What do you enjoy most about life in your community? What concerns you most about where you live?
Do you feel connected to what's going in your community? How do you prefer to stay informed?
These are some of the questions we're asking Australians in our third annual Heartbeat of Australia survey, a special collaboration between Australia's largest independent media company ACM - the publisher of this masthead - and the University of Canberra's News and Media Research Centre.
The online survey takes 15 minutes to complete. It is confidential and individual responses will not be identifiable.
Participants go into a draw to win one of five $500 Eftpos cards.
ACM research director Alex Mihalovich said the survey aims to capture how Australians, especially those living in regional towns and rural communities, are feeling in 2024.
"Each year through our Heartbeat of Australia research we seek to understand consumer sentiment, including how people are feeling, their aspirations, their concerns and how they stay informed and connected," Mr Mihalovich said.
"This year we're particularly interested in young people in the regions and exploring their habits, including how they stay informed, their thoughts on brands and how they access news."
Professor Sora Park, of the News and Media Research Centre, said the Heartbeat survey aimed to "deepen our understanding of how regional Australians prefer to stay connected ... and how news affects their sense of belonging and the wellbeing of their community".
Professor Park leads the study with University of Canberra colleagues Dr Jee Young Lee, Professor Kerry McCallum, Dr Janet Fulton, Sonia Curll and Jing Su.
The research, Heartbeat of Australia: Tracking, Understanding and Engaging News Audiences, is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council's Linkage Project funding scheme.
The News & Media Research Centre is Australia's only research centre specialising in news consumption, social and digital media networks, and the legal, ethical and social impact of communication technologies,
The centre produces the annual national Digital News Report: Australia, which monitors news consumption as part of a global study of more than 40 countries.
The Heartbeat survey findings will further expand the centre's ongoing research into how and why Australians access news.
The previous Heartbeat surveys in 2022 and 2023 had shown that "local news is essential to our connection to the community".
"Through news, people know what is going on in their community which drives community connection," Professor Park said.
