Mittuniversitetet

Problem statement and purpose of the study Journalism is having economic issues, and the journalists knowledge of this together with tools for web analysis has increased the influence of the audience. The development of internet and the new media landscape has made several scholars call for changes in media ethics, but still not much has happend. The larger influence of the audience makes it interesting to examine how it views media ethics. Recently there has also been signs of an age segregation in media consumption where younger people are using new technology and platforms, which do not have an adjusted ethic system, and the older people are using the more traditional technology, which the media ethics originally was made for. Therefore this study also examines how the view differs in a younger and an older part of the audience. Method and material This study relies on three focus groups with participants from the swedish news audience. To be able to examine a possible age segregation in the view on media ethics, two of the groups consisted of younger participants and the third group consisted of older participants. Results The results of this study can be viewed as a sign of that the younger part of the audience is prepared to take a more individual responsibility for media ethics than the older part. This could for example be done by practicing source criticism. The results also indicates that the existing ethics system in Sweden is still supported by the audience