All the News That's Fit to Read: Finding and Recommending News Online

Our survey study of 147 Finns shows that online news is becoming the most important news source today: Online newspapers have bypassed paper newspapers and also TV and radio in importance, especially among young adults. Although most respondents routinely visited their preferred news sites directly, recommendations from their social network also played an important role in helping them find salient news. We analyzed the factors that affected which recommendations were read and why, and also discuss participants’ expectations on the behavior of the receivers of the recommendations. The person recommending and the means of recommending affect what gets read. In contrast with previous studies, we found that the role of email as a recommendation tool is decreasing as the use of social media is becoming more common. However, personally targeted recommendations still have a better chance of being influential than recommendations made to the public at large.