University of Oxford
Quirky news stories are becoming more popular than celebrity gossip, according to Oxford University’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2014.
Unusual tales are becoming a key driver of traffic on news websites and is especially popular with young men – 15 per cent of UK respondents said it was important to them, just behind the 17 per cent of people who chose celebrity news.
The report’s author, Nic Newman, said: “Young men are driving a lot of this because what they enjoy is having a laugh and it’s very shareable on social media.”
The report also found that people looking for news prefer to stick to trusted brands, such as established newspapers.
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