Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Poll: More Getting News From Social Media, But Most Don’t Trust It

Even people who prefer to get their news on social media platforms are worried about fake news, a Pew Research Center poll revealed Monday.

(CN) – Even people who prefer to get their news on social media platforms are worried about fake news, a Pew Research Center poll revealed Monday.

More than half of Americans expect news they read on social media to be inaccurate, but around two-thirds of them still get news from those sources.

Among the people polled who prefer to get their news on social media, 42 percent said they expect the news to be “largely inaccurate.”

The Pew poll surveyed some 4,500 members of its “American Trends Panel” this year about their use of social media and news consumption.

Facebook is the largest social media news source, with about 43 percent of respondents saying they get news there.

YouTube trails behind at 21 percent, and Twitter at 12 percent. Fewer than 10 percent of respondents reported getting news from other platforms.

There appears to be a relationship between demographics and which platforms people use for news sources as well.

Snapchat, for instance, is the most popular news platform for people ages 18-29, while 60 percent of news consumers on Instagram are people of color.

Inaccuracy was by far the biggest concern cited by those polled, when asked about what they disliked most about getting news on social media. A smaller number of people cited political bias and low quality of the news.

Republicans reported they believed social media news is “largely inaccurate” at much higher rates (72 percent) than Democrats (46 percent) and independents (52 percent).

In the last year, the number of people reporting they get their news from Reddit, LinkedIn and YouTube has increased slightly. Fewer people in 2018 reported that they got their news from Twitter and Tumblr than in the previous year.

Earlier Pew research has shown the gap is narrowing between people who get news from television and those who get it online. The audience for network TV news and local news both decreased between 2016 and 2017, according to polls.

Categories / Media, Technology

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...