Australians have the highest rate of all countries for using their smartphones to read news, according to a survey published on Tuesday.
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And it seems we like talking about what we've read as well, particularly international news.
The results come from the first Digital News Report: Australia, part of a global survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
Further in-depth analysis of Australian digital news consumption has been conducted by the News & Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra.
"Australia's high level of access and device penetration is distinctive and our data suggest that many Australian consumers access news across a range of traditional and online platforms," the report says.
The authors found 59 per cent use of smartphones in Australia for accessing news.
Japan reported only 33 per cent use of smartphones for news, despite similar national internet penetration rates.
Social media news sources were preferred to print sources in Australia, urban Brazil, Italy, Ireland, Spain and the United States.
"Australians had one of the highest preferences for talking face-to-face with friends about news coverage (54 per cent) similar to Denmark (58 per cent) and Ireland (52 per cent)," the report says.
"Discussing news face-to-face was least popular in France (33 per cent) and Japan (24 per cent).
"Australians rated the importance of 'international news' more highly than any other country (76 per cent) but rated 'political news' as less important than any other country surveyed (29 per cent)".
The Sydney Morning Herald app was among the top five most-accessed news apps among smartphone and tablet users.
However, the survey reports less than 11 per cent of respondents paid to access digital news in the preceding year.
Of these, about half paid $10 per month or less for a digital news service.
Facebook was the most popular social networking site for finding and sharing news.
"Twitter was used more for searching for specific news and browsing to see what's new," the report says.
The report confirmed age-based trends, with 60 per cent in the 18-24 year age group citing online platforms as their main way of accessing news, whereas 70 per cent of the 55+ age group mainly consumed news via traditional platforms - print, radio and television.
The sample size in Australia was 2042 adults who access news at least once a month.
The authors noted the online survey might under-represent the news consumption habits of those who are not online news users, such as older and/or less affluent people.
