Reasons to Why Print Media is on The Decline

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Introduction

The topic of interest in this literature review is on whether print media or digital media is better than their counterpart. Print media is a medium used to disseminate information or news on printed matter (“print media”). For example: newspapers, magazines, books. Digital media is digitised content that can be transmitted over the television or through computer networks like the Internet which constitutes text, graphics, audio and videos (“digital media”).

Why is this topic of interest important? It has been suggested and viewed that print media is on the decline while digital media is on the rise - which leads to a possible assumption that digital media is a better medium and print may eventually be replaced someday. To address these conflicting views, the aid of relevant sources will help us find out the reasons why print media is on the decline and digital media on the rise, the advantages of print media as compared to digital media and the demographic differences between users of print and digital media respectively. All these questions will be answered in the following literature review.

Literature Review
Reasons to why print media is on the decline

Print media is on the decline, this can be seen in the U.S.newspaper industry as it is facing “its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression” (Kirchhoff). A few huge newspaper chains declared their bankruptcy, while many others have shut down (Kirchhoff). This has lead to many reporters and editors to be out of the job, lesser pay and even becoming web-only publications (Kirchhoff).

In recent years, digital media has become more popular, and is one of the reasons why print media is facing a financial crunch. The average American adult spends five hou...

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... favouring them, lack of portability, price factor, lack of timeliness and being seen as a damage to the environment. However, it also has its advantages over digital media. This includes: brand identity when advertising in print, more engaging, more accurate and permanency. As stated by aforementioned Senior Research Fellow, Carli “ Neither print alone nor digital media alone is capable of meeting the communication needs of business, government and the growing human population as they are used today.”

Finally, it should be known that most of the studies that we have included in this review were not done locally. However, it is still very much so relevant to us as print media and digital media is a global issue. Also, for the difference in demographics (gender) for print media, there is insufficient studies in that area, hence we are unable to elaborate further.

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