The findings, drawn from a survey of more than 10,000 U.S. adults and an analysis of social media posts posted this summer by influencers, provide an indication of how Americans consumed the news during the height of the U.S. presidential campaign that President-elect Donald Trump ultimately won.
The study examined accounts run by people who post and talk regularly about current events - including through podcasts and newsletters - and have more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X or TikTok. They include people across the political spectrum, such as the progressive podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen and conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, as well as non-partisan personalities like Chris Cillizza, a former CNN analyst who now runs his own newsletter.
The report found that news influencers posted mostly about politics and the election, followed by social issues like race and abortion and international events, such as the Israel-Hamas war. Most of them – 63% - are men and the majority – 77% - have no affiliation, or background, with a media organization. Pew said about half of the influencers it sampled did not express a clear political orientation. From the ones that did, slightly more of them identified as conservative than as liberal.
I don’t really understand this. If I’m reading news that’s shared here, does that count as getting my news from social media? It’s usually a post from a source, not just some random guy telling me stuff he made up. I get that there are people who talk about the news on the internet, but is that just with no reference to the actual news/source? What’s this breakdown in the definition of journalism? Do I live under a rock? What the fuck is going on here?
The focus is who is providing the news on social media, which is influencers … who often have a vested interest in passing off rumors and innuendo as actual news.
I bet it’s more than that.
Are you an influencer?
I’m not seeing a source to check what they define as social media but I’m gonna just call bullshit in general.
20 percent of people get their news. full stop. most people dgaf.
As opposed to entertainment pundits on cable news
I take psychic damage every time I discover where the people around me get their news from. They dont even corroborate sources!
That’s the benefit of a place like Lemmy: you get a lot of different news from a lot of different sources, so you can corroborate and read different viewpoints on the same issue.
And it’s full of people who will call bullshit and provide evidence.
These two use Trump as their cash cow. They are 100% fake.
That was my first thought: I’m not really familiar with the content of any influencers, but I assume the best of them are better than the worst of the more conventional news sources.
Or people on Lemmy.
Or the first you know of some news is memes making jokes about it.
I think this has become such a thing because the Right has essentially taken control of current mainstream media, with them constantly doing things like giving Trump (and other fascists) the benefit of the doubt and “both sides” everything.
But the right also has a large and widespread network for their lies/disinformation/conspiracy theories on “independent media” as well. Look at the top 10 podcasts/web shows (on YouTube/etc.), or at the number of just hate “social” networks, and what amount of those push anything outside of Trump-land talking points?
That’s number is staggeringly lower than I would have guessed.
I think if this were broken down and listed by a few demographics like age it’d probably have percentages closer to what you’d guess, for a few groups. TV-loving boomers probably lower the average and Gen Z is likely well above 20% for example
Is this where they are hearing about how all the gangs of immigrants are taking over apartment complexes? I heard someone recently list this as one of the big reasons they voted for trump.
