Diagnostic study of the media diet of Peruvian men and women in a post-pandemic context

This project seeks to understand and analyze the media diet of Peruvians in a post-pandemic context. Specifically, we are interested in knowing how Peruvians define and use the media to generate information, learning and entertainment environments. Since the pandemic, the relationship that users develop with the media has intensified and changed, fostering new uses and interactions. However, the evidence shows that the Peruvian public maintains a critical role towards the mass media (broadcasting model) (IEP, 2021), which motivates them to seek media and platforms that respond to their interests and expectations. In this sense, we want to compare three axes of analysis (information, education and entertainment), taking into account sociodemographic variables, in order to produce a baseline that is useful for specific research projects.

Media studies in Peru are usually designed from the perspective of the medium itself (either based on commissions from companies to measure ratings or audiences or from the theoretical prescription of what should be) or from the existing offer (focused on the analysis and content assessment). Our proposal appeals to change the perspective of analysis taking users as the axis, in order to recognize their new forms of use, conceptualizations, expectations, claims and demands towards the media, especially as a result of the pandemic context that has generated transformations that they deserve to be studied (Casero-Ripollés, 2020).

From this approach, we propose to produce a study that serves as a baseline in three interrelated thematic axes:
- Informational: how we relate to news based on our interests, how we search for it, how we assess our trust in sources, what we do with it;
- Educational: how we use the media to learn, what we are interested in learning, how we manage and evaluate that learning;
- Leisure/entertainment: what media serve us best for this purpose, how we select content and where we look for it, how we consume it and what practices and commitments they encourage in the public.

Starting from an online panel study, deepened with qualitative techniques, the sociodemographic segments that we will include in this study are:
- Teenagers from 11 to 17 years old
- Young people from 18 to 25 years old
- Millennial adults ages 35-45
- Seniors 65 years and older

The foregoing leads us to the hypothesis that, in the context derived from the pandemic, users build new relationships and specific training demands (labor or cultural), information and entertainment, the understanding of which can generate a useful baseline for the development of new formats and content from the media industry, as well as to detect trends that require more specific studies.