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Social Networks Television United States News

Social Media Now Main Source of News In US, Research Suggests (bbc.com) 62

Posted by BeauHD from the end-of-an-era dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Social media and video networks have become the main source of news in the US, overtaking traditional TV channels and news websites, research suggests. More than half (54%) of people get news from networks like Facebook, X and YouTube -- overtaking TV (50%) and news sites and apps (48%), according to the Reuters Institute. "The rise of social media and personality-based news is not unique to the United States, but changes seem to be happening faster -- and with more impact -- than in other countries," a report found. Podcaster Joe Rogan was the most widely-seen personality, with almost a quarter (22%) of the population saying they had come across news or commentary from him in the previous week. The report's author Nic Newman said the rise of social video and personality-driven news "represents another significant challenge for traditional publishers." Other key findings from the report include:
- TikTok is the fastest-growing social and video platform, now used for news by 17% globally (up 4% from last year).
- AI chatbot use for news is increasing, especially among under-25s, where it's twice as popular as in the general population.
- Most people believe AI will reduce transparency, accuracy, and trust in news.
- Across all age groups, trusted news brands with proven accuracy remain valued, even if used less frequently.

Social Media Now Main Source of News In US, Research Suggests More | Reply

Social Media Now Main Source of News In US, Research Suggests

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  • Oh dear (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday June 16, 2025 @11:34PM (#65454815)

    When everybody's perception of reality is different, nobody can agree on any hard fact and society unravels.

    • There's also the problem of many people not trusting main stream media sources to practice actual journalism.

      • Once the mainstream media lost its trustworthiness, every news source is credible now, pretty much. How can you tell what is actually a true, honest first-hand source versus someone adding fake smoke via Photoshop, showing images from a previous time, or just AI generated stuff? How can one regain a "chain of custody" from firsthand witnesses and firsthand evidence through the news aggregators, without it being diluted or chopped up into just tiny bits of truth surrounded by large amounts of propaganda?

        No

        • Yes, some kind of cryptographic proof that something wasn't altered would go a long way, especially with images, video and audio content. You don't necessarily need to trust the author, only that the device signed the file with a non-extractible private key. The public key should be tied to the device, eg. with an X.509 certificate.

          Most smartphones can already create such private keys. But you still need some secure enrollment protocol to make sure only the corresponding public keys/certs are published, and

        • Just disbelieve everything.

      • The trustworthy news media train derailed when Walter Cronkite left.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Yeah, but how much of that was really the mainstream media being (less) trustworthy, and more clever marketing by new media outlets? Social media sources seem to spend a LOT of time building personal feeling connections with the viewer than using that trust to scare them off the competition. As I see social media get worse and worse, I am seriously starting to wonder how much of the loss of trust is just people being easy to manipulate.
    • So last election Joe Biden had a moment where he was listening to a question from someone off camera. Several news outlets reported this as him staring into the distance...

      Donald Trump stopped a town hall meeting 20 minutes in and then proceeded to awkwardly dance to his iPod playlist for the next 40 minutes. This was reported as a cozy event that brought him closer to voters.

      I think people have figured out that the news media is now 120% corporate-owned without them even having to know about the d

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tailhook ( 98486 )

        Imagine thinking you've insulated yourself from "corporate media" by following fark.com links.

        • Imagine thinking you've insulated yourself from "corporate media" by following fark.com links.

          Imagine thinking that added anything constructive to the conversation.

          Focus on the argument, not the man.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I've read previous posts by you.

          Unless you can delete them all you probably shouldn't be responding to this one... the fact you can't see the irony here is not a new thing, but it's increasingly alienating.

          Feel free to explain that actually your opinion is right because the thing you predicted didn't happen, so that means that people agree with your political position. Again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        PBS News Hour is pretty solid. ...So of course Trump is cutting funding to it. It is a solid news source though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      When has it ever been different? People have always read different newspapers, listened to different radio stations, watched different TV channels.

      I remember very clearly how reporting on basically every major source I could find about the Great Touhoku Earthquake and nuclear meltdowns in Japan seemingly had very little basis in reality, compared to what I was experiencing on the ground at the time. There never was a golden age of accurate reporting, it's always been this bad.

