A survey published on June 26 shows the Internet is by far the most popular news source for Chinese university students. More than 12,000 students from 123 universities in 33 cities around China participated in the survey, carried out by the Association of Social Survey and Research of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the China Student Media Festival Committee.
A total of 99.4 percent of the country's university students use the internet as their news source, compared to much lower figures for traditional media, with 47.7 percent opting for newspapers, 44.5 percent listening to radio news broadcasts, 39.3 percent watching the news on television and 26.5 percent who read news magazines. The survey also shows that 61.3 percent of university students spend one to four hours surfing the internet each day, and 14 percent spend more than 6 hours. But they spend much less time using traditional media - from half an hour to one hour each day.