Degree Name
Master of Science
Department or Program
Mass Communication and Media Arts
Advisor
Iyer, Narayanan
Abstract
This research report examines the readership habits and buying patterns of the students, faculty and staff of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale with a focus on the Daily Egyptian, the student-run newspaper. Newspapers require an understanding of who is reading their publication to address content and advertising needs. This is important to ensure that the newspaper features relevant content for its target audience and enables the publication to be attractive to its advertisers. The goals of the study are to gain factual information dealing with readership and buying patterns regarding the Daily Egyptian through analysis of online and offline surveys distributed using convenience sampling. Findings indicate that 68 percent of the university population read the Daily Egyptian daily, and 80 percent read it for local news content. This illustrates how strong the Daily Egyptian is at reaching the university population and also remains the predominant reason why the university’s population reads this newspaper. The goal of the study is to provide the Daily Egyptian with ample data about its reader base with an eye on understanding who is reading, how often they are reading and why people are reading.