A study commissioned by Today revealed that the 17.4 percent of Internet users in Singapore rely on Facebook for General Election news, making it the third favorite online source in the country. Yahoo is first at 48 percent and Channel NewsAsia claims second spot at 23.8 percent.
The study also found out that Internet users in Singapore prefer traditional media over online sources. In a multiple question format, 63.7 percent of the respondents prefer the newspaper, 57.9 percent pick television and 57.7 percent voted for the Internet.
Despite less people learning the election news through the Internet, 7 out of 10 felt that online news sources provide “a wider range of political views than traditional media.”
A total of 606 respondents took part in the telephone survey. All the participants are Singaporeans 21 years of age or above who use the Internet daily.
Facebook has a high penetration rate in Singapore. Out of the 5 million people in the country, 1.9 million of them are Facebook users older than 21, according to Facebook’s ad stats .
Although Facebook isn’t exactly a news site, it does play a huge role in this General Election. Recommendations and comments from friends are likely to receive reactions from users, which creates a snowballing effect within a network of friends. The Facebook ‘like’ or ‘recommend’ button on news site like Yahoo, Today, and Channel NewsAsia made it easy for readers to share news with their network of friends.
The definition of “source” is blurred in the online world. ‘Facebook news’ could be either news from friends’ status updates or news linked from other sites. Every individual might have different opinions on “online sources” and differing views on this could have complicated the survey data.
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