Remember your audience theory? This will help. Some other general points on audience can be found here.

How do we talk about audiences? One way is to use a DEMOGRAPHIC hierarchy.

A	Top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals
B	Middle management, teachers, many 'creatives' eg graphic designers etc
C1	Office supervisors, junior managers, nurses, specialist clerical staff etc
C2	Skilled workers, tradespersons (white collar)
D	Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (blue collar)
E	Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers

Alternatively, we can use PSYCHOGRAPHICS, which focuses more on the audience's attitudes, beliefs and values than on their income. For example, how would a reader's political beliefs influence their choice of newspaper? How might age influence their choice of online or offline news provider? If someone likes sport, are they more likely to pick a tabloid or broadsheet?



Audience research forms a huge part of the work done in the media. The SCMP, for example, have a very clear picture of who their audience is: see here.

TASK:

Research how a group of people receive their news.

Choose a suitable group.
Design a suitable means of data collection
Carry out the research.
Present the research in an appropriate manner.

When you're ready to talk about WHY people use the news sources they do, you need to make use of your audience theory. There should be some definitions here.

A few relevant links:

Online / Offline audience comparison

Is online news taking over?