INFORMATION USERS: an applied study to journalists

Abstract

This is a users study carried out with twenty newspaper journalists, who had never been studied yet in Brazil. The purpose of this study is to identify how, depending on their informational needs, these journalists use the new technology searching tools and how often. Some variables such as the journalists´ difficulties for getting information in a short period of time, available resources, the changing of a scientific language into a journalistic one the great amount of, information and the Internet impact were taken into account. The results pointed out to a wide diversity of opinions, sometimes contradictory, however, there is a consensus thought among the journalists, which was related to the difficulty of understanding the scientific language and subsequently translate to an attractive subject to almost illiterate newspaper readers. The study also revealed that the impact of the new technologies is changing the journalists´ way of seeking information.