Just over a fifth of US adults now regularly get news from influencers on social media, a new Pew-Knight Initiative survey has found.

An analysis of who those influencers are indicated few of the most popular accounts for news online have ever formally worked in journalism and that they are more likely to lean right than left.

The findings come as the US media grapples with the result of the the 2024 presidential election and what it means for the reach and influence of professional journalism.

The survey, published on Monday, canvassed 10,658 US adults this summer and was weighted to be demographically representative of the US population.

Of those surveyed, 21% said they “regularly” get news from influencers. That figure rose to 37% among US adults aged 29 and below and 26% among those between 30 and 49.

Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans were more likely than the average US adult to regularly get news from influencers, at 27%, 30% and 29% respectively. Lower income Americans (26%) were the most likely socioeconomic bracket to get news this way and women (23%) were more likely to do so than men (19%).

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans who said they got news from news influencers rated the content positively, saying it “helped them better understand current events and civic issues”.

About a quarter said it made little difference to their understanding of the world while 9% said it made them “more confused”. About six in ten (58%) said they follow or subscribe to at least one news influencer.

There was little difference between right-leaning (21%) and left-leaning (22%) people in how likely they were to get news from social media influencers – even though the influencers themselves were more likely to create right-leaning content.

[Read more: From James O’Brien to Joe Rogan — Rise of news influencers and alternative voices]

Top US news influencers are mostly male and lean right

As well as the survey, the Pew researchers looked at a sample of 500 “news influencers”, defined as individuals who had used news-related keywords in early 2024 who had a minimum of 100,000 followers. across X (formerly Twitter), Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok or Facebook.

Figures captured within the research included the likes of podcasters Joe Rogan and Felix Biederman, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, psychologist and Trump family member Mary L Trump, Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, journalists Piers Morgan, Megyn Kelly and Katie Couric, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and actress Alyssa Milano.

Less than a quarter (23%) of the news influencers sampled had ever worked for a news organisation. On X (formerly Twitter) the proportion of news influencers with ties to a news organisation rose to 26%, whereas on Youtube it fell to 12%.

Most of the 500 news influencers did not self-identify as right or left. Of those that did, 27% explicitly identified as Republican, conservative or supportive of Donald Trump and 21% as Democrats, liberal or Kamala Harris supporters.

The influencers who had worked in news were less likely to explicitly disclose a political orientation (with 64% staying unaligned, versus 44% of those without a traditional news affiliation), but those who did articulate a position were more likely to be right-leaning (25%) than left (9%).

Instagram was the most explicitly political platform for news influencers, with 55% of the creators there disclosing an orientation (30% right, 25% left). Although Facebook had a higher proportion of ostensibly unaligned news influencers, it also had the biggest proportion of right-leaning news influencers (39%, compared with 13% who were left-leaning).

Tiktok was the most left-leaning platform, with 28% of news influencers explicitly identifying themselves as left-leaning compared with 25% right-leaning.

Most (63%) of the news influencers assessed were men. Tiktok was the most gender-balanced platform, with 50% of the news influencers there men and 45% women. Youtube was the least balanced: 68% of the news influencers on the video platform were men versus 28% women.

X was the most used platform among news influencers, with 85% of the 500 assessed present there. Half had an Instagram account, 44% posted to Youtube, 32% to Facebook, 30% to Threads, 27% to Tiktok and 12% to Linkedin.

Of the 500 news influencers, 59% were monetising their presence. The most common way of doing this was through subscriptions (49%), with 29% accepting donations and 21% selling merchandise. The proportion monetising their accounts rose to 74% on Tiktok, 77% on Facebook and 80% on Youtube.

A third (34%) of the influencers also host a podcast and 22% have a newsletter.

The Pew research incorporated ChatGPT into its methodology. The chatbot was handed text and transcribed audio from the influencer accounts and asked to analyse the content to determine whether the influencers identified themselves, for example, as left or right. A human researcher then spot-checked 1% of the results to check they were accurate, and the error rate was included in the research.

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The editor of Press Gazette’s local news website of the year, The BV magazine, says other publishers may not like hearing what’s powered the title’s success.

The digital-only, free monthly magazine for inland Dorset was founded by husband and wife duo Laura and Courtenay Hitchcock in 2020 and today boasts a loyal audience and a brisk trade in advertising.

Speaking to Press Gazette last week following The BV’s Press Gazette Future of Media Awards win in September, Laura Hitchcock said: “My whole ethos, from start to finish, is “I’m my target audience. What do I want? What do I want to read? How do I want to read it? How would I like it to look?…

“And if I’m on Facebook, browsing Facebook, I don’t want to have to go somewhere else… to read that content. I want to read it here.”

Most publishers are moving away from Facebook, burned by years of abrupt algorithm changes and, more recently, a wholesale rejection of the news industry by parent company Meta.

But The BV — short for Blackmore Vale, an area north of the Dorset Downs — has bet on a strategy that sees it upload its content directly to its Facebook page without linking back to its own website at all.

Hitchcock said it means the brand has foregone plenty of immediate revenue, “but our principle is that if the readers are there, the advertisers will follow”.

What is The BV magazine?

The BV launched in August 2020 to fill a gap left by the Reach-owned Blackmore Vale Magazine, which suspended publication following the outbreak of the pandemic in April 2020 before shuttering altogether in the summer. (It is not the only publication to position itself as the original magazine’s successor: a newspaper named The New Blackmore Vale, set up by local removals and self-storage businessman Lloyd Armishaw, launched shortly afterward.)

Courtenay Hitchcock was a photographer and had previously worked in sales, while Laura was a writer with an IT background who had run a parenting website and commercial relationships for a network of bloggers and Instagrammers. The skills they had, she said, led Courtenay to suggest “this stupid idea that we could do a local digital magazine”.

The magazine is uploaded each month to the publication’s website, theblackmorevale.co.uk, where it is immediately available to read in full for free. It is also distributed via a newsletter, and individual articles from each issue are uploaded to the website and Facebook at intervals across the month.

Foregoing print helped The BV reach more of the rural Blackmore Vale population from the start, Hitchcock said, especially because the pandemic had encouraged the region’s older residents online. As a result, she said, “it took off”.

The first fifth or so of each issue of The BV comprises newsier, more long-form journalism focused on local issues. A typical story might look at the benefits and trade-offs of a proposal to build new housing in a small village.

“Even if we’re looking at a negative story, we’ll try and find a slightly positive note to it,” Hitchcock said. “We’re not fluffy, but we also don’t want to be doom and gloom.”

The rest of the content, she said, is columns on “various rural issues” like farming, wildlife and equestrianism, as well as local history and “community news” promoting, for example, charity fundraisers. The Hitchcocks are the publication’s only full-time staff, but it takes contributions and pays two copy editors to proof the content.

