Online News in India: Appraising the Digital News Consumption Landscape in theWorld’s Largest Democracy (2014-2018)
How do people in the world's largest democracy consume online news? This article reports findings from the analysis of a novel empirical dataset tracking the web-browsing behavior of more than 50,000 Indian internet users over 45 months. In doing so, it seeks to understand the digital news consumption landscape of a crucial, but understudied context and appraise the prominence and longitudinal trends of the audience share of different types of news sources in the online Indian space. It finds that while digital-born media have not contested the hegemony of legacy media, regional vernacular media have suffered significant declines in their audience shares. The article proposes the concept of audience mobility, using it to identify qualitatively distinct dynamics in how vernacular audiences in India have migrated to national vis-à-vis international outlets. The findings are discussed in light of contemporary changes in Indian society that is characterized by increasing digitization and literacy.