The latest survey of Canadian online habits offers some interesting reading for the news industry.
The Stats Canada survey found that more than two-thirds of Internet users (68%), read or watch the news online. Keeping up with events is one of the top online activities, following e-mail (93%), browsing for goods or services (74%) and electronic banking (68%).
The figures also point to rapid uptake of social media in Canada, with 58% using social networking sites. The number jumped to 86% for younger net users under 35.
Women, too, were slightly more likely than men to use social networking sites (62% compared to 54%).
The prevalence of social networking is unsurprising as just under 17 million people in Canada are on Facebook alone, accounting for 64% of the online population.
More surprising is that Stats Canada found that only 19% of net users said they contributed content such as by blogging and posting images, or took part in discussion groups such as message boards.
The low number suggests a minority of Canadians are active participants in creating media online, even though much of what takes place on social media is posting photos or participating in a discussion.
Perhaps people do not consider what they do on Facebook as “contributing content”. Yet contributing content is implicit in interactions on social networking sites, either through sharing a link, writing a short snippet or uploading an image.
Instead, net users might only think they are contributing content if they have made an explicit decision to write a blog post or join a messageboard.
It might be time to reassess how we measure who is creating content online, as well as where, how and why they are doing this.
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