To gather an understanding our target demographic of younger people, social media was the most effective place to get the thoughts and opinions of younger people. Therefore, me and Lo both took to twitter to ask a number of people how they interactive with news in a form of polls.
We used Lo's twitter and also Charlottes twitter profiles to ask the questions. Lo and charlotte are very active on twitter, therefore they can reach a lot more people then if I was to ask the same questions.
The first question we asked was "How often do you engage with the comments section of online news stories" The three answers we gave were 'always', 'sometimes' and 'never'. This question would investigate whether or not young people engage with comments on news sites. One of the challenges on the Telegraph brief was to change the way people engage with the comments section. The comment section of any news site can be often abandoned by people because of spam and sometimes trolls trying to antagonise other people who are simply trying to voice their own opinions. Personally, the comment section is poorly designed for the user. An unattractive outdated section right at the bottom on the news story, when by the time people read through the news story they've already lost interest and there is no incentive to comment. These comments expressed above are evidently supported by the outcome of the poll. Charlottes poll gathered 146 votes with 71% of people saying that they never engage with the comments section and only 3% of people saying that they did.
What can we take from this?
It's evident that people are not taking advantage of the comments section. We asked for people to comment back with their opinions but none were given. How can me and Lo use this research to create a comment system to engage people of all ages to use the comments section. Voicing opinions are so important in the development of news and engagement and should be an important aspect to reconsider the brief.
The next poll was to see if young people would reconsider news or engage more if you the reader was allowed to filter and customise their news, allowing for a personal experience. This question was based around our current concept of a news site that allows the user a personalise experience by letting the user choose what they want to see. The question we ask was "Would you read the news more if you could filter & customise what you saw?". Out of a total of 105 votes, 73% of people said yes and 27% said no. This is a clear indication that people would reengage with the news if the option for customisation was there. This is especially positive for our concept, it's now obvious there is a clear market and need for a personalised news platform.
Last twitter poll we conducted was simply asking people how they read the news, either digitally or from a newspaper. It was interesting to see how people engage with the news. The outcome was predictable but we wanted to find out if there was any people still out their who prefer to read a newspaper.
This gave us a clear platform for a news app instead of creating a physical newspaper. It shows the demand for instant information for younger people. Younger people are able to locate what ever information they want instantly and with so many avenues to gather that certain piece of information it's important to create a news platform that would keep the attention and interest of the user. Giving them a unique news platform which becomes their go to for news from the time they wake up, to when they sleep.
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