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Millennials sound off on wearables and news consumption | RJI

Source: http://bit.ly/1lzaVQ1 By Mike McKean More millennials wear a wristwatch than you might think. While few of them actually consume news on wearable computers, many are somewhat interested in doing so. Apple’s recent, pre-holiday marketing push for the Watch has made a positive impression on most college students, who are more than willing to share their thoughts on the product’s strengths and weaknesses. These observations stem from a survey of millennials conducted from mid-October to early November as part of Victor Hernandez’s 2015 fellowship at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. We administered the survey online through a weekly email newsletter sent to all 35,000 students at the University of Missouri’s flagship campus. We offered them the chance to win a Visa gift card and 604 people responded. While the respondents came from a broad cross-section of majors, women were overrepresented by about 10 percent and undergraduates were underrepresented by nearly 17 percent. Since this is a convenience sample of only students who chose to participate, please don’t look for statistical significance in our results. But as you’ll see in the following blog posts from our convergence capstone team – Samantha Healey, Chris Mathews and Lauren Slome – some interesting and promising trends emerged. Now news organizations will have to decide whether and how to take advantage of those trends.
  • Mike McKean is the director of the Futures Lab and a mentor for the convergence capstone team at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.