The news isn’t what it used to be.
In November, Pew Research Center released a report on news influencers and how American audiences engage with them. The US-based think tank found that of the 10,658 adults surveyed in the summer of 2024, 21 percent or one-in-five respondents said they got their news from influencers, and that there were “minimal differences between Republicans and Democrats.”
Pew defines “news influencers” as people “who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers” on any of five big social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and TikTok.
While 48 percent of the 500 influencers studied don’t have a clear political orientation, 21 percent identify as left-leaning and 27 percent identify as right-leaning, leaving three percent in the “other” category that includes moderate, libertarian, and other ideologies.
TikTok stands out as the only platform with more left-leaning news influencers at 28 percent, outnumbering right-leaning influencers by three percent. While across all platforms, male influencers outnumber female influencers by a two-to-one ratio, TikTok’s news influencers are 50 percent male and 45 percent female with the remaining five percent being nonbinary or whose gender is not determined.
Another key point in the report is that 77 percent of news influencers have no past or present affiliation with a news media organization, and that the remaining influencers who did have affiliations were less likely to express a political orientation. But Pew also found that when “they do explicitly identify with a political orientation, news influencers with links to a news outlet tend to be right-leaning.”
On the topics the news influencers cover, the report states that politics and elections “are by far the most common topic for news influencers in 2024.” 43 percent of content analyzed from July to August 2024 was about civic issues with 55 percent of these posts being about politics, government, or the US presidential election.
Online news consumption in the Philippines
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s 2024 Digital News Report showed that over the last year, the use of Facebook for news has declined globally by four percentage points. Meanwhile, video has become a more popular source of news, especially for young people. “We find an increasing focus on partisan commentators, influencers, and young news creators, especially on YouTube and TikTok,” the report said.
The report indicated that Filipinos used Facebook the most for news, at 61 percent, even though its usage has gone down by 11 percentage points since 2023. In the Philippines, X was used the least, at nine percent, while TikTok usage for news was at 23 percent. The Reuters Institute also found that 80 percent of Filipinos watch shortform online news videos.
82 percent of the Filipinos surveyed said they sourced their news online and on social media, as opposed to television (46 percent) and print (13 percent). Phones are the most used device for news at 83 percent with computers at 60 percent, and tablets at 36 percent.
The report also found that only 37 percent of Filipinos trust the news in general. In a survey by pollster and think tank by Pulse Asia, it revealed that 58 percent of Filipinos said that social media influencers, bloggers, and vloggers spread fake news, while 40 percent believed that journalists also peddled fake news.
Statistics in the Philippines and the US reflect a distrust in the news with the Reuters Institute reporting that only 32 percent trust the news in general. “The vitality of alternative voices in social and video networks in some ways highlights perceived weaknesses of news organisations on such issues as trust, diversity, and digital storytelling — at least with some people,” the report reads. “In that sense, traditional media have much to learn on how to better engage audiences in this increasingly complex and competitive space.”
