More than half of Twitter users regularly get news from the site
To learn more about how Americans get their news in the digital age, Pew Research Center surveyed 11,178 U.S. adults from July 26 to August 8, 2021. All survey respondents are members of the center’s online survey site, the American Trends Panel (ATP). The research committee will be recruited through a random sampling of residential addresses across the country. In this way, nearly every American adult has the opportunity to choose. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, and other categories. Learn more about ATP’s methodology here.
Pew Research Center previously conducted a similar study on Americans’ use of social media for news purposes. This study continues to explore similar topics in a different way than studies conducted before 2020 (read more here). As a result, some of these measurements cannot be directly compared with pre-2020 findings. These changes to question wording reflect the Center’s efforts to improve how news consumption is measured.
Below are the questions, answers, and methodology used in this analysis.
This is the latest report in the Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation into the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age. This research program is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and receives generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Social media and technology companies have faced criticism for not doing enough to stop the flow of misleading information on their platforms, but a significant portion of Americans still seek out news. I keep an eye on these sites. Just under half (48%) of U.S. adults say they “often” or “sometimes” get their news from social media, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from July 26 to August 26. This was a decrease of 5 points compared to 2020. August 2021.
When it comes to where Americans regularly get their news on social media, Facebook tops all other social media sites.
Another question asked users of 10 social media sites whether they regularly get news, and found that about one-third (31%) of U.S. adults regularly get news on Facebook. About one in five Americans (22%) say they get their news from Facebook. Get regular news on YouTube. Twitter and Instagram are regular news sources for 13% and 11% of Americans, respectively.
Other social media sites are less likely to become regular news sources. Americans say they regularly get their news from Reddit (7%), TikTok (6%), LinkedIn (4%), Snapchat (4%), WhatsApp (3%), and Twitch (1%) He is less than 1 in 10 people.
The percentage of Americans who regularly get their news from these sites has remained largely unchanged since 2020, but the percentage who regularly get their news from Facebook has declined slightly (in 2020 36%, 31% in 2021).
Looking at the proportion of users who regularly receive news on each social media site, some sites stand out as more “newsy”, even if their total audience is relatively small. For example, Twitter is used by 23% of US adults, but more than half of those users (55%) regularly get their news from the site. Meanwhile, although YouTube is widely used, only a minority (30%) of users visit the site regularly for news.
Overall, the percentage of users on each site who regularly get news has remained relatively stable since 2020, a year that saw both the presidential election and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. . However, both Facebook and his TikTok are against this trend. The percentage of Facebook users who say they regularly get news from the site has decreased by 7 points since 2020, from 54% to 47% in 2021. Meanwhile, on TikTok, the percentage of users who say they get news has increased slightly. Those who regularly get their news from this site have increased from 22% to 29% in this period.
In some cases, there can be significant demographic differences between the people who visit each social media site for news. For example, the majority of regular news users on Facebook and Reddit are white adults (60% and 54%, respectively), while just under 4 in 10 of Instagram’s news users are white (36%). is white. Black adults and Hispanic adults each make up a significant portion of Instagram’s regular news users (20% and 33%, respectively). People who regularly receive news on Facebook are more likely to be women than men (64% vs. 35%), and two-thirds of regular news users on Reddit are men. The majority (57%) of people who regularly consume news on LinkedIn have a four-year college degree or higher. Young people between the ages of 18 and 29 are much more likely than other age groups to regularly get news on both Snapchat and TikTok.
The majority of regular news users on many sites are Democrats or Democratic-leaning. This may be related to the relatively young age demographic of the news consumer base on these social media sites. None of the social media sites included here have regular news consumers who are likely to be Republicans or Republican supporters.