This study examined audiovisual media consumption among high school students in Ecuador. A survey of over 7,500 students and interviews with experts and focus groups with students were conducted. The results showed that mobile phones are the most attention-grabbing screens for teenagers as they integrate multiple services. Teenagers consume both open and paid television primarily for entertainment, and consume radio and internet as well. Social media is popular for interacting with others. While individual media consumption is common, television is still watched together with families. Overall, technology use has become integral to education for researching and communicating, but local content remains important to teenagers.

1. Consumption of audiovisual media
among high school students of
Ecuador
Abel Suing, Carlos Ortiz, Geovanna Salazar and Silvia Vásquez
Grupo ECU-Digital, Departamento de Ciencias de la Comunicación, Universidad
Técnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano alto, Calle Marcelino Champagnat, casilla 11-
01-608, Loja, Ecuador
{warysa, gesalazar2, ccortiz, arsuing} @utpl.edu.ec
Workshop: MAMM&MJ - Managing Audiovisual Mass Media
(governance, funding and innovation) and Mobile
Journalism

2. Introduction
• Since the beginning, the researches in the field
of communication focused on the critical
analysis of the media but reduced importance
to the audiences.
• At the end of 1980 researches about media
reception with emphasis on the relationship
between television, communication and
audience proliferate, these studies are based
on the premise that viewers are active subjects
in the communicative process.
• In those years there highlight the works of
Jesús Martín-Barbero, Guillermo Orozco and
Néstor García-Canclini, which are articulated
with cultural and qualitative studies of
audiences and are the premise for the
conceptualization of the active reception from
a Latin American perspective.

3. Introduction
• In Argentina Florence Saintout and
Natalia Ferrante talk about the new
trends in the study of the reception.
• On his side, Valerio Fuenzalida
analyzed the influence that the
television has on children.
• Moving from the study of children to
teenagers is a challenge that
deserves to be assumed to reveal
elements that prepare the media to
new forms of consumption in
environments of digital convergence.

4. Introduction
• Watching television, cinema, Internet and listening
to music, among other activities, are the preferred
by young people, however the ones that
concentrate most of the time are the use of
mobile phones, television and the Internet.
• Young people are easily seduced by attractive
messages and contents that are found on the
Internet and then in the media especially on
television.
• Long time ago it was common to see teenagers
watching television, but today the landscape has
changed, attracted by the screen of the mobile
phones or computers the teenagers "surf" through
cyberspace.
• Why do social networks attract teenagers? It
seems that the answer is in the need to interact
with others; in the social network a group of
people appoints members forming a great
systemic family.

5. Objective and hypothesis
• Determine the preferences of consumption of
audiovisual media and trends of use of social
media by teenagers, who are high school
students of Ecuador in 2015.
• The hypothesis are:
– 1) young people consume television in open
signal and paid television primarily to entertain.
The consumptions of information, sports and
educational programs are minimal.
– (2) The young students of high schools in
Ecuador consume radio minimally and when
they do it is through Internet.
– (3) Young people consume in a simultaneous
way television in open and paid signal and
Internet; and,
– 4) Young people tend to consume the media
individually

6. Methodology
• Is qualitative and quantitative.
– On the quantitative side, a survey was conducted
to students from the public and private schools
from Ecuador of the following cities: Quito,
Guayaquil, Cuenca, Alausí, Santo Domingo,
Azogues, Puyo, Cariamanga, Tena, Chunchi, San
Cristóbal, Loja and Zamora.
• A questionnaire was applied through the platform
Survey Monkey.
– 7,542 surveys were conducted in 30 schools in the
period September-November of 2015.
• Qualitative instruments correspond to
– An interview to three experts in producing content
for digital media, three teachers from high schools
and three parents, in addition two focus groups
each composed with eight students aged 14 to 18
years of old of schools from Quito in Ecuador.

7. Results
• In the interviews, parents point out that Internet
and social media are information and
entertainment alternatives, in their opinion the
network is used with the schoolwork of their
children, they know that they do searches on
Google.
• Todays’ young people is informed by the capsules
that media emit by the networks, they do not
expect long news, they want concrete data.
• In what refers to music, young people download
songs according to their likes and in this way have
more diversity that in the open signal radios.
• Another element through which parents define
the profile of their children is the frequent use of
computers and mobile phones in homes and
Internet cafes.
Tenth of
basic
16%
First of
baccalau
reate
First of
baccalau
reate
36%
Second
of
baccalau
reate
26%
Third of
baccalau
reate
22%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Living room Bedrooms Parent Rooms Kitchen
Fig. 1 Origin per academic year
Fig. 2 Location of TVs at home