The BV’s newsletter has 17,500 subscribers, Hitchcock said. On top of these, between around 26,000 unique readers download the digital magazine directly through the website each month and a further 20,000 readers read the content as website articles.

The BV’s largest distribution channel is its Facebook page, however, where Hitchcock says it reaches 250,000 people a month.

“The traditional thing for most media organisations is to drop a link on social media to get people to come to your website so you can earn on them with the ad revenue,” she said. “But of course, there’s a massive drop off [between who sees the link and who clicks through], because people don’t like coming away from Facebook.

“So we took the decision a couple of years ago that we’ll build the community and our name and our reputation and have the community on Facebook.

“Yes, we’ll lose some ad revenue by working that way, but our principle is that if the readers are there, the advertisers will follow, and they will come and work with us the other way around.

“It’s a slower model, but it works better for us in terms of maintaining our readership and engagement.”

The BV says it’s ultimately making money from its link-free Facebook distribution model

It’s also a model that has worked for The BV commercially, Hitchcock said.

“Being a rural area, community matters, and people feel like they know us and they trust us…

“When we go and talk to people, talk to brands and potential partners and sponsors, then they know who we are, they know what we’re doing, and they’re already keen to work with us because of what they’ve seen us do.”

The BV’s advertisers are mostly local, often higher-end businesses such as law firms and private schools, but she said they have picked up “a couple of national brands” including equestrian equipment vendor Ariat, reflecting the popularity of horse riding in the county.

“People often just want to be on our social media, particularly [advertisers] like events — they see the engagement that we get on our social media and they just want to be there. They’re not even worried about the magazine, sometimes.”

The publisher’s posts regularly receive hundreds of likes and dozens of shares from Facebook users which include The BV’s 10,000 followers.

As well as advertising, The BV has “fallen sideways into event magazines” as a revenue stream, which see The BV put together annual literature for several agricultural shows around the South West.

Hitchcock said the event magazines provide a sideline that is “profitable not only in terms of finances, but also in terms of getting in front of the community and brand awareness”.

Asked what challenges the business faces, Hitchcock said: “Life’s just one long challenge in every direction at the moment, isn’t it?

“It is tricky because we are ridiculously busy, but turnover doesn’t quite [allow] us to employ a third person, which we definitely need. We’re at the point where we have the work, but we need a little bit more turnover before we can employ a third person.”

The stresses, Hitchcock said, were not necessarily unique to journalism: “It feels like you’re just constantly running faster just to stand still, but I think that’s every business owner everywhere… we spend hours every month talking to local business owners, and they’re all saying the same thing, whether they’re a local leather worker or a farmer.”

But, she said, “we cover our bills and have a little left over… It would be nice if there was more, but trying to operate on a tricky model, in a tricky industry, I think we’re doing okay”.

The BV’s editor on Facebook engagement: ‘I’m always aware it’s not ours, and it could be taken’

Many publishers have spent the last few years attempting to reduce their reliance on tech platforms after a decade that saw them become hooked on traffic from the likes of Google and Facebook which has since ebbed away or become more volatile. And although The BV does not rely on Facebook for traffic, the platform provides its largest audience.

Asked whether that gave her any cause for concern, Hitchcock said: “I’m always aware that I don’t own Facebook, I don’t own our community on Facebook and that can be turned off at any time.

“And not just because Facebook has turned it off — if you get scammed, or somebody gets into your page and then it gets turned off, it is gone, and it can take you two, three months to get it back, sometimes. You hear lots of horror stories, and I’m always aware of that.”

To hedge against that, Hitchcock said “we’re always building the newsletter database” as well as the SEO position of the website.

“It’s really important to have those. Whilst the Facebook community is there for the taking, I’m always aware it’s not ours, and it could be taken again.”

The post Facebook still powering commercial success for local news brand The BV magazine appeared first on Press Gazette.

Publishers have been urged to “band together” to challenge big tech’s power over news industry revenues as an executive revealed the impact of recent Google updates at Mail Online.

Speaking at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference last week, a group of industry experts warned there is a mismatch between how the news industry and tech platforms calculate value that means publishers are powerless addressing them alone.

Carly Steven, the global head of search engine optimisation (SEO) at Mail Online, said a June anti-spam update rolled out by Google had hit affiliate revenue from, for example, publisher voucher code and betting offers, which she said “effectively turned off a very significant revenue stream for a lot of publishers”.

“All of that content – that was really valuable, and we genuinely believe our readers find it very valuable too – it was just gone overnight.”

She said it spoke to a broader trend wherein publishers have less control in an increasingly unpredictable online landscape.

“We used to have a lot of control, as SEO editors or people working in this industry… We used to be able to tweak a headline, add some links and get something back. It used to be so easy… All that control is gone. I could not do that anymore.

“If an editor says to me: ‘I want this story to rank at the start of the top stories rail’ – I cannot make that happen in the way that we used to do.”

Googe deployment of AI Overviews varies wildly from week to week

Referring to AI Overviews, the artificial intelligence-generated summaries Google has begun deploying at the top of some search results, Steven said “the challenge that we’re facing… is that it does keep changing.

“We’ve taken part in studies where we’ve analysed our own keywords and seen that AI Overviews have been present for 23% of all the keywords that drive traffic to our website. And then the next week that’s 5%.

“So it’s very hard to be able to make decisions right now based on the data that we have.”

AI Overviews concern some publishers because they are displayed above links in Google’s search results, pushing publishers further down the page and potentially answering user enquiries without sharing any traffic.

But Steven said for now their impact on traffic was unclear, asking: “Do people ever click if you have a link within an AI overview? Probably not, but right now, we just don’t know…

“What’s taking up my time at the moment, in terms of trying to understand the AI landscape, is developing the tools to enable us to track it on an ongoing basis.”

SEO consultant Barry Adams said from what he’d seen AI Overviews “don’t really present a threat, yet, to publishers – at least not in the context of news, where AI Overviews are mostly absent from news topics”. He said they are presented more often for “evergreen” information.

Last month research by consultancy Authoritas that found AI Overviews were being offered for 17% of queries in the UK and US on the top keywords. Earlier, Press Gazette-commissioned research by Authoritas published in June saw AI Overviews offered for 24% of the top keywords driving publisher traffic.

Adams said overviews did not “seem to be cannibalising as much traffic as maybe some had expected – it tends to be low single-digit percentage traffic losses, which basically makes AI Overviews just another search feature like you had before… So it’ll be just another thing to optimise for. Which means more work for everybody, yay.”

Mismatch between how publishers and platforms assess value

Denis Haman, the chief executive of Glide Publishing Platform, described the relationship between publishers and platforms as “abusive” and questioned whether big tech could ever meaningfully value news.

“We’re not friends, we’re not even frenemies,” he said. “That’s the reality… it doesn’t matter whether you’re exposing corruption or whether you’re telling life stories, the media plays a role in society which has a greater value than what some random number cruncher at Meta will assign to it.”

