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News consumers around the world are now turning more to social media and video platforms than traditional outlets for information, a respected report said Tuesday, warning that old-style business models are under threat.
The year 2026 marks “a significant milestone: for the first time, social media and video network consumption is now ahead of other news sources as the most widely used source of news globally”, at 54 percent, wrote Jim Egan, lead author of the report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
The annual report from the institute, attached to the University of Oxford, is a closely-watched tracker of trends reshaping the news media.
Researchers based their findings on online surveys of almost 100,000 people in 48 countries, run early this year by pollsters YouGov.
This year’s edition found 54 percent of respondents said they got news from social media or video platforms in the week before the survey — rising to 56 percent if AI chatbots like ChatGPT were included.
That outstripped the 52 percent who referenced TV news, 51 percent for newspaper apps or websites, and 21 percent for radio.
While it was the first time new platforms topped the old in the average of the global survey, individual countries had already passed the turning point.
In some countries, though, notably in Europe, traditional media websites and apps remain ahead for now.
“It is better to think of this more as a drift rather than a shift, but it is nevertheless an important moment,” Egan wrote.
Across the global survey, three out of 10 respondents said social media or video platforms were their main source of news.
Among 18-24-year-olds, the proportion rose to half.
Different social networks also breed different usage patterns.
Most of the respondents visited X or YouTube specifically to find news. But on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, users were likelier to stumble across news while doing something else.
Television remained the leading news source only among 45-54-year-olds and over-55s.
The responses about traditional media apps and websites were also grim reading, with none of the age tranches surveyed saying they were their first port of call for news.
“This has obvious implications in terms of prospects for audience reach, engagement, and for monetization potential,” wrote Egan, a former senior executive at the BBC.
The scale of the challenge in finding the revenues to pay for reporting is clear from the fact that just 17 percent of respondents said they pay for information online.
Meanwhile, internet giants such as Google and Meta have captured a giant share of the advertising market — at the expense of traditional media.
The 180-page report reinforces large-scale trends acting on the media for years, including the growing appetite for video content, increasing power for individual news content creators, and loss of confidence in traditional media.
That last measure reached an all-time low, with just 37 percent of respondents saying they trust “most news most of the time”.
People are also increasingly turning to AI chatbots for news, which had been the focus of last year’s Reuters Institute report.
Some 10 percent of respondents said they used chatbots for news weekly, up from seven percent last year.
“How to respond to the rapid development and diffusion of generative AI is the biggest 360-degree challenge for today’s news leaders and policymakers,” Egan wrote.
More broadly, he noted “marked volatility in many of the indicators” tracked in the report, against a backdrop of increased geopolitical uncertainty.
“Some of this year’s report makes for unsettling reading, but it is an especially unsettled time both for the news media sector and for the world at large,” Egan wrote.
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There is no “journalism” in the sense of the word anymore, only opinion making, and what’s worse, crooked media who tries hard to make it look like 90% of the people is thinking the same thing when in reality it’s just the loud small minority. Like when everyone is shamed and programmed to hate a random person for no reason at all (Justin Bieber, etc.).
The mainstream media have done this to themselves. People my age can still remember when the news had some class, dignity and very little partisanship woven into its fabric. Now it’s the entire carpet, and they wonder why people are tuning out. The closest thing I can find to the lost era of journalistic integrity is actually NHK! Some weird stuff happened behind the scenes, but their output is still solid. As for JT, well, you guys know what you are doing, but in your defense, at least we get to comment. Take that away, and the business model just disappears, like much of the legacy media is doing as we speak. The great exodus. Not saying that’s a good thing either, but once integrity is compromised its almost impossible to get it back.
As for JT, well, you guys know what you are doing, but in your defense, at least we get to comment. Take that away, and the business model just disappears, like much of the legacy media is doing as we speak.
I remember well the last days CNN still had a comment section back in 2014, very few people were on their side, everyone was well aware how disgustingly dishonest they were (this years before the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”). So they’ve done away with the comments after giving an excuse no one believed, completely imploding themselves.
I remember well the last days CNN still had a comment section back in 2014, very few people were on their side, everyone was well aware how disgustingly dishonest they were (this years before the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”). So they’ve done away with the comments after giving an excuse no one believed, completely imploding themselves.
And this is another reason why people don’t take the msm seriously in any capacity, they want to shape and control the narrative whether they silence you, cut you off, delete or modify posts, censure you, cut your mic or your camera interview, talk over you and the list goes on and on, you can’t take any of them seriously, because true media will always allow opposing points of view, this is why I love X, you are free to say whatever you want and that is EXACTLY how free speech is supposed to be always be.
Endless victimhood.
X does not have unrestricted freedom of speech. Their moderation policy is responsive and restrict a large amount of content.
