Social Media Remains a Key News Source for Americans

With the U.S. election just six weeks away, this may not be the most reassuring chart you’ll see this week:

According to the latest study conducted by Pew Research, social media continues to play a crucial role in news consumption, with 54% of U.S. adults indicating that they get at least some of their news input from social apps.

Which is fraught with misinformation, conspiracy theories, etc. Fake reports regularly go viral in social apps, amplified as a result of confirmation bias, or via coordinated manipulation programs, and as such, it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s made up, within social media feeds.

And while new methods like X’s Community Notes offer additional hope for broader detection of hoaxes and false reports, based on a wider range of fact-checkers, various bad actors are also going to efforts to discredit official sources and news providers, in order to seed certain angles and stories that benefit their interests.

Essentially, you don’t know who can be fully trusted in social media posts. And while official news outlets, written by professional journalists, ideally incorporate a level of fact-checking and exploration that provides more context to their updates, some of these have also been shown to be biased, and misled by certain elements.

So is it a good thing that most Americans get at least some of their news info from social media apps?

I guess it’s unavoidable, based on the ubiquity of social media connection in modern life. Platform fact-checking, via vetted providers, does provide an additional level of assurance, and again, trusted providers should also provide some measure of faith that what they’re sharing is correct.

But it does seem a little concerning, especially when you also consider this aspect:

“59% of X users get news there, as do a similar share of users on Truth Social (57%), the site owned by former President Donald Trump. About half of TikTok users (52%) say they regularly get news on the site, up from 43% in 2023 and just 22% in 2020.”

X has become a hotbed for political conspiracy theories and ill-informed takes since Elon Musk took over at the app, while Truth Social is radically biased towards one side of politics.

Truth Social, however, doesn’t have many users in relative terms (5m actives), though TikTok, with over 150 million U.S. users, is currently facing a ban in the U.S. due to concerns that it seeds pro-China messaging to Western audiences.

So there are some problematic elements, though Facebook remains the leading social news source overall.

Which is interesting, considering Meta’s overt effort to step away from news content, in favor of more light-hearted, short-form video clips.

The latter drives engagement, without all the scrutiny that comes with news updates, and Meta’s been keen to distance itself from such controversy, in the lead-up to the election. Because Meta doesn’t want to get blamed once again if the election result doesn’t go how people expect, and as such, it’s getting out of the news business entirely, though the data here shows that it remains a key connector, presumably based on news updates shared by friends and family in the app.

Which could be just as impactful, and damaging, as Meta showcasing news content itself. But if Meta’s not amplifying it, it dilutes the blame, while also giving Meta a means to get rid of publisher revenue share deals, and reduce its costs.

But overall, the impact of social media on news consumption remains concerning, and underlines the impact that social platforms will have on voter actions come November.    

Are people now better informed through advanced measures like fact-checking and Community Notes, or are we being more manipulated and ill-informed, through trending topics and influencers?

It’s hard to say, but clearly, many people are still reliant on social apps for their news input.