TV queen of media, boom of smartphones and tablets. Television continues to have a share of viewers that essentially coincides with the entire population (96.7 percent), with a strengthening, however, of the audience of new televisions: web TV has reached a viewership of 23.7 percent (+1.6 percent compared to 2013), mobile TV at 11.6 percent (+4.8 percent), while satellite TV stands at a total viewership of 42.4 percent, and by now 10 percent of Italians use smart TVs connected to the web. Radio is also confirmed to have a very wide mass audience (total audience corresponds to 83.9 percent of Italians), with listening via cell phones (+2 percent) and via the Internet (+2 percent) still on the rise. The use of the smartphone continues to increase dramatically (+12,9%) and are now regularly used by more than half of Italians (52.8 percent), while tablets virtually doubled their popularity within a two-year period and are now in the hands of more than a quarter of Italians (26.6 percent).
The abysmal distances between young and old. The gaps between youth and elderly media consumption stand out. Among the young, the share of net users reaches 91.9%, while it is stagnant at 27.8% among the elderly; 85.7% of the former use smart phones, but only 13.2% of the latter do so; 77.4% of the under-30s are subscribed to Facebook, compared to only 14.3% of the over-65s; 72.5% of the young use YouTube, as do only 6.6% of the over-65s; young people who watch web TV (40.7 percent) are many more than older people who do the same (7.1 percent); 40.3 percent of the former listen to the radio through their cell phones, ten times more than the latter (4.1 percent); and while one in three young people (36.6 percent) have a tablet, only 6 percent of older people do. In contrast, the youth readership of newspapers (27.5 percent) is far lower than that of those over 65 (54.3 percent).
The growing primacy of personalized information. Today the top five sources of information used by Italians are: TV news (used by 76.5 percent to inform themselves), radio newspapers (52 percent), Internet search engines such as Google (51.4 percent), all news TV (50.9 percent) and Facebook (43.7 percent). Record increase in TV all news users, up 34.6 percent from 2011, Facebook +16.9 percent, smartphone apps +16.7 percent, YouTube +10.9 percent, and search engines gain 10 percent of information users. But among younger people, the hierarchy of sources changes: in first place is Facebook as a tool for getting informed (71.1 percent), in second place is Google (68.7 percent), and only in third place appear TV news (68.5 percent), with YouTube not far behind (53.6 percent) and still coming before radio newspapers (48.8 percent), tailed in turn by smartphone apps (46.8 percent).
The economics of digital disintermediation is taking off. The most exploited practical function of the Internet in daily life is searching for roads and locations (60.4% of web users do this). This is followed by searching for information about companies, products, services (56 percent). Next comes home banking (46.2 percent) and a playful activity such as listening to music (43.9 percent, a percentage that rises to 69.9 percent in the case of younger people). They shop on the web now 43.5 percent of Internet users, or 15 million Italians. Watching movies (25.9 percent, a percentage that soars to 46 percent among younger people), looking for jobs (18.4 percent), and making phone calls via Skype or other voip services (16.2 percent) are other popular activities among Internet users. Handling paperwork with public offices, on the other hand, is still an activity limited to 17.1 percent of Internet users. Users are increasingly making use of telematics platforms and providers that put them in direct contact with their stakeholders or the services they are interested in, avoiding the intermediation of other parties. Thus, an economy of digital disintermediation is developing, shifting value creation from traditional production and employment chains into new areas. In the crisis years, dwindling finances have forced Italians to cut back on everything. But not on networked digital media, because through them they increased their individual power of disintermediation, which resulted in a final net savings in the household budget. Using the Internet to inform oneself, to buy products and services, to book trips and vacations, to watch movies or follow soccer games, to conduct banking transactions or get in touch with government departments, has meant spending less money or even just wasting less time: in each case, gaining something.
(Censis source)
