Metrica has just released the latest update to UKPulse, the successor of ConsumerPulse, our PR planning tool that enables users to build and interrogate customised target audiences. In these days of an ever expanding media universe, we have focussed particular attention on helping our clients to understand the UK's complete media consumption - the internet, social media, referral sites, networks, user generated content as well as all forms of the more traditional media. It's thrown up some fascinating insights which seemed surprising at first.
Given the ongoing hype around social media one might be forgiven for assuming its status and credibility were much higher… but our survey of 13,000 UK adults shows different. While 29% of respondents felt they could trust an online customer review site only 5% said that they trusted blogs and not even 1% of respondents trust online forums.
So then I took a look at mainstream media to see how this had changed from last year's research… and more surprises! According to our poll (carried out in conjunction with YouGov) trust in UK television stations is up a massive 24 percentage points, with 70% of UK adults polled saying they believe what they see and hear from key channels. And national radio also performs well in the results achieving an increase of 12 percentage points in the year (from 49% to 61%).
Even the (often maligned) national newspapers managed a significant 17 percentage point increase from 2007, although this still leaves them lagging behind national TV and radio with only 43% of UK adults claiming to trust them. Trust in regional press meanwhile remains fairly static with only a one percentage point increase for regional newspapers (to 50%) and four percentage points for regional radio (also now at 50%). The more or less static perception of regional press is what I would have expected given its previous high scores, reflecting its content and readership.
The national and social media results though I would suggest require some debate and further research to fully understand. If asked to hazard a guess at what could be behind the results, my personal opinion is that the consumers of media, having so much more content to choose from, have become more savvy about their options. When choosing your news channel, the objectivity of the source is the key. Generalising massively here, I would say that while social media is often authentic, it is less likely than traditional media to be objective. Many blogs tend to focus on 'opinion' rather than 'reporting'. And there's the issue - how much do any of us trust the opinion of someone whom we know nothing or very little about?
Of course, this is all very broad and sweeping. Some bloggers develop incredible relationships with their readers resulting in them enjoying very high trust ratings. And I have no doubt that the trust ratings of different types of blogs will vary significantly. So, for example, a journalist's blog like Jeff Jarvis' Buzz Machine or a well respected business blog like Richard Edelman's 6am are likely to have very high trust ratings from their readers whereas a gaming enthusiast from small town nowheresville is likely to have much lower scores. The survey questions into media trust in UKPulse do not go to this level of granularity.
Talking of well respected bloggers, we sent some of these stats to Roy Greenslade at The Guardian. He posted about them just this morning. We really hope that this stirs some debate and opinions - already we are pleased to see that Adrian Monck, head of journalism and publishing at London's City University and author of "Can You Trust The Media?" (a great read!) has got involved in the debate on Roy's blog. We would love to hear your thoughts, and what questions you feel should now be asked. It's an area that Metrica will return to in due course and which clearly merits further research too.
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