Survey | Social media becomes locals top choice to follow

The logo of the Sina Weibo microblog service

The Faculty of Humanities and Arts from Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), along with the Sun Yat-Sen University’s School of Communication and Design, have finished a survey on Macau residents searching habits when using new media.

The researchers conducted the survey between October and November of this year, collecting 1,061 valid questionnaires from interviewees on their routines when using three new media platforms: WeChat, Facebook, and web browsers.

Around 79 percent of the interviewees said that they often read news from local websites. 61.7 and 51.2 percent noted that they have been reading news from Facebook and WeChat, respectively.

Seventy percent frequently visited governmental websites. In turn, 4.1 percent often read education-related information through websites, while the percentage of Facebook and WeChat users searching for the aforementioned news is at 31.3 percent and 21 percent, respectively. 

According to reports from mainland China, 90 percent of the interviewed mainland university students use internet more than two hours per day. Around 50 percent of the surveyed students do not read from a printed newspaper on a daily basis.

Around 88.3, 84.9, and 60.7 percent of mainland students use QQ, WeChat, and Weibo, respectively, every day, while only 2.6 percent use Twitter.

The report shows that 62.3, 60.7, and 58.8 percent of the students use WeChat or Weibo for social activities, entertainment, and reading news, respectively.

A 23-year-old female local teacher, surnamed Chan, told the Times that she never browses local media’s websites, and has never visited the government’s websites either.

Chan said that she rarely uses WeChat to read news. “I read news on Facebook when they pop up,” said Chan. While she admits to seldom reading news about the government, she pays more attention to government news which is related to social welfare.

Another interviewee, surnamed Siew, a 54-year-old female accountant, told the Times that she is very much focused on government news, especially those related to livelihood. Siew does not read printed newspapers, but she often browses Chinese news agency’s websites, and she does not use Facebook to read news. Siew also says she visits Hong Kong’s news websites frequently.

A third interviewee, a 30-year-old wholesaler surnamed Kong, said that he resorts to Facebook, WeChat, and to browsers to read news. Kong explained that 50 percent of the times he uses Facebook to read news, and that 30 percent of the time he reads news through WeChat. “[I read] mainly local news,” said Kong, who also noted that he closely follows news that is related to the government. Kong never reads printed newspapers either.