Chinese university students prefer online news

College students check news online when waiting in the lounge of Suzhou railway station. [Photo/IC]

A survey published on June 26 shows the Internet is by far the most popular news source for Chinese university students.

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A total of 99.4% of the country's university students use the internet as their news source, compared to much lower figures for traditional media, with 47.7% opting for newspapers, 44.5% listening to radio news broadcasts, 39.3% watching the news on television and 26.5% who read news magazines.

The survey also shows that 61.3% of university students spend one to four hours surfing the internet each day, and 14% spend more than 6 hours. But they spend much less time using traditional media - from half an hour to one hour each day.

And there are also differences in reading habits according to gender, as more female students use traditional media compared to male students, with 63.5% of female students watching TV, compared to 57.3% of male students.

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People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the most popular newspaper among the country's students.

More than 12,000 students from 123 universities in 33 cities around China participated in the survey, carried out by the Association of Social Survey and Research of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the China Student Media Festival Committee.

Xie Yungeng, vice-director of the academy of arts and humanities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said China has 30 million university students - the highest number of any country in the world – and their habits concerning their use of media will likely affect future trends.

The report also showed that CCTV is the most popular television station, with 54% of students watching CCTV news shows, while Hunan Satellite TV (51.2%) and Zhejiang Satellite TV (25.4%) follow closely. Regarding entertainment, Happy Camp(46.8%) and Daddy Where Are We Going(38.9%) from Hunan Satellite TV are the top two most popular shows among those surveyed.

Reader (29.8%), 'Duzhe' in Chinese, becomes the top 1 popular magazine, and CNR(Chinese National Radio) takes up the first place in broadcast by 64.7% support rate.

University students get their online news from sina(41.3%), tencent(34.9%) and ifeng(22.4%), with youku(62.9%), iqiyi(51.6%) and letv(27.5%). Regarding social media, Tencent's QQ (82.6%) and wechat(77.7%) as well as sina weibo(52%) are the top three most popular social media among Chinese university students.