D IGITALIZED N EWS M EDIA

All the selected interviewees read their daily news, online. This could either be on a computer, tablet, or phone. Few of them use tabloid news occasionally, but all of them are reading their daily news online. This was a criterion when selecting the respondents as the two segments;

The News Junkie and The Large Consumer are consuming news online (Appendix 1). Further-more, the respondents named several different news media when asked where they read their news. This ranges from the public service media DR and TV2 to Børsen, BT, Politiken, Berling-ske, and Jyllands-Posten. All respondents have in common that they read Ekstra Bladet – some more frequently than others; “I read Ekstra Bladet every day” (Respondent number 1, 2021).

Reading Ekstra Bladet was also a selection criterion when selecting the interviewees for this study.

4.1.1 Consumer Habits

As presented in the Methods section the selection of respondents have been selected by the Motivation Segmentation Matrix (Appendix 1) and focused on two main segments: The News Junkie and The Large Consumer as these are the highest priority segments for the case company and hence the segments they were most interested about.

The Larger Consumer wants to explore the latest news about many different topics from trend-ing tv shows and series to the latest news in society. As this segment wants to be updated all the time and has a high consumption of everything online, their news media habits are not only about breaking news or news concerning society. This corresponds to Respondent 2 who elab-orates on his way of consuming news:

“It's a broad spectrum I seek when I read my news. It’s just everything that can fascinate my brain and at the same time everything that can enlighten me about what's going on in the world around me.” (Respondent number 2, 2021).

For the Large Consumer “to be updated” means that they can be a part of the talk when being together with friends, family, or colleagues (Appendix 2). Even though they might not have an interest in the given topic discussed, they still want to read news articles about it to be updated

and able to participate in the conversation. This is portrayed in Respondent 3’s answer to why and what she reads when reading news articles:

“It may be that someone has played golf. I do not watch golf and I do not care about it. But still, I just read the article. I just like to know what's going on.” (Respondent number 3, 2021)

As the quote illustrates this segment is not limited to news about society or politics, but more or less wants to know ‘everything about everything’. They want to read the news article in depth (Appendix 2), as the headline might show “a slightly misleading picture” and not the whole story of what happened (Respondent number 3, 2021).

The Large Consumer likes both serious and entertaining news content. “It can be a good laugh, and it can also be scientific or enlightening. It can be all of these things.” (Respondent number 2, 2021). As the quote indicates the Larger Consumer does not mind if the news gets funny or

“cheesy” (Respondent number 4, 2021) at times. The news should be easily accessible in their breaks or spare time during the day when they are laying on the sofa or even sitting on the toilet (Respondent number 2,2021). This segment seeks to be entertained and informed (Appendix 2). Also, The Larger Consumer wants more angles on a news story and quick updates while things are happening.

The News Junkies are in contrast to the Larger Consumer mostly interested in news about the society and big current events in Denmark and the rest of the world (Appendix 4). They find their news from several news sources: “Primarily I read my news from news apps, where I have all Danish news apps - in relation to particular politics, society and news” (Respondent number 1, 2021). This segment reads the news to be informed not to be entertained and has an urge to know what is going on in relation to the society they are a part of: “Roughly speaking, I read news almost all the time. Really too often, I think.” (Respondent number 6, 2021). As the state-ment indicates as well as the name of the segstate-ment (News Junkie) reading news is done many times throughout the day and also during breaks, hence it is an urge for them to stay updated.

The segment is looking for different angles on a subject which Respondent 6 indicates by saying that she is following people on social media that she agrees with, but also people she disagrees with. The respondent indicates that getting a variety of perspectives on news stories is a

posi-In addition to the variety of news, News Junkies also tend to have an opinion about what people should read (Appendix 4). Respondent 6 touches upon this tendency when she talks about her parents and their news habit behaviors, where they ‘only’ read Politiken and watch DR and then thinks they are “good to go”. The answer indicates that the segment perceives news media as an important part of being informed and the importance of getting your information from dif-ferent sources, not just two to be well-informed and oriented from difdif-ferent perspectives. In addition, Respondent 5 contributes to this tendency about having a clear opinion about other people's news reading habits;

“I do not hope that there are any people who get all their information from there [Ekstra Bladet]

because it is often the case that you must be really source critical about what they write.” (Re-spondent number 5, 2021).

