Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 1

Institute of Foreign Languages’

Students And News Consumption:
The behavior of Institute of Foreign Languages’ students towards news consumption

Chetra Chap, Lina Tay, Rith Onyka Sambo, Sothearoth Him, & Sothearoth Peou
BA Juniors  Department of International Studies  Institute of Foreign Languages  Royal
University of Phnom Penh  Russian Federation Boulevard, P.O. Box 416 Phnom Penh  Cambodia
PAPER For the Major Assignment: Introduction to Research (October – January, 2011)

‘News is like a whole-wheat sandwich: you eat it

because it is healthy, not because it is tasty,’
said Iris, college student, aged 25.
(as cited in Meijer, 2006)

What happens in a particular place, if important and interesting enough, will become the
exhibition for world citizens. Today, it seems like information is flying everywhere at high speed as
there is a tremendous explosion of advanced technology particularly in the area of mass media. A
man in the United States may sit down on the coach in front of his TV feeling the tragedy of
Pakistanis during the extreme disastrous flood. Haitians screamed in their home country to ask for
immediate help when the giant earthquake hit them, and the world could hear it. The 9/11 attack
was the discussion of even those who have never been to the US. These are all the results of mass
media, carrying out all sorts of information across the world.
RESEARCH FOCUS
In Cambodia, a country with English as foreign language, international news consumption
of young adults, particularly university students, may be questioned critically. Like in most
countries, they can access to the Internet and famous international news channels like CNN and
BBC; however, the main obstacle might fall into the course of poor English language proficiency
and the lacking knowledge of the news’ topics. Or perhaps, the literatures above can be applied to
this case. In this quantitative study therefore, we try to discover the behavior of students at Institute
of Foreign Languages, one of the finest English language and international studies program
providing institutions, on news consumption since they are more or less thought to have very good,
if not the best, command of English language and knowledge of international studies.
SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
This quantitative study can be a learning paradigm for university students, especially those
at IFL, to increase their awareness and interests in the habit of consuming news. Today, news is not
just information consumed for fun, but a very powerful tool in paving the future path of students. It
Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research
 Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 2

is, more or less, the number one source of nurturing education since knowledge in various fields
flow seamlessly from every single part of the world in the form of news. Even more importantly,
according to Thomas Friedman (2005), the author of New York Times’ best-selling books, today
world is seen to be “flat” because of globalization. He says individuals from every single place have
unprecedentedly equal opportunity to compete with each other by using the modern era’s
equipments, including the personal computer and the Internet. However, everything comes down
the matter of acquiring information in order win when it comes to competition, and most, if not all,
information is generated from news consumption. In this sense, there lies the significance of this
study because the behavior of university students, back bones of the country, towards news
consumption, to a certain extent, determines the future of the country’s competitiveness in this
globalized world.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES
The purpose of this study is to find out the behavior of IFL students towards news
consumption. Thus, the following hypotheses and research questions are the basis for the research.
H1: Little attention on news consumption is determined by:
a. the low level of English proficiency;
b. the narrow knowledge of students on themes broadcasted on news;
c. the low age of students;
d. the decision of students to consume entertainment contents often;
e. the unavailability of students because of academic activities.
RQ3: What is the percentage of the overall IFL students who consume news?
And how do they access the news?
RQ4: What are those particular topics of news IFL students consume the most?
LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Do Young Adults Consume News?
As mass media reaches its peak, there is a sign that today young people pay little attention to
news (Beekhoven & Van Well, 1998), while Hargreaves & Thomas (2002) show a huge number of
people aged between 16 and 24 think there is too much news on television. In the past, there was
always an assumption that people’s attention on news automatically increases as they grow older
into adulthood, yet it is no longer relevant, according to Buckingham (2000). Interestingly, the
reason why people tend to lose their interest in consuming news is because of the advancement of
mass media itself (Huysmans & Hann, 2004). The same source explains there were very few news
channels on television during the 1980s, but now the existence of advanced technological

Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research

 Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 3

revolution has made media services available anytime, anyplace through especially the Internet, and
those devices that can access it; people have more options to choose their entertainment content in
today phenomenal media services and as Nijs & Peters (2002) claim, they are not so much looking
for news.
As this figure indicates, the group of
people aged between 18 and 24 (young adults) do
not so much take news into consideration. Across
all these four sources, the percentage of young
adults’ news consumption does not outgrow 35%,
which is obviously pointing the lower rate
comparing that of the older people groups.
Distribu)on  of  News  Sources  Consumed  by  Ages
Surprisingly, online news source demonstrates Source:  h*p://www.cincomsmalltalk.com

relatively high percentage among the young adults’ group, yet this is not the case because online
news is the most recently sophisticating source, which most of the time only young people are
interested in and know how to consume. Also, people aged from 25 to 49 still consume more online
news than those young adults. Therefore, this figure should get pave the path to the conclusion that
young adults, particularly and mostly college students aged between 18 and 24, show very little
interest in news.
2. The Why and the Debate:
  Supporting the claim of Nijs & Peters (2002) that today young people do not look for news
much on media, a study illustrates young adult television viewers may want to consume news, but
not the one offered by the current televisions (Barnhurst & Wartella, 1998). This source says topics
popularly served in news such as domestic politics, international politics, security and economy are
seen as least interesting to young adults because these topics are seen ‘irrelevant to their life’.
Barnhurst (1998) goes even further arguing that most news seems to cover a realm beyond young
people’s everyday life. In this sense, Bird (2003) further argues much news hardly impresses young
viewers, unless it affects them personally: “The images and messages wash over us, but most leave
little trace, unless they resonate, even for a moment, with something in our personal or cultural
experience’ (p. 2).
On the other hand, there are researches suggesting that young people do in fact value news.
In the view of Richard Sambrook, director of BBC World Service and Global News Division and
former director BBC news, young people “no longer sit down with news as appointment viewing,
but it would be wrong to conclude that they don’t care about the news” (as cited in Hargreaves &
Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research
 Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 4

Thomas, 2002, p.85). In Netherland, more than one of two in the age group 18-24 report that they
follow news on a daily basis (CBS, 2003). Similarly, Raeymakers (2003) has found out that in the
Dutch-speaking part of Belgium over 40 percent of the young respondents aged 16-18 consume
news regularly.
RESEARCH METHOD
1. Research Approach
The main objective of this study is to explore the behaviors and awareness of IFL Students
toward the habit of consuming news. According to Thomas S. Kuhn (2008, p. 306), in the social
sciences particularly, quantitative research is an analysis and interpretation of observations for the
purpose of discovering underlying meanings and patterns of relationships, including classifications
of types of phenomena and entities, in a manner that does not involve mathematical models. The
aim will be to gain familiarity with the issues, and to gain a deeper understanding about the topic.
From this definition, the study is undertaken in a quantitative approach in the form of explanatory
design since our research is actually conducting on social science phenomenon. In addition, it is a
cross-sectional study for variables in the study population of subjects are assayed once and the
relationships between them are determined at one particular time only.
2. Study Population And Sampling Design
The study population in this research is defined to include the undergraduate students from
Institute of Foreign Languages from the age of 16 years to higher, and the total number is 350.
Eligible respondents must come from either English or International Studies Department in all shifts
excluding those currently taking Bridging Course. However, we ended up administering the
questionnaire to only afternoon shift students since we could not make it possible to find
availability in the morning and evening.
In order to collect data, the stratified random sampling procedure is selected and operated
based on the arrangement by year levels and classes. The procedure has been distributed equally to
50 respondents at all year level from both departments.
3. Instrument And Data Collection
The research is conducted with the purpose of collecting the number of students who
consume news and make generalization on their behavior toward the whole IFL students, thus the
best instrument for accomplishing this study is to use the questionnaire survey technique.
The questionnaire is consisted of five significant parts (see Appendix 1). The first part,
Background Information, is designed to find out respondents’ personal data, covering age, gender,
year level and department. The second part, namely News Consumption, is intended to determine

Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research

 Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 5

the frequency of those respondents in consuming news. Then, the third part, Perception On News,
is aiming at discovering how those respondents give their personal opinions about news
consumption particularly in the areas of its importance, and limitation. After that, Knowledge
About News noted as the fourth part describes what fields of news the respondent focus on most.
At the end, the fifth part directing the respondents to share what have in mind deserves the title as
Final Comments.
During the process of going to the field to collect data, the questionnaires had been split up
into two main categories respectively: one was sent to English Department and the other one to
Department of International Studies. The English Department category holds four sub-groups,
covering students in year 1 until year 4, while only three sub-groups, year 1 to year 3 students, were
incorporated in the category of the Department of International Studies. Ultimately, each sub-group
was given 50 questionnaires and asked to fill in the data.
In this data collection process, we delivered those questionnaires to fourteen classes (2
classes for each sub-group) at the Institute of Foreign Languages during the break on the 17th
December. Since the process of collection data is not as smooth as what was expected, the time
needed for collecting those information had to be prolonged until the end of the second session of
the class. Finally, the 350 questionnaires were successfully collected back.
4. Contribution To The Study
It is intended that the selection of this research project based on categorization provides two
positive outcomes. First, we received a surprisingly high response rate which was fully 100%.
There were no questionnaires missed after going to the field. Second, it guarantees the
representativeness of the study population since all students from the fourteen classes represent the
whole IFL students at all year levels from both departments.
FINDING
Table 1: Characteristics of Sample