Madhav Chinnappa, a senior executive consultant at AI data marketplace Human Native and previously the director of news ecosystem development at Google, said: “The reality is that the tech companies, from their California headquarters, look at the industries that they touch and they value them based on the revenue that they bring in.”

In the news industry’s case, he said “it’s de minimis, right?

“I actually was on a panel with an ex-Facebook person who talked about it, and he said: ‘Look, actually, the value of news to Facebook is zero if not negative, because when they took news off, their revenues went up.’

“So they’re valuing it based on dollars in. But I think the news industry and news people value the news industry on societal value…. I think that’s actually one of the fundamental factors about why this relationship has been so difficult.”

‘Green shoots’ resulted from collective industry attempts to cajole big tech

On a more optimistic note, Mail Online’s Steven said that “a really positive unintended consequence” of June’s Google spam SEO update for publishers was that “it’s forced us together a lot more”.

“While that was a terrible thing that happened… publishers all came together to put pressure on Google, to insist on having conversations with them.

“I’m not saying that we’ve got the solution that we wanted to, but it was really productive, and not just because it’s a bit of a therapy session.”

She said there had been “green shoots” from those discussions.

“I feel like, personally, our relationship with Google – while it can be frustrating because we don’t get answers – I feel like there’s been some small victories. 

“And maybe I need to be more ambitious with my targets, but on the back of some of the things that we collectively as publishers have raised, Google… clarified things, they tweak the rules.”

Steven said Google is “not really interested in you individually as a publisher”.

“But when you have a whole industry coming together and being able to provide evidence and proof that ‘you made this change, and something collectively happened to all of us, and the consequences of that are really bad for your users who are searching for this information on Google’ – then they pay a little bit more attention.”

SEO expert Adams said: “You need to hold them accountable, because if you just let them get away with it, they aren’t just going to care about us.”

He added: “It is not true that all of Google search results are purely algorithmic. There are some specific aspects, like for example, around Covid information, where Google will manually whitelist websites…

“We need to lift that veil off of it and understand these are just human-coded algorithms – coded by people who make editorial decisions on what works and what doesn’t work, and it is okay to hold them to account.”

Chinnappa agreed that publishers needed to work together to influence big tech, saying tech companies are “culturally different” from the news industry and that the way to sway them was “at scale, with data”.

‘Don’t get split up by bits of money here and there’

On the question of whether publishers should licence their content to artificial intelligence companies, Chinnappa noted that away from giants like Google and OpenAI, “there’s actually an entire AI developer ecosystem of small and not so small developers who also need access to content, and they want it for specific reasons, whether it’s niche content or it’s hard to find in a big data set, or, quite selfishly, they don’t want to get sued into oblivion…

“I think we need to be helping get that ecosystem that’s sustainable for both sides. Because I hope that data licensing becomes a sustainable revenue stream for publishers going forward, but we need to push in that direction together.”

And Haman, similarly, said “there’s an opportunity nowadays, with a new crop of big tech companies emerging, where we should come together as an industry and see whether we can influence the governments, band together, don’t get split up by bits of money here and there.

“Because it’s not just the big guys. News Corp will do a deal, Axel Springer will do a deal, of course they will – as they should, people should pay for the content.

“But what about smaller publishers? Who’s going to compensate them for the content that’s been taken from them without permission?…

“I don’t think that they’re going to have a breakthrough and all of a sudden see the value that that media industry [adds to] society, and it’s something that needs to be protected.”

The post Google killing publisher voucher codes overnight part of wider trend, says Mail exec appeared first on Press Gazette.

Many leading UK news publishers saw a bump in website traffic during the Paris Olympics, data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb shows.

US sites meanwhile saw a drop in visits compared to the previous fortnight, likely because the weeks before the event saw the Donald Trump assassination attempt and news Joe Biden was standing down as president.

But in both the US and UK the year-on-year traffic trends were strongly up and publishers reported far more interest in the Paris games than the covid-impacted 2021 Tokyo event.

Among top UK news sites, the publishers that saw the largest bump over the 18-day Olympic period this year were the BBC (visits up 5% on the 18 days immediately before), The Independent (10%) and the Birmingham Mail (12%).

Publishers say they saw as much as double their 2021 traffic for 2024 Olympics

Mail Sport said it received double the average daily page views at the 2024 Olympics versus Tokyo, which had been scheduled for summer 2020 but was postponed because of the Covid pandemic and took place without spectators.

The Sun, similarly, told Press Gazette it saw 70% higher site traffic on Olympic articles this summer, and The Guardian’s total page views were 44% higher than during the Tokyo Olympics and 52% higher than Rio de Janeiro’s. Daily page views were “up every single day except one compared to previous Games”, a spokesperson for The Guardian said.

Independent editor Geordie Greig said in a statement that site traffic was “33% higher than forecast” over the Paris Olympics and that the title’s reporting on Imane Khelif, a female boxer subjected to online backlash over her gender, “generated 20% of our overall Games traffic”.

“Gymnast Simone Biles, sprinter Noah Lyles and British tennis hero Andy Murray also captured our readers’ imagination,” he said, “with millions of people reading our industry-leading commentary from our correspondents in Paris.”

Mail Sport said it saw more than 100 million page views on Olympic-specific stories. The publisher added that it saw its third-most daily page views in the last four years on Tuesday 6 August, a day that featured the finals of the men’s 1,500 metre and the women’s 200m runs.

The Guardian said the fourth day of the games, 30 July, saw its greatest traffic, “with Simone Biles and the USA winning gold in the gymnastics team final, while other top stories included the Guardian’s medals table, the opening ceremony live blog and news stories on Imane Khelif, ‘floating surfer’ Gabriel Medina and Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification”.

A spokesperson for The New York Times Company said its sports title The Athletic saw “two of our ten biggest weeks” ever during the Paris Olympics.

The Washington Post, similarly, said the three weeks of the games “were among The Washington Post’s top five weeks of the year in terms of reach, across site, app and off-platform”.

The title’s most-read reporting included live event coverage and “pieces reporting on issues in the spotlight”, including the backlash against Khelif.

A spokesperson for the publication said an animated Instagram post about gymnastics moves originated by and named for Simone Biles “had a reach of 8.5 million and was a great example of our unique coverage that went beyond the medal counts”

Sun head of digital sport says Olympic traffic no longer driven by social media

Alex Peake, The Sun’s head of digital sport, told Press Gazette there was “much more of an even split” in where that traffic was coming this year when compared with in previous Olympics.

“Direct traffic was up, search traffic was up, and it’s just a bit more of a balanced picture as opposed to what it was three years ago when Facebook was nearly 50% of the page views we drove during Tokyo,” he said.

“The Olympics, I suppose, is different to pretty much everything else we cover. When you look at the sports we do day in, day out, like football or boxing, everything follows a pattern.