The two different segments and respondents have a different approaches to reading news. The characteristics of The News Junkies are that they want to be updated frequently on what hap-pens in society. The Large Consumer wants to be updated on everything the whole time – not limited to politics and news. Both segments have in common that they want to read the news articles in-depth and not just a headliner.

Both segments are aware of Ekstra Bladet’s brand and the fact that they read news on their platform even though they find it unreliable, sensational, or both. Ekstra Bladet is perceived as a “stupid news media” (Respondent 5) by respondent 1 and respondent 5. This perception of news media does not match with the New Junkies self-representation where 25% of the News Junkie segment has a higher education like Respondent 5. This mismatch is also indicated by respondent 1:

“I feel like I would like to keep EB at home, but I also do not want to be him who keeps EB. So that's why I do not have it.” (Respondent number 1, 2021)

Yet Ekstra Bladet is used by this segment as a guilty pleasure and functions as an awry and fun supplement to other news media (appendix). Respondent 5 mentions this by having a subscrip-tion on Børsen but uses Ekstra Bladet as an addisubscrip-tion to the news he gets from Børsen: “Then

ends up on Ekstra Bladet. But then it has a slightly different tone, then they might dive into how much money and big cars he has.” (Respondent number 5, 2021).

Respondent 6 perceives Ekstra Bladet as a ‘fast news media’ there are great at giving quick updates, but uses ‘slow news media’ when wanting to get more well informed: “BT, Ekstra Bladet and the fast news, I think they are good to give a quick update on what is happening. But it's probably not Ekstra Bladet, I read it if I want to get well-informed. Then I'll probably read some slower news like Politiken, Information and Berlingske.” (Respondent number 6, 2021).

Respondent 5 contributes to this perception of Ekstra Bladet being a ‘fast news media’ in con-trast to other news media:

“If something violent has happened, they (Ekstra Bladet) tend to be pretty quick to write about it and have pictures. Børsen and Berlingske can pack their stuff and go home.” (Respondent number 5, 2021). All of the respondents in The News Junkie segment; Respondents 1, 5, and 6 (Appendix 14) have the same perception of Ekstra Bladet being a ‘fast news media’, as well as Berlingske being a ‘slow new media’. “I think EB is some of the fastest to be able to break a story.” (Respondent number 1, 2021).

In addition, Respondents 3 distinguish between news and entertainment. This corresponds to Ignatidou (2019) and her terms ‘hard news’ which refers to breaking news and political content and ‘soft news’ which refers to entertainment. The News Junkie segment perceives Ekstra Bladet as an alternative news option with different angles and uses it as a ‘hard news’ media for breaking news. The Large Consumer segment perceives Ekstra Bladet as an entertaining news option that is easy to go to and use it as ‘soft news’ media. Thus the perception of Ekstra Bladet as a news media differ from the two consumer segments, as they use it for different pur-poses. Ekstra Bladet can hence be placed in between the two terms of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ news as they both entertain their consumers, but also has breaking news and political content. Due to the different approaches to consuming news the two groups of consumer segments also have different experiences of what a good news experience is.

4.1.2 The News Experiences

A part of the aim of the PIN Project is to optimize the news experience for the users of Ekstra

recommender systems it is interesting to look at what elements contribute to the news experi-ence for the consumers. A good or a better news experiexperi-ence could be multiple things and it is, therefore, valuable to understand how the two consumer segments reading Ekstra Bladet per-ceive their news experience when reading news articles online. As already clarified the two consumer segments have different approaches to reading news, and this is connected to how they perceive their news experience.

Two of the respondents mentioned that their news experience on EB has been better before when they did not have to pay for reading a news article: “If I found an article you have to pay for then I just look it up on Google and find it somewhere else where I do not have to pay for it.”

(Respondent number 5, 2021). This non-willingness to pay for news articles is a general ten-dency in literature. According to Hjarvard and Kammer (2015) the democratic corporatist me-dia model is under pressure, hence the news can be found elsewhere for free. This could lead to the notion that paid news is not as valued as free news among the respondents. This is a challenge that news media faces today due to the digitalization of news media (Ottosen &

Krumsvik, 2009). This unwillingness to pay for news means that news media have to find other ways to generate revenue (ibid.). This could be by the consumers paying with their personal data instead. This privacy concern leads to the next section about recommender systems in news media and the question about giving personal data as a consumer of news media.