世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT recently performed a survey into the consumption of news. Over a week at the end of October 5,973 people, 62.1% female, chose to complete the public survey available through iMode.

Although infoPLANT used its usual method of collecting self-selecting respondents through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone menu system, thus resulting in a bias towards those who are heavy users of mobile phone, the data forms an interesting point of comparision to a recent translation of a more balanced survey of the news consumption habits of the average person. We cqan immediately see from the pie charts that there are a quarter less daily paper reader amongst the mobile phoners, but even though there are presumably a lot of heavy users in this sample, newspapers still outdo all internet-based web services put together.

The survey also looks at iChannel, a new non-free but low cost service from DoCoMo that pushes headlines to mobile phones. I tried out a free preview of it but it seemed rather ordinary, and being a stingey git, paying a couple of hundred yen per month was just a bit too much for me!

Q1: Where do you usually obtain news from? (Sample size=5,973, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=2,266	Female N=3,707
Television	94.8%	92.7%	96.2%
Newspapers	65.8%	70.3%	63.2%
Mobile phone-based internet	43.7%	44.3%	43.4%
PC-based internet	27.9%	33.3%	24.6%
Radio	20.3%	28.9%	15.0%
iChannel	18.3%	19.6%	17.5%
Magazines	13.5%	15.9%	12.1%
Other	2.0%	2.0%	2.0%
Almost never see news	0.2%	0.4%	0.1%
Internet-based total	58.1%	60.7%	56.4%

Interestingly, when looking at the age breakdown, there was a significant decrease in computer-based internet access to news sites with age, yet for mobile-based services there was very little variation by age.

Q2: Usually, about how often do you read newspapers? (Sample size=5,973)

	All	Male N=2,266	Female N=3,707
Almost daily	55.0%	61.0%	51.3%
Four or five times a week	6.5%	6.6%	6.5%
Two or three times a week	10.9%	10.1%	11.5%
Once a week	6.8%	6.3%	7.1%
Twice or thrice a month	3.4%	2.8%	3.9%
Once a month	1.8%	1.6%	1.9%
Less than that	3.9%	3.5%	4.1%
Never	11.7%	8.2%	13.8%

There was a very definite trend by age – only a third of teenagers read a newspaper daily, versus 80% of over-50 men and 67.9% of over-50 women.

Q3: When do you usually read the newspaper? (Sample size=5,277, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=2,081	Female N=3,196
As soon as I get up	25.9%	30.7%	22.8%
Over breakfast	26.2%	22.6%	28.5%
On the way to work or school	4.5%	8.2%	2.2%
During work or study	7.4%	10.8%	5.2%
Over lunch	10.4%	11.7%	9.5%
On returning home	34.7%	36.9%	33.2%
Over evening meal	10.8%	12.5%	9.7%
Before going to bed	14.2%	11.5%	15.9%
Other	16.1%	11.7%	18.9%

Q4: When do you usually read news web sites from your PC? (Sample size=1,667, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=754	Female N=913
As soon as I get up	8.0%	9.7%	6.6%
Over breakfast	2.3%	1.2%	3.2%
On the way to work or school	4.4%	4.8%	4.1%
During work or study	30.6%	33.8%	27.9%
Over lunch	17.6%	19.6%	16.0%
On returning home	39.8%	45.5%	35.0%
Over evening meal	4.1%	4.1%	4.2%
Before going to bed	48.5%	44.8%	51.5%
Other	14.3%	12.1%	16.2%

A quite surprisingly high number of people are stealing work time by reading the web in the office, not that I’d do such a thing, oh no.

Q5: When do you usually read news web sites from your mobile phone? (Sample size=3,196, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=1,231	Female N=1,965
	All	Male N=754	Female N=913
As soon as I get up	19.7%	19.3%	20.0%
Over breakfast	7.3%	8.0%	6.8%
On the way to work or school	31.5%	36.4%	28.4%
During work or study	17.9%	28.8%	11.1%
Over lunch	31.0%	33.9%	29.2%
On returning home	32.7%	35.1%	31.1%
Over evening meal	8.7%	9.3%	8.3%
Before going to bed	48.3%	38.9%	54.2%
Other	18.5%	16.3%	19.9%

Another quite high percentage for men surfing on their mobiles at work!