Digging a little deeper into Pew's TikTok poll

This week, I’m smooshing together a deeper dive into a study with a links post. Read all of the deets on Pew’s latest study and what to expect from them next, then scroll down for more news from around the independent journalism creator ecosystem. And next week stay tuned for the long-awaited results of the Trusting News-Project C journalism standards survey.

I read the study (and talked to a data scientist) so you don’t have to

Last week, Pew dropped a new peek into how we spend our time online. Researchers, not surprisingly, found that “American TikTok users follow far more pop culture and entertainment accounts than news and politics ones.”

I talked to Pew’s Director of Data Labs Aaron Smith to find out more about how the study was conducted and what we should be paying attention to in the data:

On what kind of content or content producers counted as news:

Aaron Smith: “There were people who could define themselves as journalists … and conversely people who, and this was more common, talked about news, current events, political things, but didn't meet any of the characteristics of a politician, a civic actor, nonprofit organization, a journalist, that sort of stuff.”

Accounts that discuss news and politics tend to mix these topics with humor, entertainment and other ‘light’ content.

Aaron Smith: “The thing that I really found most interesting about this is the extent to which discussion of news, current events, politics, et cetera, is very frequently paired with or interspersed with funny skits, promotional content, and celebrity gossip, beauty tips.”

This data point isn’t all that surprising and bolsters the findings from the study I wrote about earlier this year re: timepass mode. I would love a study, though, that goes further to ask two more questions:

1. Are minds more likely to be open to news content when sandwiched between lighter fare and humor? I mean, this is basically the strategy behind everything from The Daily Show to MTV News (at least back in the day) to the Onion.

2. How different is this consumption from, say, how audiences were exposed to news when the medium of choice was cable TV? I suspect it’s more similar than we realize. We did a lot of channel flipping in the 90s and would only pause on CNN when there was something that grabbed our attention.

Don’t make the assumption that Americans, especially younger Americans, don’t value news or learning or their world because it’s just really hard to unpack this data.

Aaron Smith: “We've tried doing some studies where we basically tracked everything people do on their devices and even that … is pretty clunky because not everybody gives you access to their phone and sometimes they turn the thing off and even when they have it on you can't actually see what within TikTok or Instagram or Facebook they're actually seeing … It's designed to be very, you know, almost opaque by design, and so just unpacking all these things is really tough.”

What’s next?

Aaron Smith: “The next study is on what we call “news influencers,” so this is almost the flip side of what we did in this study. In this study, we looked at one platform and we wanted to get a really broad demand-side bottom-up look at all the things that people are following on TikTok, what in very broad strokes is that stuff?

“What [this new study is] doing is a more kind of top-down producer-driven look at the way they defined it. These are people who regularly post about news have at least 100,000 followers and are individuals rather than affiliated with an institution. And looking at across several different platforms: TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. [We’re doing] a cross-platform look at basically who are those people, what sorts of things do they post about what is their political affiliation – and then pair that with some survey findings on how people engage with those types of folks in the broad context of their of their media diet.”

Link-o-Rama

• New York mag is out with a big ol’ “Power Issue” with insights from a cornucopia of influential media types weighing in on a central question: “Can the media survive?” It’s both an oral history and a bit of prognostication. Creator-model journalism is touched on at multiple points but mostly in terms of gaming out revenue potential (versus say paying close attention to shifting audience consumption). “My understanding of it is that 5 percent of the writers are making 90 percent of the money, which I don’t find surprising,” says The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles re: Substack at one point. There is also a good bit of grousing about Gen Z journalists’ career expectations which had even this Gen Xer mumbling “OK, boomer.” It’s still a fabulous and important read for anyone who cares about media, but I do worry that this esteemed group of influentials can’t comment on the bleeding edge because it just isn’t where they live.

• The Knight Center produced a new ebook of collected learnings from their work with UNESCO into what content creators and journalists – a group they’ve dubbed “newsfluencers” – can learn from each other. I’ve only skimmed, but pass the link along in good faith. I attended one of the ISOJ panel talks that led to its creation and if any of that information is captured here, it’s worth a read. Especially for news organizations trying to understand our brave new world.

• Newsletterers, take note: Lex Roman wrote a promo plan for Substackers looking to grow reader subscriptions and offers it up to us all. Thanks, Lex!

• If you’ve ever followed, or wondered about, House Inhabit, the shelter influencer turned conspiracy theorist with 1M+ Instagram followers, stop what you’re doing and read this Mother Jones profile now.

• In a profile with What’s Trending, Under the Desk News’ V. Spehar says they make more money off than on platform. “TikTok’s creator fund isn’t enough to live on,” they said. “I’ve always monetized off-platform, making money from in-person speaking engagements and consulting.”

• Love a conference? You’ll want to pore over Lia Haberman’s curation of 2024 social and influencer marketing conferences, events and online opportunities. Sure, the year’s almost over, but most of these are annual or recurring in some way.