How is Digital News Being Consumed Internationally? #DNR23
The “vast majority” of those under 35 get their online news via social media, search engines or news aggregators.
The “vast majority” of those under 35 get their online news via social media, search engines or news aggregators. Nic Newman, a founding member of the BBC News website, wrote today's Executive Summary of the Overview and key findings of the 2023 Digital News Report. In partnership with Reuters and Oxford, the annual survey, which this year covers 46 markets, accounts for more than 1/2 of world's population, not the least of which are the young. “Our data show, more clearly than ever, how this shift is strongly influenced by habits of the youngest generations, who have grown up with social media and nowadays often pay more attention to influencers or celebrities than they do to journalists, even when it comes to news,” Newman writes. This isn’t a great surprise, as we have all been wrestling with consequences of the slow death of traditional news — from network news to now cable — for some time now.
The data includes more than 93,000 respondents who participated in a YouGov survey. Of the methodology, they explain:
This study has been commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to understand how news is being consumed in a range of countries. Research was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2023.
The report is exhaustive and, mirabile dictu, international(ish). Three English-speaking African countries are included (as are many parts of Asia and Latin America). Though, I cannot fail to note, the report does not have data on the percentages of paying news customers in South Africa, Nigeria or Kenya, the three African countries surveyed. Further: “Data from India, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa are representative of younger English-speakers and not the national population, because it is not possible to reach other groups in a representative way using an online survey,” they say in the methodology. Duly noted. The report still goes out of its way, compared with other online media polling, to include parts of the Global South.
Some of the findings are (forgivably) old school. For example, of respondents more than half say they “‘worry that more personalised news may mean that I miss out on important information’ (48%) and ‘miss out on challenging viewpoints (see above).’” I say forgivably old school because it is hard for me to imagine the average millennial consumer of news through social media worrying about missing out on challenging viewpoints. Perhaps they are saying so because the question is leading? Or maybe the sample contained a lot of people over 50-years old? It just seems to me, as a contemporary media observer, to strain credulity. Young people who grew up with social media don’t feel as if they are missing out on well thought out counterarguments to their particular news silos, unless I am missing something.
“Personalization” is a term often used in the report. It refers to the trend in which the consumption of news is now tied to our social media feeds. News is no longer guarded by Gatekeepers, like the old traditional models of the Evening News or, to some degree, the daily newspaper, which is becoming increasingly rare in news deserts and information archipelagos. A quarter of all US newspapers died between 2004 and 2020, a 2020 UNC report found. “This is a super difficult environment for the biz of news,” Rasmus Nielsen Tweets. “On one side, various competing platforms are attracting most online advertising. On the other, many different subscription offers compete w/news, and most news subs go to a few winners, mostly upmarket national titles.”
As expected, there is a correlation between exposure to news media criticism and distrust in news. And, in this age of populism and democratic backsliding, Politicians and political activists are the most frequently cited sources of news media criticism. In the curious case of imperiled Peru, which is one of the youngest democracies in the Americas and a nation with an extraordinarily high distrust of the news. Peru, interestingly enough, further struggles with misinformation, which poisons the well of trust in news and explains some of its anti-democratic headwinds. “At the higher end of exposure are many Latin American and Southern/Eastern European countries, where as many as two-thirds of people say they very or quite often see news media criticism,” writes Dr. Craig. T Robertson. “Highest of all is Peru, at 71%.” Croatia (69%), Greece (66%) and Argentina (66%) all come close, but nothing quite like Peru.
In almost a decade of tracking, the report found that across 20 rich, newspaper-centric countries, 17% on average are willing to pay. This raises the question, have rich, newspaper-centric countries reached a peak for paying subscribers of online news?
Trust in the news has fallen since the pandemic, but not everywhere. “Trust in the news has fallen across markets by a further 2 points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made in the pandemic,” Tweets the Reuters Institute. “Trust is declining, and people are shifting away from websites just as they shifted away from print,” is how Adam Tinworth characterizes the report’s findings. What percentage of that is due to the post-COVID environment? We are no longer limited by lockdowns. The findings in Mexico, on this matter, are quite interesting. While trust in the news has been declining for some time, the numbers have dropped precipitously since COVID, which is interesting. "The country has seen a steady decline in trust in the news from 50% in 2019 to 36% today."
That having been said, trust in news is above 50% in countries like: Portugal, the Netherlands, Thailand, Sweden, Norway, Finland (69%!), Denmark, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Ireland, which fell to 47% trust from 52% is still high, relatively speaking to this present age. And more good news. News sharing on private messaging apps, presently all the rage in Latin American, Asia-Pacific, and Eastern European markets, is cause for some celebration. According to Dr. Kirsten Eddy:
Our data on news sharing over time also show one closed form of sharing – via private messaging apps – growing, even amid steady declines in open forms of sharing and commenting as well as other closed forms of sharing. Across all markets since 2018, sharing news stories via social networks has steadily decreased, on average, from 26% to 19%, and sharing via email is down from 12% to 7%. Meanwhile, sharing news stories via messaging apps has increased, on average, from 17% to 22%. This is particularly pronounced in markets in Latin America, South East Asia, and Southern Europe with higher overall use of private messaging apps – such as Colombia (35%), Malaysia (33%), and Spain (30%), where nearly a third of people regularly share stories via instant messengers.
Finally, TikTok. The wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance is used heavily in the global South. It also has some of the youngest viewers and thus information about TikTok adoption ought to be coveted by any news organization. The countries that the report show with the highest and lowest use of TikTok are an unpredictable grab bag, to be frank. For example, the aforementioned, imperiled Peru, which is a nation with an extraordinarily high distrust of the news, has the highest use of TikTok for the purposes of news. Even more confounding, Thailand, which has an over 50% trust in the news, ties Peru for the highest adoption of TikTok! Would it be too conspiracy-minded to wonder if Beijing is somehow influencing Peru’s democratic backsliding? And, finally, Denmark has the lowest adoption of TikTok for news (2%), but one of the highest levels of trust in the news. So, make of that, dear reader, what you will …
Q&A: Hiba Morgan on the fighting in Sudan and the press (CJR)
Ukraine, Russia, and the Lessons of World War I (Margaret MacMillan/Foreign Affairs)
"Anderson Cooper explained that CNN would monitor the political rally for news and bring anything noteworthy to viewers. The move to not air Trump's remarks live notably represented a departure from how the network handled Trump's post-New York arraignment speech. I" (Reliable Sources)
What Saudi Arabia's Shanghai Cooperation deal means for China and the region (Middle East Eye)
Why CNN and MSNBC Didn’t Carry Trump’s Post-Arraignment Speech Live (Charlotte Klein)