“The great thing about the Olympics, which makes it quite special to cover, is the fact that a lot of the people we’re writing about, we don’t know anything about, that we’ve probably never heard of them before.”

Press Gazette looked at daily traffic over the period for the top 20 publishers on Press Gazette’s June rankings of the most-visited news sites in the US and the UK. (Daily traffic data was not available for certain sites: in the UK, ITV, Money Saving Expert, The Times, Healthline, Global, GB News and the Daily Record, and in the US USA Today, Forbes, CNBC, Newsweek and The Guardian.)

[Read more: Advertising blocklists unfairly targeted coverage from Olympics and Euros]

In the US, meanwhile, only two top-20 sites — news.yahoo.com and people.com — saw more traffic over the Olympics than the weeks leading into the games.

However, most news sites analysed by Press Gazette did see US traffic growth when compared against the same set of dates last year. Fox News, The New York Times, CBS News, NBC News, CNN and BBC.com all saw growth of between ten and 20%, while People.com saw a 46% rise in traffic and the Associated Press 63%.

The same was true in the UK, where four sites — Sky News, The Telegraph, Metro and the Birmingham Mail — all saw average daily page view growth of at least 30%. The Birmingham Mail saw an increase of 72% on last year.

Top stories in search during the Olympics

Similarweb also carried out an analysis for Press Gazette looking at which news publishers performed well on Google searches for the words "Olympic", "Olympics" and the names of various gold medal winners.

Among the winners on search in the US were Yahoo.com (1.35 million search clicks), USA Today (1.3 million) and NBC News (1.2 million).

In the UK Mail Online secured the most Olympic search traffic, with 644,010 domain clicks. It was followed by The Guardian (462,450) and the BBC (395,110).

The data also reveal the top-ranked URL for each site in the analysis, showing which stories did best on search.

In the UK, the top article at half of the 16 domains assessed covered Imane Khelif or Lin Yu-ting, another boxer whose gender became a focus of abuse online. Other well-performing stories covered the men's tennis finals and a red card for Brazil's all-time leading women's goalscorer. In the US only four of the top stories at the the 18 domains analysed concerned Khelif or Lin: other successful coverage recapped the opening ceremony, covered gymnast Simone Biles or simply tracked the US medal count.

The post How Paris Olympics led to traffic boost for leading news publishers appeared first on Press Gazette.

Several media publishers in Australia have revealed how “potentially catastrophic” it would be for their businesses if Meta removes all news from Facebook and Instagram in the country.

Broadsheet Media, which publishes the culture and community news website Broadsheet and has 65 full-time employees, said it estimated it would lose up to 52% of its revenue if Meta no longer distributed news.

This would “make it nearly impossible for the business to survive,” it told the Australian Parliament’s Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society.

Meta has threatened to remove all news from Facebook in Australia if it is “designated” under the world-first News Media Bargaining Code, which has the power to force digital platforms to pay for the use of news on their platforms.

This year Meta said it was ending the Facebook News product in Australia as it has done elsewhere and will not renew any deals it previously made with publishers in the country. These began to expire at the end of May, with the last one running until December.

Three years ago Google and Meta agreed to pay Australian publishers around £100 million per year to avoid being forced into payments under the News Media Bargaining Code.

Parliament can choose to force Meta to pay publishers for their content through arbitration by designating it under the Code. But Meta’s decision to remove news might avoid that.

Meta already removed news from its platforms in Canada last summer over a similar bill that said tech giants should pay publishers for news content appearing on their platforms.

The Australian Parliament’s Joint Select Committee is now looking at Meta’s decision to abandon its publisher deals and the role of journalism in countering mis- and disinformation on social platforms. Publishers have been sending in their submissions for the past month.

[Read more: UK publishers should be ready for Facebook to switch off news altogether]

The Daily Aus, a digital news company with a full-time staff of 15, a focus on audiences under 35 and a particular reliance on Instagram, told the committee Facebook’s threat to remove news is already adversely affecting business.

“Already, Meta’s actions have led to lost commercial deals and hindered TDA’s expansion plans,” it said.

Although it told Parliament it is currently “financially sustainable”, it said it has “lost approximately AUS$450,000 (£234,788) worth of commercial advertising agreements in which clients have directly referenced Meta’s actions and a potential ban” since February.

As a result the publisher withdrew adverts for three editorial roles in March and has “deprioritised” plans to expand into the US ahead of the presidential election.

The Daily Aus claims to be the second-largest news page on Instagram in Australia after ABC News, reaching three million accounts in the 90 days to 23 June. But it has begun efforts to “diversity from reliance on Meta” including by expanding its daily newsletter, podcast, website, Tiktok and Youtube channels.

Of the potential aftermath of a news ban, it said: “A 50% revenue cut as a result of TDA’s removal from Meta would necessitate staff redundancies, limit our ability to provide free news, and stifle future growth and technological innovation.”

Publishers ‘already feeling the effects’ of Facebook news algorithm changes

The Digital Publishers Alliance surveyed its members in March, receiving responses from about half, and found that an average of 18% of independent publishers’ traffic came from Facebook referrals – ranging from 0% to 50%.

The DPA told the select committee that this showed “that despite Meta’s attempts to dial down its importance, referrals from Facebook still represent an important source of traffic for many digital publishers.

“This percentage has decreased in recent years as Facebook have intentionally tweaked their algorithms to direct less traffic to publishers.”

The survey also found that 80% of respondents said that a removal of news from Facebook and Instagram “would have a significant, or extremely significant, impact on their business” with the impact coming not just from advertising lost in referral traffic but in sponsored social media posts as well.

Australia’s Local and Independent News Association said local publishers are “already feeling the effects” of Meta’s algorithm changes and will be affected even more, and disproportionately, if news is banned.

The trade body, which represents 70 digital news publishers, said posts by its members are “now reaching around 15% of the audience that similar posts were reaching mere months ago” having a direct impact on advertising revenues.

The Conversation, an academic-led publication founded in Australia before its launch internationally , also revealed it has seen a “sharp reduction of its audience via Facebook of 40% since an algorithm change in May 2024”.

Although this has not had a direct financial impact on The Conversation because of its non-profit grant-led funding model, it said “it does mean less Australians are seeing evidenced based, trusted news and analysis where they are spending significant time” – a point made by most of the publishers in their submissions as well as the recurring financial concerns.

The co-founders of Australian men’s lifestyle site Man of Many said they anticipated a fall in website traffic of around 2% to 4% if Facebook drops news as well as the loss of 6,700,048 social interactions per month.

Around 20% of Man of Many’s overall revenue is driven by referrals from Facebook and Instagram, they said.

“This decline would not only impact our revenue but also hinder our ability to foster community engagement and maintain brand visibility.”

