desktop/laptop news consumers and smartphone news consumers get news this way “very often.” Even more tablet news users, 38%, follow this path. On desktop/laptop computers, going to a news site directly is statistically tied with search (30%). Yet even these numbers may understate those seeking out news home pages. Previous PEJ studies have shown that many people who access news through search engines are typing in some variation of the home page name, not searching by topic across different news sources.
Social media, while clearly a part of the digital news experience, is not nearly the driver of news that many have suggested. Just 9% of digital news consumers follow news recommendations from either Facebook or Twitter “very often” on at least one of the devices asked about here. Of the two networks, Facebook garners about twice as many news followers than Twitter. Still, though, the rapid growth is striking. As written about in the Digital chapter of this report the percent of traffic that comes to news sites from social media platforms increased 57% since 2009.
For those who get news on both the smartphone and tablet, social networking is a much more popular way to get news. Among that group (13% of all digital news consumers), fully two-thirds (67%) have ever gotten news recommendations from Facebook. That compares to 59% who get news on just one of those devices and 41% who only get digital news via the desktop/laptop. Similarly, 39% follow news recommendations on Twitter, compared with 24% who just use a smartphone or a tablet and 9% who use only the desktop/laptop.
Consumers who still only get digital news on the desktop/laptop computer have a very different set of behaviors. This group is less likely to get news in any of the ways asked about in the survey than those who get some digital news on a smartphone, a tablet or both. Only about half (48%) get news using key word search “very or somewhat often” compared with at least 70% of those who use a smartphone, tablet or both for news. Similarly, 54% go directly to news websites or apps somewhat or very often, while 80% or more of those who get news on other devices do so.
Commercial data tracking online usage reinforce the findings of this survey. Localytics shared its proprietary data with researchers involved in this study, and that information shows that people using mobile devices tend to spend more time with news on mobile devices than they do on computers. They go to news sites more often, spend more time per session and read more articles per session.

Original article HERE. By Amy Mitchell & Tom Rosenstiel of PEJ, and Leah Christian of the Pew Research Center