CONTENT CONSUMPTION ON THE INTERNET AMONG HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS - PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF A PROJECT AT A HIGHER EDUCATION SCHOOL IN PORTUGAL

The global increasing importance of the Internet in the various segments of society is explicit, and its rapid control by younger users particularly seems irrefutable. In fact, data presented by the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) confirms that many Portuguese students aged 13-18 are online daily (ESPAD, 2016). But what do they consume? This paper presents the partial and preliminary results of 0014CI&DETS Project - The consumption and sharing contents of Internet by students of higher education: the case of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, specifically related to the consumption practices of Internet content by students of the School of Education, one of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu Schools. The principal objective of the Project is to understand the use that higher education students do of the contents available on the Internet. The methodological approach includes the application of an online questionnaire survey, with questions related to: i) the socio-demographic and institutional data of the participants; ii) access to and use of the Internet; iii) competences for its use; iv) consumption and sharing content; v) and attitudes and preferences regarding consumption and sharing. The sample includes 120 students, with participation of students attending the courses of Social Communication (N=79) and Multimedia and Plastics Arts (N=32). Most of the participants are female (N=88), attend the 1st year of the course (N=88) and the average age is 19.36 years (SD=2.56). Asked about how often they access the Internet, 95.8% of the students said they use it every day. Preliminary results from the quantitative analysis suggest that the most popular activities are: listen to music, see photos and read text posts on social networks daily. The analysis presented in this article refers only to data obtained between June and September 2017 and was performed using the SPSS - Statistical Package for Social Sciences.