Studies, studies, studies

New news consumption deets from Reuters and the Pew-Knight Initiative

Author

Liz Kelly Nelson
June 17, 2024

grayscale photo of man writing on paper

Two new studies are out this week with lots of interesting consumption data. Today, we’ll look at them from the creator journalism perspective. Which means we pick out things that traditional news orgs might bypass and pepper in some suggestions for the studies’ framers re: how to make these even more relevant in the future.

Zooming in

First up, the Pew-Knight Initiative is out with a new study on how Americans get news from social media platforms. They surveyed respondents re: their habits across four platforms: TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram.

Pew/Knight’s study is an important measuring stick, for sure, though not necessarily anything revelatory. The findings confirm what we already knew – more people follow influencers for news on TikTok while Democrats distrust what they read on X more than conservatives. If anything, I was surprised that X, which has witnessed a mass user exodus since ownership changed hands, was included while YouTube – a hugely powerful source of news consumption for younger gens and driven by social-style algorithms – was left out. Feels like an oversight.

An obvious, but maybe not often enough noted (so we’ll note it here!), finding from Pew/Knight’s study is that most people who say they get their news from TikTok and other social platforms aren’t going to those platforms specifically for news – it’s just seeping into their feeds while they click through Bum Bum Cream vids. Though that seepage is important and leads to serendipitous discovery which leads to affinity which leads to parasocial relationship which leads to loyalty.

Also noted from the study:

  • TikTok news consumers are equally likely to get news from influencers or celebrities as they are from news outlets or journalists.

  • TikTok news consumers are less likely to say they feel worn out by the news they see there compared with news consumers on the other sites studied.

  • On Instagram, most users reporting getting news-related content via posts from friends, family and acquaintances – so a little less serendipitous than TikTok.

Zooming out

Also out today, the Reuters Institute’s annual report on digital news consumption. By way of background, the report is based on an online survey of 95,000 people in 47 markets and is the most comprehensive study of news consumption worldwide – so a bit of a wider lens than the Pew/Knight study in geography and platforms (including YouTube, dammit!).

Key findings from the report can be found here and I’ll likely be reading for days, but I want to zoom in on their findings about alternative voices and news influencers in social and video networks.

Below, a screengrab from a much bigger graphic detailing the biggest sources of news for surveyed users across a range of platforms:

The report also qualifies the next gen audience’s definition of “news” used here in a paragraph that could be viewed as dismissing that very definition. But I’m excerpting here because it is exactly the way Gen Z and Alpha are defining news now and will into adulthood, so worth it for us all to understand and adapt:

It is important to note that this methodology draws on audience perceptions of what is meant by news, and this definitional issue is most relevant when discussing the online influencers and personalities category. As well as news creators and commentators, we find it also includes celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Lionel Messi who rarely talk about topics like politics directly. Their inclusion, however, shows that many younger users, in particular, take a wide view of news, including updates on music, sport, food, fitness, fashion, and travel.

Still, some good data points to note here:

  • The United States has a much higher use of YouTube for news compared with many other countries, with a high proportion of those users who say they are paying attention to alternative news sources.

  • The study notes the popularity of news creators and influencers that speak to younger audiences, mostly using video formats and cites creators and nascent brands like Hugo Décrypte, V Spehar, Dylan Page, Brut, Politics Joe, and TLDR News.

Link-o-rama

Reply

or to participate.