Audience Research

I did some online research by reading through some articles on audiences of local newspapers and the difference between audiences in local, national and global newspapers, where I found out that elderly people are the most likely to read local newspapers. Elderly people are also most likely to read newspapers in general regardless. I found this out from several different articles such as http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/1174605/yougov-study-confirms-young-abandoning-newspapers# and https://www.themediabriefing.com/article/youth-audiences-newspaper-old-demographics-advertising I then created an easy to do online survey and asked elderly people who i knew personally (and their friends in the same age range) to complete it. The link to my survey is https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/37XMF6X I carefully planned the questions to include specific questions that will show me the types of article that my audience will prefer and what they would like to see most. Below are the results:

This pie chart shows the average age of people who completed the survey, which means the ages 61-79 are the average ages I need to consider when analysing my results.

This question shows the available newspapers the participants are able to read. The outcome of this was that the majority were able to access any type of newspaper, so I can apply this when considering the average preference. (That the majority would choose a certain style even though there are other styles available).

As the previous question showed, although all newspaper styles were available for the participants, they still would, on average, choose to read local newspapers over National or Global newspapers. This also backs up my research into elderly people enjoying local newspapers the most, perhaps reading them more than any other age group.

This question shows that the favourite topic to read about in local newspapers by an elderly audience, is upcoming events. This makes sense as upcoming events that people are able to attend would need to be local. This also gives me an idea of what my audience would like to see in my local newspaper.

This rating system shows that in comparison to other newspaper styles, even if they are all available, local news is preferred over National or Global. Although National news was very close which means that maybe it is worth included some small national news articles that may interest my audience.

The comments above were written after the participants were asked "In terms of local newspapers, what would you like to see more of included?"

There is a common appearance in answers. The most common response was that people wanted to see local upcoming events that they can attend, so things that are close to get to and news about the local area.

With this, I will base my local newspaper on the results I have collected. I made a list of three things I will make sure to do:

• I will plan to include the specific things my audience most like to see in a newspaper, in this case it will be local events that people can attend.
• As my most popular age range was mid to late 70's, I plan on including relevant adverts that will appeal to this group of people, for example I will include adverts for local window cleaners rather than for music festivals.
• As one of the most favourite topics was local politics, i will make sure to include some of this in my newspaper.