News consumption on social media has become a major focus over the past decade, with accusations that social platforms cause greater division and anxiety through sharing and involvement, while activist groups want to reinforce misinformation and fake news in the same way around the agenda in their own desired direction. too skewed.

It’s hard to argue that we are not more politically divided than we were before social media existed, but the real cause of the division is less clear. Is it greater access to information, and / or more capacity for political groups to reach people at any time of the day? Is the evolution of the news cycle, which now sees stories coming and going within hours? Or could it be media that weapon anger as a way to raise their own ratings, essentially click and attract comments by taking a more biased perspective in their reporting?

In reality, it’s a combination of these things – but in every way, social media clearly plays a role.

Therefore, the usual ‘News consumption on social media‘reports of Pew Research is so valuable to understand the modern media landscape.

This week, Pew has the the latest version of his report, which highlights how Americans access news content, and the role each social platform plays in it. The data were obtained from a survey among 11,178 people in the US, which gives an indication of the main trends and habits.

You can read the full study review of Pew here, but in this post we look at some of the key points.

First, Pew says that in 2021, there was actually a decline in people regularly relying on social media platforms for news content.

As you can see here, 48% of respondents indicated that they get news from social media ‘regularly’ or ‘sometimes’, which is off 2020while overall, including the ‘rare’ answers, 67% of people now get at least news content from social platforms, up from 71% by 2020.

This is a slight decrease, which shows that news consumption is still significant on social platforms, and that the consumption of social media still has an impact in this regard. But it is interesting to note the decline. Does this mean that more people are becoming more skeptical about the posts they see in social programs, and are looking for alternative sources to stay up to date?

In terms of platform-specific news consumption, Facebook and YouTube are still in the lead, although both are also slightly lower than last year.

Pew Research News Consumption Report on Social Media

Last year, 36% of respondents indicated that they regularly get news content on Facebook, while 23% noticed the same for YouTube, so only a slight shift. Twitter also saw a slight decrease in this year’s survey (-2% compared to last year), while TikTok did not rise surprisingly, with 6% of adults now receiving news content on the platform, from 3% in 2020.

How influential it is on each platform is hard to say, as the deviations are so small – but then again, TikTok found a 100% increase in news content consumption, based on these statistics, making it an increasingly relevant can consider for communication on key issues – especially if you want to reach a younger audience.

In addition, Pew notes that Twitter in particular is a news source among those who use it.

Pew Research News Consumption Report on Social Media

As explained by Pew:

‘If you look at the ratio of each social media site user who regularly gets news there, some sites become more’ new ‘, even if their total audience is relatively small. Twitter, for example, is used by 23% of American adults, but more than half of the users (55%) regularly receive news on the site. On the other hand, although YouTube is widely used, a smaller proportion of users regularly visit the site for news (30%).

This is an important aspect of Twitter’s influence that is often overlooked – while Twitter is generally used by far fewer people, compared to Facebook or Instagram, the people who do use it are generally more adapted to the news cycle. and the latest shifts, which means that conversation points starting on Twitter tend to spread to other platforms and apps.

In other words, Twitter’s influence is greater than it seems because of the people you can reach via tweets, with journalists, commentators, influencers and more actively trying to stay up to date with the latest news, and then redistribute via their own platforms in other applications.

While your reach on Twitter may be smaller, the people you reach can be the key to maximizing your messages, an important consideration in these findings and in the broader social media marketing, especially with regard to news trends.

As noted, given the ongoing debate about the impact of social platforms on the news cycle, and how people receive and translate the latest updates, it is important to gain an understanding of the use of social platforms in this regard and to gain perspective on which platforms There is more reliance on important information, and how it relates to such trends.

Pew’s report helps to get a clearer picture of what’s happening in this regard, which may be the key to extensive research on news impact, while also giving brands more insight into the key usage behaviors of your planning.

You can read the full Pew Research 2021 ‘News consumption in social media report here.



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