A new ACMA report, released on Monday, has revealed just how differently Australians consume news, with many people relying on social media and convenience rather than actively seeking out multiple sources.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has identified seven distinct groups of news consumers, ranging from people who barely engage with news at all to a small group spending more than 30 hours a week consuming it.
The research, based on a nationally representative survey of 5,590 Australians aged 18 and over, found that the way people access news is shaped by their routines, the platforms they use and how much effort they are prepared to put into finding and verifying information.
And while Australians continue to value being informed, the ACMA found that actively seeking out different perspectives and checking multiple sources is not the norm.
Seven very different news audiences
The largest group identified by the research is the news neutrals, accounting for 23% of Australian adults.
They consume an average of 6.5 hours of news each week, but generally see news as something practical rather than central to their lives. Their consumption tends to be relatively surface-level, including headline scans, background television and occasional checks prompted by notifications.
They are followed by trusting traditionalists, who make up 20% of adults and consume around 14 hours of news each week.
This group skews older and remains heavily reliant on free-to-air television and radio, with traditional news routines continuing to play an important role in their daily lives.
At the other end of the scale are the sceptical passives, who account for 13% of Australians and consume just 2.1 hours of news each week.
Almost four in ten people in this group — 38% — reported consuming no news at all in the previous seven days. Rather than seeking out news, they are more likely to encounter it incidentally while scrolling social media.
Another 14% are classified as online browsers, consuming around 3.3 hours of news a week and relying particularly heavily on digital platforms and social media.
The ACMA found that these audiences are often reacting to news rather than deliberately looking for it, with algorithms playing a significant role in what they encounter.
Only a small group actively seeks different perspectives
The research also identifies a much smaller group of Australians who treat news as something to actively investigate.
Diversity seekers, representing 10% of adults, consume around 13.9 hours of news each week and deliberately seek out different viewpoints across multiple platforms.
Meanwhile, news advocates, just 5% of the population, are the most intensive consumers, spending an average of 30.2 hours a week consuming news and regularly consulting multiple sources.
Together, those two groups account for just 15% of Australian adults.
The ACMA describes diverse and critical news consumption as being concentrated among this relatively small proportion of the population, noting that checking multiple sources and verifying information requires time, motivation and media literacy.
There is also a middle ground.
The digital devotees, representing 15% of Australians, consume around 8.4 hours of news each week and actively use online sources, with the report finding they are confident in identifying misinformation and frequently cross-check stories.
Social media is changing how Australians encounter news
One of the clearest themes running through the report is the significant role social media plays as a gateway to news.
For online browsers and sceptical passives in particular, news often appears as part of their social media feeds rather than being something they deliberately seek out.
The ACMA says this provides convenience and immediacy, but can also expose audiences to misinformation, repeated perspectives and emotional overload.
The report also warns that passive consumption can mean people become more reliant on what is presented to them, rather than what they actively choose to seek out.
In digital environments, that can result in repeated exposure to similar perspectives or partial information shaped by platform algorithms.
But that doesn’t mean traditional television has disappeared from the picture.
For older Australians in particular, free-to-air television and radio remain important parts of their news routines, with the ACMA finding that traditional formats continue to provide familiarity, trust and perceived reliability.
Australians want better news — but don’t necessarily want more of it
Perhaps the most interesting finding for news organisations is that audiences aren’t simply asking for more news.
Across the different groups, the ACMA found demand for more balanced reporting, clearer separation between fact and opinion, greater diversity of perspectives and stronger editorial standards.
For lower-engagement audiences, negativity, repetition and bias are significant barriers. Some have deliberately reduced their news consumption because they find it too distressing, overwhelming or repetitive.
For the highly engaged audiences, meanwhile, the concerns are different — including paywalls, gaps in local coverage, perceived bias, declining journalistic standards and the blurring of fact and opinion.
The ACMA’s research ultimately paints a picture of an Australian news audience that is anything but uniform.
Some Australians still sit down for the nightly bulletin, others spend hours jumping between websites, podcasts and television, while some simply encounter whatever happens to appear in their social feeds.
And for the media industry, that presents a much bigger challenge than simply getting people to watch or read the news — it’s getting them to actively choose where their news comes from in the first place.
The full report can be found HERE.
