According to a survey, younger people are turning to Instagram and TikTok influencers as their news sources and fact-checking tasks as opposed to traditional journalists and the mainstream media.
In the survey undertaken for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, part of Britain’s University of Oxford, 55% of TikTok users and 52% of Instagram users obtain their news from “personalities” on these platforms.
TikTok NEWS BOOM
According to the 2023 Digital News Report, only 33% of users on TikTok and 42% of users on Instagram obtain their news from journalists and conventional media.
“Perhaps the most striking findings in this year’s report relate to the changing nature of social media, which is partly characterized by declining engagement with traditional networks like Facebook and the rise of TikTok and a range of other video-led networks,” Nic Newman, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute, wrote in the report.
Young people nowadays are more than ever impacted by “influencers” on the platform for trends, recommendations, and now even news, claims Newman.
The younger generations, who have grown up with social media and frequently pay more attention to influencers or celebrities than they do to journalists, even when it comes to news, are clearly shown by our data to be a major factor in this transition, he said.
On more traditional sites like Facebook and Twitter, where users chose to follow mainstream news sources over individuals for their news, 43-38 and 55-42, respectively, this trend was not evident.
Ordinary People
Additionally, TikTok stood out among the other social media platforms, such as YouTube and Snapchat, since a higher percentage of users (44%) trust “ordinary people” to provide their news. Other platforms were also below 37%.
The 2023 Reuters Institute Digital News Report also discovered that more young people prefer social media over websites or apps for news delivery.
According to the report’s findings, young people are becoming more and more critical of the news media, which is heavily influenced by politicians and other people.
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