Also as a private company users are not in any way at all protected by the first amendment.
Endless victimhood.
No because we have choices unlike when Biden was in office.
For the most part and the majority of the time, they do, compared to this site, night and day. on that platform all sides have the right to say what they provided you are not advocating for the killing of someone because of that will get you banned.
X does not have unrestricted freedom of speech. Their moderation policy is responsive and restrict a large amount of content.
When it was Twitter, yes, I was blocked and muted all the time, not anymore since Musk took it over
Also as a private company users are not in any way at all protected by the first amendment
That was not the issue.
Bob FosseToday 01:38 pm JST
Endless victimhood.
Your comments don’t get deleted because you just accept the narrative. Wouldn’t it annoy you if they were?
X does not have unrestricted freedom of speech. Their moderation policy is responsive and restrict a large amount of content.
You have no way to know that, unless you work for them.
Endless victimhood.
Your comments don’t get deleted because you just accept the narrative. Wouldn’t it annoy you if they were?
Comments get deleted because they are hateful or abusive. Same here.
X does not have unrestricted freedom of speech. Their moderation policy is responsive and restrict a large amount of content.
You have no way to know that, unless you work for them.
Nonsense.
Traditional Media just can’t compete with the authenticity of the new digital media formats. Viewers can easily tell who’s controlled by stakeholders and who’s ‘real’.
Media Markets like all markets must constantly ‘self-correct’, thus competition and choice = Healthy transparency, as the alternative’s corruption/’fake news’
Comments get deleted because they are hateful or abusive. Same here.
Who determines what hateful is? If I say, I don’t like Obama because he was a horrible President, or I support the J6 protesters, our comments often get deleted, but when libs call Trump every name in the book or conservatives for that matter or praise Obama no comment is ever deleted, so where is the abuse or hate? How is that justified when both sides are expressing their opinions, why do we have to agree with the liberal mindset or ideology? Why?
Readers, please stay on topic. The story is about where people get their news from.
All of my news is coming from the traditional media sites, a wide range of political views, and not social network sites, which I do not trust.
I’m very selective about where I go for news, but I’m definitely looking for more center of the road. There are a few out there, but not many
This is because people are not too bright. I use online video but only OF traditional media.
This is because people are not too bright
Based on what? Your own personal opinion. Who gets to determine who is bright and who isn’t because they get their news sources different from yours?
And this is another reason why people don’t take the msm seriously in any capacity, they want to shape and control the narrative whether they silence you, cut you off, delete or modify posts, censure you, cut your mic or your camera interview, talk over you and the list goes on and on, you can’t take any of them seriously, because true media will always allow opposing points of view, this is why I love X, you are free to say whatever you want and that is EXACTLY how free speech is supposed to be always be.
And just everything you said above can be well represented in a 9 min. interview/spat John Lemon had with Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke back in 2016.
10 years later and it still makes my stomach turn, legacy media in a nutshell.
X isn’t a ‘selective’ place for news. It’s an open sewer.
Television remained the leading news source only among 45-54-year-olds and over-55s.
People don’t watch TV news anymore. Youtube has taken over – for the first time, it’s even beaten Netflix
“From broadcast news to streaming and platforms: The changing landscape of news video”
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2026/broadcast-streaming-platforms-changing-landscape-news-video
The following chart shows the proportion of people in each region in our survey who say they consume news videos weekly on each platform. The heaviest news video consumption is happening in Africa, Latin America, and South-East Asia, but even in Europe and North America there is widespread adoption. The regional differences are interesting, with half of people surveyed in Africa (54%) and Asia (47%) consuming news videos on YouTube, compared to just a quarter (24%) in Europe.
“YouTube’s Total Dominance: For the First Time Ever, It Has Overtaken Netflix in Daily Viewing Time”
https://quasa.io/media/youtube-s-total-dominance-for-the-first-time-ever-it-has-overtaken-netflix-in-daily-viewing-time
YouTube has officially become the world’s most-watched video platform by time spent… The gap is small on paper, but symbolically enormous: the free, creator-driven video giant has edged past the subscription streaming king in the one metric that actually matters — how much real human attention it commands every single day.
The heaviest YouTube users are in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. But the most striking growth story is happening among older audiences: engagement is rising fastest among viewers 55 and older.
The platform once dismissed as a teen distraction has quietly become the default screen-time destination for an entire generation that grew up with broadcast TV.
X isn’t a ‘selective’ place for news. It’s an open sewer.
But this site is also on X, so what are you saying?
bass4funkJune 16 04:14 pm JST
This is because people are not too bright
Based on what? Your own personal opinion. Who gets to determine who is bright and who isn’t because they get their news sources different from yours?
Randos on the internet are not credible journalists. This will not change.
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