News and the city: understanding online press consumption patterns through mobile data

TL;DR

This study analyzes mobile data to understand how socio-demographic factors influence news consumption patterns in Santiago, Chile, revealing significant links between age, education, and media preferences in the digital age.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into how demographic attributes affect online news consumption, using real mobile data in a Latin American urban context.

Findings

Age and education significantly influence news media consumption patterns.

Socio-demographic attributes are strongly associated with specific news preferences.

Digital news consumption reflects offline media distribution trends.

Abstract

The always increasing mobile connectivity affects every aspect of our daily lives, including how and when we keep ourselves informed and consult news media. By studying a DPI (deep packet inspection) dataset, provided by one of the major Chilean telecommunication companies, we investigate how different cohorts of the population of Santiago De Chile consume news media content through their smartphones. We find that some socio-demographic attributes are highly associated to specific news media consumption patterns. In particular, education and age play a significant role in shaping the consumers behaviour even in the digital context, in agreement with a large body of literature on off-line media distribution channels.