Gender Department Age Total

Male Female English Int’l Studies 16-18 19-21 22-24 25-Higher

154 196 200 150 56 207 78 9

350
44% 56% 57.1% 42.9% 16% 59.1% 22.3% 2.6%

Another Major

Finance &
Law IT Economics Environment Business Management Accounting Others N.A.
Banking
100%
35 5 42 6 22 52 12 33 19 124

10% 1.4% 12% 1.7% 6.3% 14.9% 3.4% 9.5% 5.4% 35.4%

Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research

 Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 6

The final sample, from which the questionnaires were collected, comprises of 350
undergraduate students at the Institute of Foreign Language, Royal University of Phnom Penh.
They are aged from 16, but the majority (59.1%) is between 19 and 21. In terms of gender, there are
196 females and 154 males. These 350 students are from two departments of IFL, which are
English (57.1%) and International Studies (42.9%). Additionally, among the 350 students, 64.6% of
them is taking another major as statistically shown in table 1.
Hypothesis 1 expects that the little attention on news consumption is determined by the low
level of English proficiency, the narrow knowledge of students on themes broadcasted on news; the
low age of students; the decision of students to consume entertainment contents often; and the
unavailability of students from academic activities. This hypothesis is sturdily supported by table 3
below. English proficiency is very much a tool to consume news as more than half of the
respondents (Mean: 2.38) claim that they have good English proficiency. The 2.17 mean of the
knowledge on themes of news denotes most respondents believe that relatively limited knowledge
on news themes discourage them to consume news. Furthermore, another interpretation shows that
there are almost all people (Mean: 4.25) consuming entertainment contents rather than news.
Finally, the data, through the mean of 1.03, also indicates that unavailability because of academic
activities, specifically too much schoolwork, leads to the ignorance of consuming current news.
Table 2: Factoring determining the little attention on news consumption Table 3: News Accessibility
Causes to Little Attention on Number Minimum Maximum Mean TV 262 74.9%
News Consumption

English Proficiency 346 1 5 2.38 Radio 130 37.1%

Knowledge on themes 350 1 4 2.17 Internet 240 68.6%

Entertainment Contents 349 1 5 4.25

Newspaper 170 48.6%
Unavailability (School work) 342 1 2 1.13
Others 16 4.5%
Age (Consume more when older) 342 1 2 1.03

Table 4: News consumption of students from both departments

Department Department Department

News Duration of Frequency of
Consumption Int’t Consumption Int’t Consumption Int’t
Eng. Eng. Eng.
Studies Studies Studies

174 134 142 92 157 100

Less than More than 2
Yes
30 minutes times a week
87 89.33% 81% 69% 87 75%

26 16 32 42 22 34
More than
No Everyday
30 minutes
13% 10.67% 19% 31% 13% 25%

Total: 350 200 150 Total: 308 174 134 Total: 350 174 134

Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research

 Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 7

Hypothesis 2, which predicts students from the Department of International Studies have
more attention on news consumption than those from the Department of English, is supported.
More specifically, there is 85% of 200 students in English department consumes news while 92% of
150 students in International Studies Department. In terms of duration and frequency of
consumption, students at Department of International Studies appear to consume longer (31% over
19%) and more often (25% over 13%), according to table 4.
Research question 3 is aiming to ascertain the percentage of the overall IFL Students who
actually consume news and how they access it. From Table 4, among the 350 respondents from both
departments who had completed the questionnaires, there are 308 people (174 from English
Department and 134 from International Studies Department) conveying that they do consume news
which is equivalent to 88% of the total numbers.
In research question 4, which attempts to find out the most popular themes of news that
most IFL students consume, the descriptive statistic has been applied. In table 5, the variables are
ranked from number 1 the lowest to 5 the highest showing the level of the knowledge of the
respondents in each theme. Thus, the finding demonstrates the top three subjects IFL students are
likely to consume the most including Entertainment (Mean: 4.19), Technology (Mean= 4.13), and
weather (Mean=3.51). Themes such as scientific exploration, security, politics, economics, and
environment are not really in the knowledge of the respondents, taking the means of 1.91, 2.35,
2.53, 2.74 and 2.78 correspondingly. This table also show the means of students from both
departments on each theme, and even though the there classes of means are slightly different in
number, they match orderly.