8. Results
• In the opinion of experts the social networks
are not only for young people but for all
people who want to interact with technology,
for example in Facebook there are people of
all ages, although the majority are between
18 and 35 years
• Experts also remind that television was
created to inform and entertain, however it
has been achieved to transmit a series of
negative values that now seems to be
reinforcing with social networks when people
only see headlines and give likes or conveys
an emotion only reading the headline but
does not enter to the information, in the case
of young people they are the ones who
decide what they want to see.
Daily
39%
Some
times per
week
26%
Rarely
29%
Never
6%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Fig. 3 When watch open signal TV
Fig. 4 Preferred programming on TV

9. Results
Finally, the focal groups allow to know that the
teenagers and young people from high schools from
Ecuador:
– Consume open signal TV, primarily local channels,
but also access to paid TV channels for the varied
offer of content.
– The kinds of entertainment consumption are
musical videos, horror movies, Internet series and
videos on social networks.
– Some young people point out that social networks
are very useful due to through them they
communicate with family members who are
outside of the country, moreover, the cost is low
and communications are really good.
– The young people who do not have paid television
replace those programs that they not can see by
Internet.
Daily
28%
Some times
per week
19%Rarely
21%
Never
9%
Does not
have
23%
Daily
23%
Two to
three times
a week
12%
Once a
week
6%
Weekend
11%
Rarely
34%
Do not
listen to
radio
14%
Fig. 5 When watch paid TV
Fig. 6 Listen to the radio

10. Results
– The majority of young people do not
consume radio because they have their
own music and when they want to
listen to it. Moreover, some young
people listen to the radio via Internet
for comfort.
– Young people express that they like to
use the computer while watching TV,
but mostly they use the phone,
– Both parents and young people have
their favorite shows for that reason
each one sees what they like on
separate TVs.
– The young people watch movies
through Internet or D.V.D.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
TV
Radio
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Listen to music (other media)
Access the Internet
Read and study
Talk on the phone
Do not do another activity
Fig. 7 Where does he/she listen
to the radio
Fig. 8 Simultaneous consumption

11. Conclusions
• The mobile phone is the screen that
is capturing more the attention of
young and Ecuadorian teenagers
because it integrates services that
other screens offer: Internet, video
games and television.
• The use of the technology has
become an educational need, since
young students from high school
need the technological media to
make research, projects, school tasks
and communicate with their
educational and social environment.

12. Conclusions
• The first hypothesis is verified, young
people consume open signal and paid TV
mainly for entertainment.
• The consumption of information, sport
and educational programs are minimal, it
gets the attention the preference of
consumption of open signal television.
• The second hypothesis is not accepted,
the teenagers and young people from
Ecuador consume open signal radio and
Internet, consumption is daily and in
households even though there are
significant trends to consumption in
movement both in smart phones and
vehicles.

13. Conclusions
• The third hypothesis is accepted,
while young people watch TV and
listen to radio, they access to
Internet and to related options as e-
mail, it is configured a stage ready to
a virtual world.
• The fourth and last hypothesis is
accepted, the young people
consume individually the content of
the media of communication,
Internet has changed the custom of
watching television in family.

14. Conclusions
• The value of local communication and
point out that they use open signal and
radio television to reach to what is near
them and to what is different from
what is on the Internet.
• The consumption of media of
communication from high school
students from Ecuador is in relationship
to the digital possibilities resulting from
Internet and are causing changes in
households, but they can't stop
recognizing and demanding local
content according to their needs.

15. References
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http://www.publicaciones.cucsh.udg.mx/pperiod/comsoc/pdf/10-11_1991/85- 106.pdf
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http://www.razonypalabra.org.mx/N/N82/V82/13_Alcocer_V82.pdf
• Martín-Barbero, J. De los medios a las mediaciones. (1987). Retrieved from
http://perio.unlp.edu.ar/catedras/system/files/de_los_medios_a_las_mediaciones.pdf
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http://www.publicaciones.cucsh.udg.mx/pperiod/comsoc/pdf/10-11_1991/107- 128.pdf
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estudios-de- recepcion-en- argentina.pdf
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equipos tecnologicos. (2013).
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• Cordicom. Consejo de Regulacion y Desarrollo de la Informacion y la Comunicacion. (2015). Retrieved from
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• Fundamedios “Después de la TV, los ecuatorianos prefieren informarse por internet” (2013). Retrieved from
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16. Thanks to everyone…
Greetings from Ecuador.