March 19, 2008
Going Mobile: Reaching Hard-to-Reach Communities
Want to gain an edge in reaching African American, Hispanic, and low-income communities with your news? According to some new research from the Pew Internet and American Life project, a good bet might be to increase your mobile content and services.
In Seeding the Cloud: What Mobile Access Means for Usage Patterns and Online Content, Pew’s John Horrigan writes:
“Cell phone users are more likely to be found in groups that have generally lagged in internet adoption, such as senior citizens, blacks, and Latinos. In our December 2007 survey, 50% of Americans age 65 and over had cell phones compared with 36% who used the internet. Some 84% of English-speaking Hispanics reported having cell phones and 71% of blacks had cell phones, compared with 78% and 63%, respectively, for online access.“More striking than access patterns is usage. For use of non-voice data applications on handhelds, Hispanics and African Americans lead the way relative to white Americans. Half of African Americans and 56% of English-speaking Latinos with cell phones, on a typical day, do at least one of 10 non-voice data applications such as taking pictures, accessing the internet for news, playing music, or texting. By contrast, 38% of whites do these kinds of activities on a wireless handheld device on the average day.
“Even lower-income Americans with cell phones (61%) are active in using non-voice data applications on cell phones; 44% of cell users in households with incomes below $30,000 annually do one such non-voice data activity on a typical day.
Want more details? Check out Pew’s Mar. 5 full report on Mobile Access to Data and Information
Do these numbers surprise you? They surprised me!
Based on this information, do you think you’re using mobile offerings effectively to reach currently under-served populations in your news coverage area?
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