The relationship between journalism, communication and the general public will be ever evolving as society continues to change. This relationship can be strengthened once particular patterns are recognised in the public’s behaviour toward the media. Results taken from a poll of 436 university students showed a trend towards changes in the public’s attitude towards the media. When an individual’s sample was extracted from the poll it became evident that an online audience was taking shape in society. This gives an indication of the types of media that should be generated to accommodate this change.

Below is a graph illustrating the types of media utilised by a single student over a ten day period. It is clear from this graph that the laptop was the most common medium, and it can also be said that accessing the internet was the most frequent media usage.

When the individual’s data was compared with the survey in Fig.1, it supported the findings that the most common form of media, due to its ease of accessibility, was the internet. Over 75% of those polled admitted they used the internet for up to 4 hours a day.

Fig. 1

Acknowledging that the internet was the most frequent media usage, it was important to establish what types of online activity was conducted for the media to target a specific audience.          

The students stated that their internet usage mainly consisted of accessing the social media site Facebook, emailing, general surfing and research (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

This trend was also evident in the individual’s Media Use Diary (Fig. 3, portion of Media Use Diary) as the majority of the time spent online was accessing Facebook, Hotmail or Google.

Fig. 3

If media forms such as radio or news wished to increase their audiences it would be beneficial for them to make online access easier. The data from the poll shows that to keep up to date with the latest news, over 65% of student’s accessed online newspapers (Fig. 4). To strengthen the relationship between journalism, communication and the public, the use of the internet as a popular form of accessing radio and the news would be beneficial.

Fig. 4

The most common channel of listening to music was via an iPod or phone; however there is still a large majority that use their computers. Therefore, if radio was to be broadcasted regularly on Facebook, a bigger audience could be reached (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5

Based on the findings derived from the data a conclusion can be drawn about the role of journalism and communication in a changing society.  To ensure that the relationship between journalism, communication and the public remains strong and relevant, a move must be made towards increasing accessibility to online media.