      What has changed is now people

  • shocker (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NagrothAgain ( 4130865 ) on Monday June 16, 2025 @11:37PM (#65454823)
    On most news sites these days it's difficult to claw your way through all the ads to get to the paywall, and on the off chance you make it through that it's literally just the same blurb that every other site has. And the real articles are sandwiched between a stack of "paid content" which are essentially just more ads disguised as articles that if clicked take you to an even more ad infested site. There's a few exceptions of course, but they are increasingly hard to find and the average person doesn't want news they want someone "important" to deliver a daily dose of reinforcement to their belief systems.

    • On most news sites these days it's difficult to claw your way through all the ads to get to the paywall,

      Have you seen Facebook recently? The entire internet is a cesspool of ads. Heck the top half of Slashdot looks fucked on my work machine since we don't have adblockers on here.

  • What a great news source (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Monday June 16, 2025 @11:56PM (#65454857)

    The loudest loudmouth is the source of truth. That's what this means. This is how you get this sequence:

    Time for an election.

    Candidate A: hardworking successful and respected prosecutor, Senator, and Vice President. Exemplary record of promoting health care, voting rights, and reducing gun violence and crime. Full understanding and adherence to the rule of law. Well educated. Articulate as a court officer should be.

    Candidate B: Convicted felon of over 30 counts, with indictments for around 50 more. Impeached twice for betraying the country and his oath of office. A known sex offender. Party to over 3500 lawsuits in private business (that would be about one a week over 30 years). Known con-man and grifter, surrounded by like minded cronies. Tells so many lies a national newspaper tried to count them all and eventually just gave up. Shows no deep comprehension of any subject matter without his name embedded in it. Ran a campaign based on retribution and weaponizing the government for political purposes. That turns out to be one of the few things he didn't lie about.

    Voting public, steeped in social media: Of Course Candidate B! Candidate A laughs funny. Candidate B is a Man's Man who Tells It Like It Is! He's going to hurt the people I want to hurt. And look how f**king mad those snooty liberals are. Look at this meme I could die laughing.

    And there you have it. I realize that I am probably going to be moderated Troll for this post because they will think the above is a political rant and not a recitation of objective fact. Or, more likely, they will pretend because they don't like those facts. So this will be a demonstration of how social media works.

    • There was a ton of good journalism going on over there in real time. Naturally he chased off everyone except the right when extremists and their propaganda Mills as soon as he bought the site.

      But up until then Twitter was a great place for independent journalism without corporate propaganda. I don't think that is unrelated to the purchase...

    • Attributing Trumps win to social media is a social media meme at its worst. People are unhappy with the way things are. They voted for change. Its the same reason Biden won. Biden didn't deliver any real change other than not being Donald Trump. (Which admittedly was a big change.) Trump is certainly delivering change this time around.

      The media is full of itself. It assumes it is the center of the universe and everyone is listening carefully to all their blather. But most people are paying far more attenti

      • Attributing Trumps win to social media is a social media meme at its worst. People are unhappy with the way things are. They voted for change.

        After the 2024 election somebody got the idea to ask middle school students how they would have voted. The majority were for Trump, to the surprise (dismay?) of the journalists compiling the report.

        As it turns out, the aggregate reason for this result is that Harris "dissed" Joe Rogan where Trump cozied up to him.

        That's just one example of what I wrote about. Do you think the "adults" that voted Trump were doing any better with critical thinking about their news sources?

        • That's just one example of what I wrote about. Do you think the "adults" that voted Trump were doing any better with critical thinking about their news sources?

          Well, not if you are an example. I guess not even adults who didn't vote for Trump. You have to believe that middle schoolers in "aggregate" are paying close enough attention to know that Harris "dissed" Rogan and cared enough that they decided they would vote for Trump instead. And you have to wonder how the "journalists" got a random sample of middle schoolers opinions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      LOL. Found the person who gets their news from MSNBC.

  • Destruction of the Fourth Estate (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The public press has been completely defeated, their power seized by a very tiny handful of very powerful people. To be fair, the press used to be in the hands of a few powerful people, famously the last half of the 19th century with the likes of William Randolph Hearst. With mid-20th century seeing a move towards editors appointed by newspaper owners having a significant amount of autonomy and decades long reign.
    This was a more ideal era where newspapers were about making money and not quite so willing to

  • If a person isn't able to get fired over providing false news, then.. it's BS.

    Heck, I find big 5 news outlets with incomplete coverage, leaning on sensationalistic coloration.

  • How do you get your news from social media? You listen to those self proclaimed experts that comment half an hour about something from their fancy attic in their mom's house?

    • How do you get your news from social media?