Private Media, which publishes digital media brands Crikey and Smart Company, cited a figure of AUS$600m (£313,000) for the payments that have come into the news industry from the likes of Meta and Google as a result of the Code but noted that despite this “in recent weeks we’ve seen significant redundancies across every major media company as they adapt, not to cyclical changes, but large structural changes that will see even more of their advertising businesses shift to the digital platforms”.

Redundancies have been announced at News Corp Australia, Seven West Media and Nine since the end of May.

Publishers split on whether Meta should be designated under News Media Bargaining Code

However, the publishers appeared split on whether Meta should be forced by designation under the Code to pay if this could lead to it removing news.

The Daily Aus said: “Meta’s designation will likely lead to the removal of all news pages, including TDA, from its platform. This will severely harm TDA, which did not benefit financially from NMBC deals but will face significant consequences from a news ban.

“This outcome will cause job losses for young journalists, the disappearance of vital Australian stories, and disengagement from democratic processes among TDA’s audience of over 3 million Australians, primarily aged 18-35.”

And Man of Many said: “Designation under the NMBC risks Meta withdrawing from news entirely, as seen in Canada. This would be potentially catastrophic for independent publishers in terms of audience reach, given that they have not received any NMBC funding, thereby unintentionally stifling diversity by giving an advantage to already established media players, with the financial benefits under the Code having only flown through to the large media conglomerates.”

However, The Saturday Paper publisher Schwartz Media and Free TV, an industry body representing commercial free-to-air broadcasters, said Meta should be designated.

Schwartz said: “We believe Meta needs to be designated under the code, and the full value Meta receives from news content properly represented.”

And Free TV urged the Government “to designate Meta, particularly in respect of both Facebook and Instagram, but also WhatsApp and Threads, under the News Media Bargaining Code, as there is a significant imbalance in the bargaining position in favour of Meta, without Meta making any discernible contribution to news sustainability in Australia. Government should also designate other platforms such as YouTube and TikTok to ensure that the creators of Australia’s news content are fairly remunerated.”

Several publishers backed the countering of a potential news ban by forcing Facebook and other social media platforms to carry news.

Broadsheet Media said the Code “can only be successful if it requires: 1. the digital platforms ensure news availability, with minimum prominence; 2. all eligible publishers are supported by the outcomes of the Code; 3. the Code is expanded to include Instagram, TikTok, You Tube, Threads and X; and 4. the terms of the deals completed are transparent.”

And Man of Many recommended the implementation of “policy measures to prevent digital platforms from withdrawing news content entirely, through ‘must carry’ or ‘news availability’ provisions”.

The Conversation separately suggested Meta could be forced to carry disclaimers on its content if it removes verified news providers.

“If Meta is designated and withdraws from publishing news (as it has done in Canada) to avoid triggering the NMBC, Meta could be regulated to explicitly publish disclaimers warning their audiences about the unreliable information that they disseminate much like the health warnings mandated on cigarette packaging,” it said.

Man of Many and Private Media both said a tax on digital platforms’ revenue would be more effective. Man of Many pointed to a proposed tax credit for news publishers in California that would come from taxing online advertising revenue above $2.5bn.

And Private Media said: “The sensible, sustainable approach would have been to tax the technology companies on revenues generated in Australia, and then use those funds to create incentives for public interest journalism.”

In its own submission, Meta argued that there is no evidence of an increase in misinformation in Canada since it dropped news from its platforms there and that because of changing consumption habits news referrals from Facebook have been falling anyway.

It said that since its commercial agreements with publishers and other news funding was established “there has been a change in consumer behaviour on our services. As a general rule, most people do not come to our services for news and news is highly substitutable on our services – this means that when news is not on our services, people continue to engage with other content.”

The post Australian publishers say ‘catastrophic’ if Meta follows through on news ban appeared first on Press Gazette.

A little over a year on from launch, millions of people have signed up for updates from publishers via Whatsapp Channels.

Press Gazette has found publishers account for 74 of the top 150 Whatsapp Channels by follower count, with The New York Times leading the way with more than 12 million subscribers.

But away from the most-followed newsbrands, the distribution format appears to be showing promise for publishers looking to build smaller, engaged readerships around specific subjects — especially for sport.

What are Whatsapp Channels?

Launched in June 2023, Whatsapp Channels are a one-way content distribution system built into the main Whatsapp app.

Unlike Whatsapp Communities, which can have a maximum of 2,000 members, Whatsapp Channels can be followed by an unlimited number of people. It is not possible for anyone but the Whatsapp Channel owner to post, making it effectively a broadcast-style distribution mechanism.

Significantly, Channels are simply presented as a feed showing the most recent content and allowing users to scroll up to find older posts — meaning content delivery is not mediated by an algorithm.

Channels are centrally discoverable in Whatsapp, which features a leaderboard of the most-followed Channels and allows users to search for them by topic and name. Previously only available to Meta partners, now anyone can create a Channel.

One drawback of the medium for publishers is that, unlike Communities, Whatsapp Channels do not automatically send notifications when new content is posted — users need to manually turn notifications on for each Channel to which they subscribe.

Another is a lack of direct monetisation opportunities: most publishers using the platform at present simply drive traffic to their sites or use Whatsapp to build engagement and community.

[Read more: Whatsapp for publishers – How Reach is driving millions of page views via messaging app]

Although followers of a Channel may not post into it, they can react to posts using an emoji, in the same way that is possible in chats with friends.

Users usually respond with the Whatsapp default emoji options of hearts, thumbs up or a “crying laughing” face — although since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, Palestinian and Israeli flags frequently appear underneath content of no direct relevance to Gaza.

Who are the top news publishers on Whatsapp Channels?

The Updates section of Whatsapp allows users to access a leaderboard of the top 150 channels on the app. The leaderboard appears to be global, as several of the top channels communicate in languages other than English.

The top ten channels are mostly run by football clubs, with appearances from brands or personalities like Netflix and Shakira. Further down the list, however, news publishers are common.

Despite Whatsapp's relative unpopularity in the US, as of late June the seven most-followed news publisher Whatsapp Channels were all American: The New York Times (12.2 million), CNN (9.6 million), the New York Post (9.1 million), The Wall Street Journal (5.2 million), Newsweek (4.4 million), National Geographic (4.3 million) and The Washington Post (4.3 million). The New York Times was the only news outlet to feature among the top ten channels overall.

The top non-American publisher is the Daily Mail — but, notably, not for its all-purpose Daily Mail account, which has 580,000 followers. Instead, the eighth most-followed news account on the platform is named "Daily Mail | Kardashians News", which has 2.7 million followers.

The success of the Mail's Kardashian Channel speaks to a broader trend on Whatsapp Channels that sees Channels with narrow focuses receive the most engagement.

