Social media has overtaken TV and websites/apps as a primary news source for the first time, according to a new poll from Reuters and the University of Oxford.
Per its findings, 54% of respondents surveyed reported accessing news via social media and video networks in the U.S. in the last week, compared to 50% who accessed TV news and 48% who accessed websites/apps in the same period.
The shift is being driven in large part by younger groups, with 54% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 and 50% between 25 and 34 saying social media/video networks are their main news source – increases of 13 and 6 points respectively compared to last year.
When it comes to specific platforms being used as news sources, Facebook reached 26% of respondents in the last week, followed by YouTube with 21%, Instagram with 16%, WhatsApp with 15%, X with 11%, TikTok with 10%.
Other notable sources included Facebook Messenger with 5%, LinkedIn and Telegram with 4% each, Snapchat and Reddit with 3% each, and Threads and Bluesky with 1% each.
Despite the shift, a notable finding from the poll is that 38% of respondents said they would look to news outlets that they trust, 35% would look to official sources and 25% would look to fact-checkers before social media (14%) to verify whether something is false, misleading or fake.
More than half of respondents worldwide (58%) agreed that they were worried about what is real and fake online when it comes to news, a 4 point increase from 2022, with 73% of U.S. respondents concerned.
In addition to social media, the proportion of Americans consuming news video weekly has grown from just over half (55%) in 2021 to around three-quarters (72%) today. The majority of this consumption is accessed via third-party platforms (61%) such as Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok rather than via news websites or apps (29%), adding further evidence to the narrative about the diminishing influence of legacy media.
The United States has among the highest proportion (15%) accessing one or more podcasts in the last week, with many of these now filmed and distributed via video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.
More to come…
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