Audiences lean into video news and online influencers, raising misinformation concerns and new dilemmas for traditional publishers
● AI chatbots are also emerging as an alternative news source, with 12% of younger audiences in our global sample using them to get information about current event
● South Africa has one of the highest overall trust scores for news at 55%, ranking 5th out of 48 countries in our survey. 50% of people say they use Facebook for news.
This year’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report documents how an accelerating shift towards news consumption via social media and video platforms is further diminishing the influence of traditional news organisations and supercharging a fragmented alternative media environment containing an array of podcasters, YouTubers, and TikTokers. At the same time, chatbots powered by generative AI are emerging as a new way to access information, especially for people under 35 — raising concerns about a potential loss of search referral traffic to publisher websites and apps.
Despite this, audiences remain mostly sceptical about news they find on both social and AI platforms, partly due to concerns about access to reliable content. Online influencers and politicians are seen as the biggest threats in this regard, while the majority expect generative AI to make the news cheaper to produce but less accurate and less trustworthy. These concerns could offer opportunities for publishers, as audiences say they still turn to news brands when checking for reliable information, ahead of sources such as politicians, influencers, and trusted personal contacts.
As arguments rage about content moderation on social media, the public is divided over whether platforms should be removing more or less content that may be false but not illegal. There are sharp differences between the US and Europe and between ideologies, with those on the right more likely to oppose removing content. Trust levels in the news overall remain stable for the third year in a row, but selective news avoidance is still at an all-time high, against the backdrop of the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
These are some of the key findings of the 14th edition of the Digital News Report, which is based on an online survey of almost 100,000 people in 48 markets.