Posts by The New York Times, for example, usually receive a few hundred reactions each, only occasionally breaking above 300. The Mail's Kardashian Channel, in contrast, often breaches 500 reactions, despite having a quarter as many subscribers.

The most popular topic focus is sport: 30 of the 74 publishers on the list above cover either sports generally or one sport, team, or sporting professional specifically. One football-specific publisher, 90min, has 11 channels in the top 150.

Other highly-engaged topics include culture (Vanity Fair and British Vogue), cooking (Tasty) and internet culture (Buzzfeed, Know Your Meme).

One of the most highly-engaged Channels Press Gazette found was The Sun's Christiano Ronaldo Channel. Posts on the Channel, which has 739,000 followers, rarely receive fewer than 2,000 reactions.

In part this is because of a different content strategy. The New York Times exclusively uses its channel to promote articles, which are typically linked to alongside a story excerpt. In contrast, posts to The Sun's Ronaldo Channel usually do not link to an article: instead, quotes, images and copy from the website are repurposed for consumption on Whatsapp directly.

Phil Harman, The Sun's head of audience, told Press Gazette: “We’ve sort of treated Whatsapp as we have with newsletters, and pushed to reach those direct audiences.”

He said the publisher had early on decided that its approach would be to go "very niche" on Channels.

"That paid off with huge followings," Harman said. "They grew very fast in the first few months, and many are still growing now, and we know readers really like them...

“We can see really high levels of engagement across those niche interest areas, and that’s really important. Traffic’s decent, but we know that it can often be quite seasonal — club accounts will fly during the transfer season and when there’s lots of live football.”

Whatsapp Channels provide 'direct relationship' in volatile sector

Harman added: "It’s so important to have that direct relationship with our readers when other referrers are so volatile."

Amid the well-documented decline in referral traffic from Whatsapp sister platform Facebook and unpredictability at search giant Google, the simplicity of Whatsapp Channels' chronologically-ordered feed appeals to some publishers.

Speaking at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Copenhagen in May, Reach plc engagement director Dan Russell said Channels had allowed the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Manchester Evening News publisher to take "control" of its distribution.

“We’re sending the content how we want to send it, how we want it to look, with what headline, with what picture. We don’t have to mess around with key words… it is entirely up to us.”

Reach has embraced both Whatsapp Channels and Communities, and told Press Gazette in October that its 100,000 subscribers across 80 Communities were delivering millions of page views per month.

Speaking in May once its Channels had had more time to bed in, Russell told the World News Media Congress that its Channels were less impactful for traffic than Communities: "On Whatsapp Channels we have two million members… however currently we’re only getting about a million page views from those people" per month, he said. In contrast almost every Community user reads at least one thing a month, he said.

Posts in Whatsapp Communities appear in a user's feed of chats, alongside messages from friends, whereas channels need to be sought out by the user in a different part of the app.

The post Whatsapp Channels one year on: Top news publishers ranked appeared first on Press Gazette.

One of the first and most pressing choices facing the next UK government will be how Britain asserts its authority in a test of wills’ battle with the tech giants.

The UK has taken an international leadership position with its new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act to tackle the power of big tech and oversee competition in the digital sector.

But the real test will come when the UK imposes this rule of law and the tech giants either paralyse it through legal warfare or simply defy the authority of a nation state by hiding behind the way they have set up their international operations.

One of the Digital Markets Acts’ powers is to require tech platforms pay for content.

But what if they refuse, as Meta has done in Canada and in Australia as it walks away from deals to pay Australian publishers under the ground-breaking News Media Bargaining Code?

This sets up the test of wills between the Silicon Valley Sovereigns and the UK Government. It’s a fight we know all too well in Australia.

And that’s why I am calling on the Australian government to impose a Social Licence compelling tech companies to pay a licence fee to operate in Australia and comply with a package of laws and requirements if they want access to its consumers.

Until now individuals and nations have both been rendered powerless to reign in the tech giants’ misbehaviour.

The protection the tech giants have been given by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act combines with their international corporate structures to effectively place them above the law both at home and abroad.

It is time for nations to take on the Silicon Valley sovereigns and end their contempt for repeated requests to behave differently and their regard that huge fines are simply the cost of doing business.

As Australia’s Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said recently: “We are up against these giant companies, multinationals who have more power, money and global influence than some standalone nations.

“They have deep pockets. They are highly litigious.

“But that is no reason why they should not be subject to Australian law, and we should seek to enforce Australian law.”

In Australia the need for action is overwhelming.

Social harm caused by tech giants in a human rights issue

Two recent cases won by US tech giants have proven they have built legal shields to place themselves above domestic and international laws: A failed Australian government attempt to stop X broadcasting internationally a terror attack in a Sydney church and the failed bid by business billionaire Andrew Forrest to prevent Meta allowing use of his image in scam advertising.

The social harm being caused is a human rights issue. Australian parents – like those in Britain – are also getting nowhere with their pleas for social media to do something about bullying, the glorification of eating disorders, trolling and body shaming.

These harms are profoundly affecting the lives of millions and we all pay the price for that and for scammers stealing billions of dollars from the vulnerable when the NHS and welfare systems pick up the pieces to help people who have lost everything.

But we should never accept we are powerless. Countries impose rules on all other businesses: now’s the time to do so with tech giants.

A Social Licence is essentially the permission granted to companies to operate within a society – and the tech monoliths should pay for a licence. Under such a licence in Australia, the government would make the platforms liable for all content amplified, curated, and controlled by their algorithms or recommender engines.

The licence should require they have an effective consumer complaints handling system, including call centres contactable by telephone with staff in the country.

Other measures would include:

• A framework overseen by the competition watchdog that addresses monopolised digital advertising markets
• A financial contribution to programs tackling mental health problems
• Tech platforms honouring Australia’s Media Bargaining Code deals to compensate larger publishers for content, and to contribute to a fund for small publishers.

Penalties should incorporate criminal sanctions for companies and their executives, and the power to ultimately block access to our country and our people.

This idea of a Social Licence is neither overreach, nor pie in the sky. All other businesses accessing Australian people play by similar rules.

Miners pay a royalty to access resources, banks and telcos meet complaint-handling standards, media accept responsibility for what’s published and advertising businesses can’t run fake ads with famous people.

It’s time to change things. Tech monopolies are really like miners, only they are mining our greatest resource – our lives.

And what if a nation imposes a Social Licence? The platforms could sign up or leave – their choice. And if Meta walked away, I’d say: “It’s not the end of the world.” We all know another digital innovator would quickly fill the void.

It’s time the tech giants played by society’s rules.

The post Message from Australia: New UK government facing battle with Google and Facebook appeared first on Press Gazette.

News consumers across the world are increasingly far more likely to access news via social media than they are by directly accessing publisher websites and apps.

The 2024 Reuters Digital News Report surveyed news consumers in 47 leading markets around the world with over 2,000 respondents in each territory (big exclusions included China and Russia).

