THEJOURNAL.IE IS THE second most-read online news outlet in Ireland, according to an authoritative new study.

The nine-year-old news website is second only to RTÉ News Online when it comes to where people got their news online in the past week, the Reuters Institute Digital News Report for 2019 has found.

Independent.ie, Breaking News.ie and Irish Times Online round out the top five.

32% of 2,013 respondents said they had used TheJournal.ie to access news online in the last week, compared to 33% for RTÉ News Online, 27% for Independent.ie, 22% for BreakingNews.ie and 18% for Irish Times Online.

The report notes that any changes compared to last year’s research are likely to be within the margin of error, meaning that there has not been any significant shift in reader habits when it comes to the publications they read.

The report found a number of trends in how people get their news online in Ireland, including generally high consumption of news and high levels of trust of the media among respondents, but a deep suspicion of news on social media and concern about the threat of false news.

Source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report

When it comes to traditional sources for news, RTÉ’s tv news remains the most popular source by a wide margin at 36%, followed by RTÉ radio news (21%), Sky News (18%), BBC News (15%) and any local radio news (14%).

The study found that people in Ireland trust the news more than people in other EU countries do, and more than half (59%) say the media is doing a good job in helping them understand the news.

Among the other findings of the report were:

People aged 25-34 are most likely to pay for online news while people aged 55-64 are least likely. 12% of people in Ireland pay for news in some way through subscriptions, donations and one-off payments, marginally higher than the EU average of 11%

of people in Ireland pay for news in some way through subscriptions, donations and one-off payments, marginally higher than the EU average of 11% Almost one third of people (32%) now say that they are actively avoiding the news either sometimes or often

either sometimes or often Irish consumers are more cautious about trusting social media than in other EU countries; 54% of respondents either strongly disagreed or tended to disagree with the idea that they could trust news on social media

The research also found that Ireland’s podcast consumption remains higher than other countries; 37% of Irish respondents say they listened to a podcast in the last month, compared to the EU average of 33%.

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The main reason people gave for listening to podcasts was to learn something, followed by to keep updated or informed about a topic.

Despite Ireland’s low level of disinformation and political polarisation compared to other countries, Irish people are concerned about false news on the internet – 57% expressed concern about it, compared to the EU average of 51%.

The research, which is funded in Ireland by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, was carried out using an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2019 and the sample size in Ireland was 2,013 people, weighted to control for age, gender, region, newspaper readership, internet access and social grade.

The annual report carried out by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford is the largest ongoing study of news consumption trends in the world, covering 38 countries.