1 in 5: Social Media is The News

“About one-in-five U.S. adults (21%) say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media.” (Pew Research)

Worth noting, the study wasn’t looking at Substack (or Medium). The study was looking at “traditional” social media platforms.

Where do folks get their news? Twitter (X…) is at the top of the list. Followed by Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Threads, TikTok, LinkedIn... This is all troubling.

Getting your “news” on Twitter now is basically like getting your news from a crossover of FoxNews and pick-your-poison conspiratorial alt news bizarro universe. I’m not saying it’s all fake news, I’m saying there’s so much noise, so much misinformation and disinformation, that it’s difficult to know if you’re getting a sense of the real story leaving aside any number of biases.

Backing this up, the Pew study found that more news influencers are Right-leaning than Left-leaning. We don’t currently have a Left equivalent of Joe Rogan, for example. There’s no one who talks for 3-hours and has a cultish following. Sorry Ira Glass.

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Only 23%

“News influencers are mostly voices from beyond the newsroom: About three-quarters (77%) have no background or affiliation with a news organization. Roughly a quarter (23%) of news influencers work for a news organization (or did so in the past).”

This means the majority of those who are sharing “The News” have no previous experience working in a position that required them to adhere to a code of journalistic ethics.

This is going to keep coming up because information literacy is urgent and necessary.

Over time, I’m planning to do a much deeper dive into information literacy, media literacy, social media literacy, digital citizenry, civics, and related topics that intersect with gaining a thorough understanding of how we can improve literacy in an ever-shifting landscape.

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In 2024, people were unsurprisingly focused on current events (read: politics).

A lot of social media news was about the U.S. presidential election.

Trump seems to have understood that these spaces were the new reality tv.

As he desires, Trump is the subject of a great deal of posting on social media. People are talking about him.

18% of posts, in 2024, concerned social issues, and 14% related to international issues.

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“65% say news influencers on social media have helped them better understand current events and civic issues, while just 9% say they have made them more confused. About a quarter (26%) say they have not made much of a difference.”

I recommend looking at the findings for a more nuanced perspective.

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Is Mark a Professional Journalist? No.

At this point, you might be wondering… “Hey, wait a minute, what is Mark’s news industry experience?”

The answer is—limited.

I took a journalism class in high school (which was my favorite class in high school).

Summer after freshman year of college I interned at the local newspaper (sadly, now shuttered like so many important local watchdogs).

I’m a trained professional… in a more generalist sense of writing and editing… but not strictly under a code of journalistic integrity. While I aim to be even-headed and even-handed in my positions as well as adherence to moral/ethical standards, I’m imperfect.

What I can promise is that I’ll never intentionally lie to you.

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13%

Ambiguity is difficult for us.

Apparently, so is moderation.

Moderate/Liberal (which sounds like another way of saying “slightly left of center” or “quasi-centrist” to me) is the category that seems to cause the most confusion when people engage with an influencer. To be clear, I mean people were most confused when they engaged with content from a news influencer who shared values that are more aligned with Moderate/Liberal views as opposed to more extreme views on either end of the political spectrum.

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2%

18% of news discussed by news influencers on social media platforms was on the subject of “social issues”. Breaking down the 18%, 4% involved issues regarding race, 2% LGBTQ+ issues, 2% abortion and reproductive health. It’s important to call attention to the low percentages here.

Culture wars have amplified the perception of how much we focus on certain subjects in our society. The extremes on both the Left and the Right have an outsized view of the percentage of those groups who hold extreme positions.

For comparison, 5% of overall posts discussed the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. This actually makes sense as an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate is a wildly crazy news piece. I’ve heard some experts say they thought mainstream media was not reporting on it as much as they should have been. Not that mainstream media swept it under the rug, but rather that it’s such a big deal that it should have remained part of the news cycle for longer.

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Male Domination

Overall, there are more men who are social media news influencers than women. Further, a greater percentage openly identify as right-leaning.

Interestingly, of all the platforms, TikTok has the least dramatic gender gap in news influencers. 50% men and 45% women. There’s an unknown percentage based on those who are nonbinary or their gender was not determined. Notably, there’s more LGBTQ+ support on TikTok (openly stated in profiles). Still, this clocked in at 13%.

There was a poll from Gallup not too long ago showing that, among Americans, about 7.8% of the population identifies as part of the queer community. About 1 in 5 Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+. It’s interesting that this just so happens to be the same number of adults who regularly get their news from social media. The world is, in fact, full of coincidences. The takeaway here is that only about 8% of Americans identify as queer whereas 13% of those on TikTok do. This would seem to indicate that TikTok is a queer-friendly space. This makes me wonder about reasons why there have been strong attempts to shut down the platform in the U.S. I’m not intentionally being conspiratorial here. I believe the real reason is that TikTok has been shown to be highly addictive. I’ve previously called attention to recent findings that they have determined the number of videos a person has to watch on TikTok before they become addicted. 260 videos or approximately 35 minutes.

The broader picture relates to concerns about moral panic vs. reality.

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1/3 + 1/5

About a third of social media news influencers host a podcast and about a fifth have a newsletter.

Important to keep in mind that news influencers tend to act as if they are presenting information that is raw and unfiltered and that they are free from the constraints of traditional mainstream media. However, most of these influencers are selling something. At least 20% of these influencers are selling merchandise and sponsorships are common.

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51%

51% of Instagram news influencers are on FOUR or more other social media platforms.

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Is the Medium the Message, the Metaphor, or both?

“My argument is limited to saying that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse; it does so by encouraging certain uses of the intellect, by favoring certain definitions of intelligence and wisdom, and by demanding a certain kind of content—in a phrase, by creating new forms of truth-telling.” (Neil Postman, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, 1985)

See how this relates to what is being discussed in a previous essay I wrote— Undead Poetics.

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Video is King

Platforms that promote video content are go to places for news content.

YouTube has the most news influencers who focus on politics. Only 12% of YouTube news influencers have a prior affiliation with a traditional news organization. These are not trained professionals.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a video worth?