One of the products of the media people consume most is the news. It is not surprising news makes the most because it is essential that they have an understanding of happenings around them. Not only this, they want the media to report happenings that cut across all aspects of their life. When this happens, the belief has always been that making informed decision regarding personal, corporate and societal needs or challenges would not be difficult.
It is imperative to note that like other people in the world, Nigerians and other residents in the country also consume news beyond the digital space. They are reading, watching and listening to sports, education, politics, health, crime, business, lifestyle and other news categories through conventional news media such as radio, television and newspapers. Therefore, Infoprations’ Digital News Consumption 2021 Half Year Report, the first of its kind in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, explores Nigerian public interest in searching and reading news reports of different categories between January and June, 2021.
The findings indicate that foreign news reports were more searched and read by the public than national news reports. Month-on-month and Quarter-on-Quarter analyses indicate that the consumption of national news grew positively despite the public low interest in searching and reading them over the foreign news reports.
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The lack of high interest in reading education, health and business news indicates low level of priority given to the news categories by the public. This is also applicable to the news media because when the media pay attention to specific categories more than other news categories, it means those categories that received high attention are what the media want the public to pay attention to as well and think about. In this regard, it is imperative that the news media deploy their resources more to education, health and business events for the public to make decisions that would improve their education, health and economic status more than social status or finding a balance among the status.