Table 4: News consumption of students from both departments

Themes of News Number Minimum Maximum Mean Mean (English Mean (Int’l Studies
Department) Department)

Entertainment 348 1 5 4.19 4.21 4.14

Technology 334 1 5 4.13 4.18 3.99

Weather 348 1 5 3.51 3.56 3.47

Environment 328 1 5 2.78 2.22 2.96

Economics 338 1 5 2.74 2.19 2.94

Politics 349 1 5 2.53 2.06 2.76

Security 348 1 5 2.35 1.98 2.43

Scientific Exploration 347 1 5 1.91 1.89 2.11

Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research

 Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 8

DISCUSSION
Surprisingly, this study provides new evidence supporting one side of the arguments in the
literature that today young adults do pay considerably high attention on new consumption.
Statistically, the generalization made based on the finding reveals 88% percent of the overall IFL
students consumes news everyday; this is a huge milestone indicating a positive image of
Cambodia, particularly in the area of globalization. It is actually a bottom line that Cambodia needs
from her human resource: the the sense of wide knowledge and competitiveness. More importantly,
as seen in the finding, the equipments they use to access news, more or less, stand to the edge of the
most recent and advanced technology. Those equipments include television, radio, newspaper and
the Internet. This again implicates the up-to-date capabilities Cambodian young adults acquire.
Regarding the other side of the arguments, which says news consumption of today young
adults is gradually declining, this study appears on the surface to be in a quite different path. Yet,
this study turns out to give similar comments on causes preventing young adults to consume news.
Like in the literature, the supported hypothesis 1 illustrates the boredom on news consumption is
resulted from today modern entertainment contents. There are fun activities taking place on the
media such as social networking, musics, movies, radio podcasts and so on. In hypothesis 2, the
majority of respondents (mean: 4.5 in table 2) give a very strong agreement on the fact that
entertainment contents, in many ways, distract them from consuming news. Another cause the
literature and this study communicate is the idea that most themes of broadcasted news are not the
favorites of young adults. While the literature points out themes popularly served on the media such
as politics, security and economy are seen as least interesting and relevant to young adults’
everyday life, the result of this study similarly marks the knowledge of IFL students on these
themes to be a low rate, and thus very little consumption.
Additionally, looking analytically at the finding, the top three news themes IFL students are
most knowledgeable about are entertainment, technology and weather. This might answer to the
high attention of IFL students on news consumption. In fact, these three themes, as far as
concerned, are not so much considered as news contents. They may eventually fall in the categories
of entertainment-related news contents, despited being broadcasted on news media. Therefore, the
88% of IFL students cannot fully identified as intensive news consumers, so a match between the
literature claiming the decline in young adults’ news consumption and the finding is like to be
reached.

Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research

 Institute of Foreign Languages’ Students And News Consumption 9

LIMITATION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE STUDY

All data was collected through the self inventory method. The validity of the results of such
studies is always questionable. Throughout this research process, two main limitations have
emerged.
First of all, it was the problem occurred during the process of collecting data. In fact, when
the researchers asked the respondents to complete the research questionnaires, several of them,
specifically the juniors, refused to help since they were very busy with their homework,
assignments, and mid-term exams. Thus, for those who want to conduct a future research project at
this institution should be aware that the most hectic period at Institute of Foreign Languages is
actually between December and January for semester one, and between March and June for
semester two. The most suitable time for conducting research should be at the early stage of the
semester, which is generally October for semester one and February for semester two.
The second problem we have encountered concerned the point of making generalization. We
failed to involve respondents from morning and evening shifts because of the unavailability of time.
This failure may consequently question how we generalize the data. Therefore, the better and safer
way should be the struggle from wider and more diverse sample, meaning that data must relatively
be given by students from all shifts.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this study has produced such an exciting result that 88% of IFL students
consume news, although they are not fully seen to be intensive consumers when their news themes
fall mainly into entertainment-related contents. In this sense, IFL students should change their habit
to consume more professional news themes such as politics, economics, business, security,
environment and so on. Most necessarily, students from International Studies Department, who
have been shown in hypothesis 2 to have higher attention on news consumption, need to be aware
that these professional themes are very much related to their field of study.

Research paper summited in partial fulfillment of the Introduction to Research