Across all leading global media markets, social media is the main gateway to news for 29% of people (up from 23% six years ago, but slightly down compared with last year).

Search (dominated by Google) remains important, with 25% citing this as their main access point to news, compared to 24% in 2018.

There has been a sharp decline in the proportion saying that direct access to publisher websites and apps is their main access point for news, down from 32% six years ago to 22% in the latest survey.

Looking at UK sources of news, social media is now cited by 37% of respondents as the main way they came across news in the last week versus 14% for print. TV has declined from 79% to 50% over the last decade.

In the UK there has been a sharp fall in the number of 18 to 24 year-olds accessing news websites or apps directly, from 53% to 25% over the last decade.

The fall amongst 25 to 34 year-olds has been less sharp, down from 53% to 34%. For those aged 35 and above, publisher websites and apps have remained important, with 51% saying they used them over the last week, a figure which has remained level.

Looking at 11 leading media economies, the survey asked which social media networks people have used to access news over the last week.

Facebook remains the most popular source of news, but it has declined from 36% in 2014 citing it to 26% in the latest survey.

Youtube has grown from 16% to 22%, Whatsapp is up from 7% to 16% and Instagram is up from 2% to 15%. Twitter/X is steady on around 11% and Tiktok has grown sharply after emerging four years ago to be used by 8% for accessing news.

Looking at particular newsbrands and sources of news, the survey underlines the dominance of the BBC over the UK media scene. The BBC is also the only UK brand cited by a significant number of US survey respondents as a source they access on at least a weekly basis.

Looking at TV/radio/print, the BBC is twice as popular (48%) as second-placed ITV News. Looking at online it is nearly three times as likely to be cited (44%) as the second-placed Guardian website.

In the US, opinionated right of centre brand Fox News is the most likely to be cited as a weekly source for both online and looking at just TV/radio/print. Overall, US newsbrands are far more evenly split in terms of popularity.

The report found that in the UK mainstream news brands are most likely to be cited as a source of news by social media users, versus alternative news outlets and influencers.

Online native brand Politics Joe made the top five most-referenced outlets in the UK survey behind legacy brands BBC News, Sky News, The Guardian and ITV News.

When survey respondents to ask individual news accounts they pay attention to for news on social media, partisan and outspoken voices dominated and in both the UK and US all the named social media accounts cited by survey respondents were men.

See more on this phenomenon of “news influencers” from Digital News Report author Nic Newman here.

The post Where we get our news in 2024: Social media has become the new global newsstand appeared first on Press Gazette.

In recent years large social and video networks, offering powerful creator tools and free global distribution, have provided a platform for an increasingly wide range of voices and perspectives. Most of this content has nothing to do with news. Much of it generates very little attention, but some accounts and individuals have become increasingly influential around politics, and a range of other subjects  

In previous research we have shown how in newer networks such as TikTok and Instagram as well as in long standing video platforms like YouTube, mainstream media are significantly challenged by a range so called creators, influencers, and assorted personalities, as well as smaller, alternative news outlets. This contrasts with networks such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) where mainstream media and journalists still tend to lead the conversation when it comes to news.

Who are the biggest ‘news influencers’ in the UK, US and France?

In this year’s Digital News Report, we wanted to understand more about who these news influencers are, what type of ‘news’ they discuss, and what this means for wider society. 

We did this by asking a random selection of people who use a range of popular networks including Facebook, X, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to name up to three mainstream and/or alternative accounts they followed most closely that related to news.

We then counted the most popular individuals and news brands from the combined data. We did this in around 20 countries around the world, but in this article, we explore findings in just three – the United Kingdom, the United States and France. 

United Kingdom: High representation of 'mainstream' journalists

Traditional UK news brands established an early and strong presence in social media networks such as Twitter (now X) and Facebook, but have been slower to adapt to newer networks.

Despite this, across all networks studied we find that the majority (57%) of all mentions were for mainstream news brands and their journalists and 43% for other individuals and alternative media.

Big broadcasters such as the BBC and Sky do best, along with The Guardian, but these brands are more challenged in YouTube and TikTok by a range of youth orientated outlets such as Politics Joe, LADbible, and TLDR News – and also by more partisan political outlets such as Novara Media and individual creators.

[Read more: Video brand TLDR finds way to make money providing news for the young]

When it comes to our list of top ten individual accounts, we also find a high representation of journalists from mainstream media brands.

Topping the list is LBC’s James O’Brien who has been particularly effective on YouTube and TikTok with smartly packaged video clips from his radio show regularly going viral. ITV’s political correspondent Robert Peston, an early adopter of social media, is in second place.

Also represented is former CNN, ITV, and TalkTV host Piers Morgan who recently took his eponymous Uncensored show online-only to get round what he calls the "unnecessary straitjacket" of TV schedules.

There is a clear absence of women in the most-mentioned list. Partisan perspectives are provided, on the left, by columnist and author Owen Jones and on the right by TV hosts from GB News. These include Nigel Farage, now leader of Reform UK, and Neil Oliver, whose controversial views on lockdowns and vaccinations have led to complaints to the broadcast regulator Ofcom. 

 
Comedian Russell Brand attracts an eclectic crowd for his outspoken, libertarian and anti-mainstream media views expressed manly via YouTube (and Rumble).

Sports journalists David Ornstein and Fabrizio Romano, both with a reputation for transfer scoops, are widely followed, as are others with specialist knowledge such as Dan Neidle, a former high-profile lawyer who breaks stories about dodgy tax affairs of the rich and famous. 

Influencer Dylan Page operates what he claims is the biggest English language news account on TikTok (10.6 million followers).

Celebrities, such as BBC football presenter and podcast entrepreneur Gary Lineker (nine million followers on X) tweet from time to time about politics and refugees and Elon Musk’s tweets (150 million followers) are also widely followed in the UK. 

United States: Much higher use of YouTube for news

We see a very different picture in the United States with much higher use of use of YouTube for news compared with the UK and a higher proportion of those users paying attention to alternative news sources.

X (formerly Twitter) is another important network for alternative voices in the US, where creators have been encouraged in recent years by owner Elon Musk. The network has recently refocused its strategy on video and is supporting commentators like Tucker Carlson, who was dismissed by Fox News, and has subsequently built a significant audience there.

Our list of the most mentioned individuals is headed by Carlson along with Joe Rogan who runs a successful daily show on YouTube (as well as Spotify).

It is striking that all of the most mentioned (top ten) individual names are known for political commentary or chat - rather than original newsgathering. Most of the content is partisan – with little or no attempt to put the other side, and the entire top ten list is made up of men.

Many of these names can hardly be called ‘alternative’, as they often come with decades of experience from legacy media, having previously been fixtures for years on traditional cable or talk radio networks.  

