US voters who lean toward the right are engaging with new apps more than their liberal counterparts, highlighting the stark difference in media consumption between voters, according to new research.
The data, from mobile tech marketing firm Ogury, indicates that Media outlets which traditionally align with the Republican party and US President Donald Trump are experiencing record levels of reader engagement.
The findings do not necessarily indicate that right wing voters are more ‘engaged’ overall with the news, rather that on average they are more loyal to sources aligned to their views than their left-leaning counterparts.
Key findings:
• Users of the Fox News mobile app spend twice as long per session on the platform, when compared to users of nearest rival NBC News’ app
• Close to 100% of those who have downloaded the Fox news app are active users of it, vs only 52% for the NBC news app
• Fox News also has a much larger market share in the news category on mobile in the US – capturing 1% of the market versus 0.2% for NBC
• Breitbart’s smaller, but more engaged audience spends almost quadruple the time in-app per visit than NBC News users
• Mobile ownership of the Washington Post’s app has declined by more than 7% since July
Fox News, the second largest outlet in terms of market share, continues to see possession growth of its app, an increase of 1.4% since July. It also has the highest percentage of active users among all the main media outlets (94.2%), and those users spend an average of almost six minutes (5.41) per session in the app.
In contrast, just over half the users of the nearest broadcast rival NBC News are considered active, with the average time per session only 2.48 minutes. Category market share leader, CNN, meanwhile has seen its possession growth fall by 0.5% and has close to 15% fewer active users than Fox.
Right-wing challenger, Breitbart, on the other hand, has by far the most engaged user base overall, with average times per session of 10:28 minutes – almost double those of CNN (5:16) and more than quadruple those of NBC News (2:48).
Even establishment titles such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are not seeing these levels of engagement online, with times of 4:49 and 2.31 minutes respectively. The Washington post has also seen a huge decline in possession growth, with a 7.1% drop against an average drop of 0.55 percent across the board.
Stats at a glance (data captured between 9 July and October 1 2018):
The data looks at engagement from the time period between 9 July and 1 October 2018.
Source: Ogury