New Media (digital media: online and mobile) is becoming a more trusted source of news for Mena residents, with one in five saying they trust information online more than traditional media, said a survey.

Seventy per cent of respondents admitted to watching TV simultaneously while surfing the Web in a poll conducted by YouGov, a full-service market research company.

YouGov recently under took a digital survey of 30,000 adults in the Mena region to gain a deeper understanding of their use of different media and the tools used to access them.

With devices to access online media, now widely available, 8 per cent of Mena respondents say they use a tablet computer to access digital media (rising to 16 per cent in the UAE and Saudi Arabia).

Forty-five per cent of respondents’ access digital media using their mobile phones, and one-third of radio listeners said they listen to the radio via their mobile phones.

New media has now become an active lifestyle for residents of the Mena region, 87 per cent are on Facebook and 53 per cent visit the site at least once a day and 11 per cent are members of a group buying site. In Egypt alone 42 per cent are active twitter users, with one in five tweeting at least once per day.

Legacy media usage has changed over the past five years, for example with the introduction of TV recording devices, 32 per cent of Mena respondents said they will make a purchase in the next twelve months while one in 10 already claimed ownership.

Almost half reported using the Internet as a source to find new TV shows to watch, whereas in Saudi Arabia, one in five respondents said they actually watch TV online. – TradeArabia News Service