Few university students reading newspapers online

Newspaper Research Journal, Spring 2002 by Bressers, Bonnie, Bergen, Lori

But males were significantly more likely to use the Internet for chat/ personals (t=2.628, d.f.=371, p=0.009) and for games (t=4.224, d.f.=370, p

We also explored gender differences by the type of information respondents sought on the Internet. Males were significantly more inclined than females to use the Internet for news/media (t=2.695, d.f.=371, p=0.007), entertainment (t=3.451, d.f.=371, p=0.001), recreation/sports (t=5568, d.f.=371, p

We also looked at the amount of time both groups reported spending online. These college-age men spent significantly more time online than did their female counterparts - approximately 61 minutes compared to 43 minutes, respectively, (t=2.090, d.f.=371, p=0.037).

Both groups were heavy e-mail users with no significant difference between them. "Thinking back over just the last 24 hours," men reported spending 40.5 minutes accessing their e-mail compared with women's 37.3 minutes.

Relative Value of Channels of Communication

Our final area of inquiry was college students' use of various channels of communication - both mediated and direct, mass and interpersonal - when seeking information on a number of issues that arise in everyday life. Our interest was to discover which channel of communication they chose and how prominently the Internet figured in their selections.

Interviewers asked a series of six open-ended questions about "what you would probably do" to accomplish the following: 1) find out what movies are playing at the local theaters; 2) make a reservation for an airline flight or hotel; 3) wish a friend in another state "happy birthday;" 4) check the weather for the next five days; 5) find out if classes are canceled after a heavy snowfall; and 6) learn the results of a statewide election.

Responses were recorded verbatim and categorized later into one of the following: newspaper, radio, television, Internet, telephone, direct contact with a friend and several other categories specific to individual questions.

As Table 3 shows, the telephone was the first choice for respondents when communicating for the first three of these purposes.

Most respondents said they would use the phone to find out about local theater listings (51.9 percent), with newspapers (35.6 percent) the second most popular answer.13 Using the telephone was the most frequent response for making an airline or hotel reservation (49.6 percent) with the Internet mentioned by 29.3 percent of respondents. Another 17.3 percent said they would go to a travel agent. When we asked how they would send birthday greetings to a friend, 45.1 percent said they would use the telephone, 30.1 percent said the Internet and 8.8 percent said the mail.

Television was the most frequent first choice for checking the local weather, although 26.1 percent said they would use the Internet. Most respondents said they would listen to the radio to learn if class was canceled due to snow, although 15.8 percent indicated they didn't know how they would learn such information. Finally, television was the first choice for learning the results of a statewide election, with 22.6 percent reporting they would seek such information from a newspaper. Only 6.5 reported they would turn to the Internet, where such information would most likely be found at an online newspaper site.