The Australian Catholic Media User Survey was conducted over a period of two months, from September to November 2017. The 1,000 respondents were people deeply invested in Catholic life and, in general, were largely from older age groups. This is representative of the Mass-going demographic in Australia.
ACMA chair, Debra Vermeer said: “This affirms that church-going Catholics are interested in accessing Catholic media, but it also presents an important opportunity to find new strategies to reach out to those people not in the pews, especially young people.”
What Catholic media are people using?
The survey also delved into the type of Catholic media people use the most. The results showed that most people still rely upon their parish newsletter. 78% of all respondents reported reading their parish bulletin notices. Other types of Catholic media being utilised included:
- websites 59%
- email newsletters 54%
- Facebook 44%
- print newspapers 39%
- print magazines 38%
- online newspapers 37%
- online magazines 31%
- television 16%
- radio 12%
- podcasts 14%
Why people use Catholic media
According to the respondents of the survey, most held Catholic news outlets in high esteem because they presented a Catholic perspective of events and provided a source of local and diocesan news and information. 62% of the people who responded to the survey also said they turned to Catholic media to nourish their faith and as many as 70% of all respondents said catholic media provides something they don’t receive elsewhere in Catholic life.
The results of the Catholic Media Survey tie in nicely to our survey conducted in Aurora magazine last year. The results of our Aurora survey can be found here.