In addition to many things that have changed, news channels, consumption and the way people reach news have also changed in today’s world. Of course, it cannot be said that the traditional press and journalism is over, but it can be observed that it has turned to the internet and social media channels to a great extent. Especially with the development of social media, people prefer to get news from the more practical and fast internet and social media environment instead of getting their news from printed publications. The report published by Pew Research also reveals this situation.
The last of the regularly published ‘News Consumption in Social Media’ reports was published recently. Identifying how United States (US) citizens access news and the role played by social media platforms, the data in the report comes from a survey of 11,178 people across the US, providing a variety of indicative metrics about trends and habits.
Confidence in social media platforms for news has decreased:
According to Pew’s report, there is a decrease in the number of people who receive news from social media compared to 2020. While 48 percent of the respondents stated that they often or sometimes receive news from social media, this rate was up to 53 percent in the past years. Of course, this does not show that social media is no longer an unimportant place for news, but it indicates that people are more skeptical and look for alternatives to get news. This situation becomes more understandable when it is observed that fake news has increased considerably with the increase in journalism in social media.
Facebook and YouTube take the lead:
In the report, according to the results of the news consumption research on platforms, Facebook and YouTube still lead the way, although there is a decrease compared to last year. While 31% of survey respondents’ Facebook users stated that they regularly get news from Facebook, this rate was 22% among YouTube users. The Pew report also notes that Twitter is particularly influential as a news source among those who use it.