      People read their social media feed and there happens to be news commented there. Since TV is not fashionable and some people don't have enough interest in news to follow a news website, they just expect to learn about news when their social media feed mentions something.

      For example if I stopped reading the particular news websites I like, my only source of news would be slashdot. Some people here count slashdot as social media (I don't because stories are posted by the editorial staff, making slashdot a cl

    • You pick a media source you enjoy that aligns with your views, like a YouTube channel.
      That way, you only hear things that suit you and won't challenge your fundamental mindset.
      No one will question you if you think the earth is flat, that Kubrick filmed Armstrong in1969, or that the CIA put microphones in the COVID vaccines..."

  • People should not only gather claims from different sources (ideally from sources in different languages and cultures), but also verify for themselves using scientific methods whether something can be true.

    I think math education in school is exactly where you learn this: There are formulas and rules with which you can calculate something yourself. Then you don't need any news or opinion or answer from anyone - you can calculate it yourself and rely on it 100%. In doing so, you learn three things:

    1) conducti

  • I was just watching a video [youtube.com] by of my favorite war journalists. I appreciate that he covers topics I don't see elsewhere, and he does so with neutrality balanced against recognition of evil. I'm supposed to see "social media" and imagine the clickbait garbage so common, but pick your sources and you'll be getting better information, sooner and with less bias than traditional media. I particularly like that there are too many of this kind of outlet for any government, including my own, to effectively silence.
    • The problem is that, while it's possible to get better news there is no way to know it without considering many other sources anyway. If you are following a person who 'saw it first' how do you know they haven't slanted it to suit their own personal best interest?
  • I piss in a little orange bottle but that doesn't mean I've just made medicine.

    Marketing platforms distribute ads, not news. Anyone referring to the political spam on Twitter and Facebook as "news" is lying. Words mean things and that shit just ain't news.
    • Came here to say this.
      Headline should have "News" not News.

      Getting his "News" from x.com is what drove Musk crazy.

  • Journalism died decades ago (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @02:45AM (#65455037) Homepage

    There's a reason traditional media in this country is dying faster than the rest of the world, or even why it's dying at all; it's a steaming pile of horseshit, and has been for a long while. It's not "news", it's propaganda. What's more, it's obviously so; only the dumbest of us actually believe what sources like foxnews, cnn or msnbc "report". By extensions, they don't employ journalists, they employ propagandists.

    That said, journalism isn't dead, although it is on life support. Real journalism CAN'T happen at the traditional media companies, so it's moved to the social media space...which nicely explains why they're eating traditional media's lunch.

    Note; I'm not saying social media is the pinnacle of truth. Rather, you simply can't find real data from traditional media companies, whereas you CAN from social media ( along with tons of horseshit, yes ).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      The funny thing is thinking social media is better when often times it is far, far worse. Also, what do you mean by "real data" because social media serves up all sorts of cherry picked and discredited "data" all the time?

      We're basically trading traditional media which at least has some sort of oversite (however imperfect) for social media which has even less. This isn't good.

    • it's a steaming pile of horseshit

      Which one is steaming pile of horseshit? The ones who write about things that don't fit your political view? Or all of them, even when they present counter arguments to each other meaning that one of them is usually correct*?

      How is social media better? Do you think it's less horseshit because you are in an echo chamber of people preaching your views back to you?

      • Social media is "better" because accurate reporting is at least possible on that platform.

        It's not on traditional media.

        Is there a ton of horse shit on social media? Yes, absolutely. More so than traditional media, if only by volume.

      • I merely want factual NEWS.

        CNN, Fox, the rest, are steaming piles of horseshit because they gave up on reporting factual news and let their opinions take over.

        I don't want to hear their stupid woke or rightwing opinions. I want FACTS.
  • Because I can follow lots of news accounts, I dont have to depend on one source for news and paywalled news sites get blocked so I dont have to see their posts ever again (washington post & new York times are blocked)

  • Sad (Score:2)

    by Teun ( 17872 )
    Sad for those that believe these social media, sad for those that stopped supporting the traditional media.

  • social networks are content aggregators that link to the actual source: the news websites. Somehow the whole promise of the internet of cutting the middle man is broken.

  • Social media is rotting our brains, plain and simple. Jonathan Haidt has been sounding the alarm on this for years, and he’s right. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram aren’t just harmless distractions—they are manipulating our minds for profit. They’re built to keep us hooked, constantly craving that next "like" or comment, feeding us dopamine hits like a drug dealer on the corner.

    The people behind these platforms don’t care about our mental health — they

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