Nearly half of the Kiwis surveyed about the proposed merger between NZME and Fairfax do not want it to go ahead.
The two media companies want to join forces and are awaiting a Commerce Commission ruling on the merger.
The Commerce Commission proposed to decline the merger in November and is due to announce its final decision in March.
Research, self-commissioned by Horizon, asked 1000 people for their thoughts on the merger.
They found 44% of adults opposed the merger, while 15% supported it. Forty-one percent were either indifferent or were not sure.
Of people who purchased newspapers, the opposition rose to 56.7%.
NZME, which publishes the NZ Herald, and Fairfax want to merge in order to better compete with giants Facebook and Google, who take the lion's share of online advertising revenue.
After the Commerce Commission proposed to decline the merger, 30 editors wrote an open letter to the competition body arguing they had got it wrong.
``We decided to write because in its draft decision the commission didn't stick to the economic analysis but strayed into intangibles such as the quality of journalism and unquantified risks to editorial independence, and that is territory where we live and work every day,'' the letter stated.
Otago Daily Times publisher Allied Press has opposed the merger along with publisher Horton Media.