Some of these US individuals are attached to wider online networks, such as the Daily Wire and Blaze TV (conservative) and Young Turks and Medias Touch (progressive) that contain multiple creators within a wider brand. 

But whatever the politics, the look is remarkably consistent – somewhere between a podcast and a TV broadcast – with mostly male hosts armed with oversized microphones talking to mostly male guests.

Alternative voices received more citations in total from our US sample than traditional media, but mainstream media brands and their journalists still accounted for 42% of mentions with CNN and Fox News heading the list.  

On TikTok, however, alternative news approaches are also prominent, such as @underthedesknews, an account which features creator V Spehar presenting news updates from a lying down position to contrast with the formulaic ‘over the desk’ approach on mainstream TV. The account has over three million subscribers with content aimed at explaining current events and news for younger audiences. 

Elon Musk regularly posts content on subjects such as free speech, AI, and the failings of mainstream media. Donald Trump was also frequently mentioned and has 65 million followers on X and 6.5 million on Truth Social. 

France: Young news influencers lead the way

In France, we find mainstream media challenged on social and video platforms by a range of alternative media including a number of young news influencers.

Head and shoulders above others we find YouTuber and podcaster Hugo Travers, 27, known online as Hugo Décrypte, (literally Hugo Deciphers … the news). With 2.6 million subscribers on his main channel on YouTube and 5.7 million on TikTok, he has become a leading news source for young French people.  

In our survey data, Décrypte received more mentions than Le Monde, Le Figaro and Liberation combined. His followers had an average age of 27, around 20 years younger than many other news brands according to our data. Travers regularly interviews top politicians and global figures such as Bill Gates. The social media generation “won’t start reading a newspaper or watching the news on TV at 30,” he says.

Youth focused news brands such as Brut and Konbini have also built large audiences via social and video distribution. This level of engagement highlights the weakness of many traditional French news brands, which still primarily cater for older elites and have been slow to innovate through social platforms.

Protecting the environment has become an important theme for alternative voices with Hugo Clément (32) and Salomé Saqué (28) two prominent voices, who have built their ecological reputations through social media.

Meanwhile many older, male, right learning commentators, such as Pascal Praud and former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, are extending their influence through like-minded and mostly older communities on X and Facebook.

Far right politicians such as Marine Le Pen (one million followers on TikTok) and her 28 year old protégé  Jordan Bardella (1.6 million) were also mentioned in our data as the National Rally leader successfully targeted the youth vote ahead of the European elections. 

Implications for mainstream media from news influencer findings

Looking across our three selected countries we find that news related accounts of any kind are cited more often in the United States than they are in the UK or France.

In the United States we also find a greater number of alternative news or individual accounts mentioned as opposed to mainstream news brands and journalists, suggesting that the trend towards news influencers is far more developed here.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast mainstream media brands and journalists are both active and widely followed leaving less of a gap for independent operators. 

Digging further into the content itself, we find that many of the most cited accounts belong to partisan political commentators (from left and right), some of whom have been criticised for factual inaccuracies and for spreading conspiracies or misleading narratives, even as they are highly trusted by those who share their political views.

Many of the commentators now committed to online distribution emphasise their ability to speak freely (e.g. Tucker Carlson Unfiltered, Piers Morgan Uncensored), setting themselves up as an alternative to a mainstream media that they say ‘suppresses the truth’ or is driven by ‘elite and corporate interests’. But any increase in the range of views is not matched by diversity, with the most popular accounts mostly white and male in the three countries included here. 

A second important trend is the popularity of news creators and influencers that speak to younger audiences, mostly using video formats. In France Hugo Décrypte is blazing a trail in trying to make news more accessible and entertaining. Elsewhere brands such as Brut, Politics Joe, and TLDR News are engaging a large number of under 35s using younger hosts, as well as an agenda that includes more content about climate, social justice and mental health.

The vitality of alternative voices in social and video networks in some ways highlights perceived weaknesses of news organisations on such issues as trust, diversity, and digital storytelling – at least with some people. All this means that traditional media still has much to learn on how to better engage audiences in this increasingly complex and competitive space while staying true to its mission and values.

You can read more detail about news consumption across countries and about wider audience trends at www.digitalnewsreport.org/2024.

The post From James O’Brien to Joe Rogan: Rise of news influencers and alternative voices appeared first on Press Gazette.

Some 41% of Tiktok users in the US say news is a reason they use the platform, versus 37% of Facebook users and 33% on Instagram.

However X, formerly Twitter, still comes out on top with 65% using the platform for news despite suggestions last year that news-heavy users like journalists might move away from the platform under changes made by new owner Elon Musk. News was the second most popular reason given for using X after entertainment (81%).

The survey of 10,287 adult internet users in the US, carried out by Pew Research Center in March, indicated a continued interest in news on Facebook despite Meta’s winding down of its relationship with publishers and its claim that just 3% of content in user feeds is news meaning publisher content is playing a “diminishing role on the platform.

According to separate Pew research, 68% of US adults use Facebook versus 47% who use Instagram, 33% who use Tiktok and 22% who use Twitter.

Among the survey’s other findings it revealed two-thirds of Facebook users aged below 50 see information about breaking news on the platform as events are happening.

However the use of Facebook for news continued to be eclipsed by other uses: for example, 76% of US users said they use the platform for entertainment, 74% to connect with others who share their interests and 93% to keep up with friends or family.

Most people who identified news as a reason they use a platform identified it as a "minor" reason. It was a major reason of use for 7% of all Facebook users and 8% of all Instagram users but this shoots up to 15% for Tiktok and 25% for X.

Nonetheless, the proportion of respondents who said they "regularly" get news or news headlines from each platform was similar to the combined proportion who said news was either a major or minor reason they use social media.

Although hard news was one of the less popular types of content among respondents, other kinds of content provided by professional publishers proved more popular. Just over half (52%) of Instagram users said they use the app to keep up with sports or pop culture and 53% of Tiktok users said the same.

Within those figures 20% of Tiktok users and 19% of Instagram users gave sport and pop culture updates as a "major" reason they use the platforms.

Another mainstay topic of news coverage, politics, was the most unpopular type of content for social media users.

Although a large minority of social media users say they actively seek out news, the survey shows news in some form or another reaches most people. More than half of Instagram and Tiktok users reported ever seeing news articles on their feeds, whether posted, reposted, linked or screenshotted.

Far more common, however, was users encountering news through jokes or opinionated posts. More than eight in ten (84%) of Facebook users said they see people expressing opinions about current events, and 81% said they see funny posts that reference current events.

In line with that, 85% of regular news consumers on Facebook said they get news from friends, family and acquaintances while 72% of Instagram users said the same.

However news outlets and journalists were a major source of news identified by respondents. More than two-thirds (68%) of Facebook users, 65% of Instagram users, 67% of Tiktok users and 80% of X users who say they regularly receive news on each platform said they get news from outlets or journalists.

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