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More People Get Their News From Social Media Than Newspapers, Study Finds (engadget.com) 82

The Pew Research Center has found that more adults get their news from social media than newspapers. "In a survey conducted earlier this year, 20 percent of adults said they often get news via social media while just 16 percent said the same about print newspapers," reports Engadget. "Television topped the list, with 49 percent of respondents saying they get news from TV often while 33 percent and 26 percent of respondents said news websites and radio were significant news sources for them." From the report: Though television is still the dominant news source for American adults, it has been on a decline -- 57 percent of surveyed adults reported getting their news from television regularly back in 2016. And Pew points out that when you look at online news sources together, so either news websites or social media, it's creeping up to TV as the top source, pulling 43 percent of adults combined. But there are significant differences between age groups. TV is by far the most popular news source for adults aged 50 and over while just 16 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds and 36 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds say they often get news via television. Among the youngest adults (aged 18 to 29), social media is the most popular platform for news, and for 30- to 49-year-olds, websites are the top news source.
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More People Get Their News From Social Media Than Newspapers, Study Finds

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  • That's like saying more people get their nutrition from McDonald's than from the grocery store.
  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday December 10, 2018 @09:13PM (#57783838)

    That explains a lot.

    More seriously: I recently resubscribed to our local newspaper after letting it go for about 4-5 years - before that, I’d been a subscriber for a couple decades. I’m debating if I want to continue. Thing is, the long-form journalism that is the strength of a newspaper has been cut way back - it seems they’re trying to appeal to the younger generation and their short attention span. But what they’ve really managed to do is cut down on the amount of information their product now offers. Not to mention that local news coverage is just about gone, excepting sports.

    And the ads! I understand that they can’t rely on classifieds carrying them anymore, but it’s gotten ridiculous. You have to help not through the ads to find the newspaper.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hdyoung ( 5182939 )
      Long form journalism is still pretty good at the NYT. Other than that, it's mostly moved to the weekly-published magazines. US News and World Report. Economist. Stuff like that.
    • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      Actually worse then that. Nearly all "local" newspapers are owned by the same gigantic media company, not only are local stories near to non-existent, but you can buy your local paper, and the major newspaper in another city 30km or 400km away. And they'll both have the same articles in it. The news media became a self-fulfilling failure because of two things, they cut the hell out of local reporters and relied heavily on wire services for the news, because they believed that international news was more

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday December 10, 2018 @09:16PM (#57783846)
    Secular Talk, Dave Packman, The Young Turks. To be honest they're mostly just commenting on BBC stories and some Al Jazeerez. I'll check CNN & MSNBC but both are more or less the Establishment party line. For general news there's Fark (not the comments section, but the aggregator part).

    I think folks stopped caring about newspapers when they started to be 24/7 nonstop corporate propaganda. Back in the day newspapers would muckrake and dig up dirt on powerful men. That was something worth paying for. These days those men either buy out or sue the papers until they toe the line. What's the point.
    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      Unfortunately even the muckraking can be corporate propaganda. How do you distinguish an independently-researched expose, from a paid-for hit piece? What we need are quality independent journalists who are directly funded, without being hampered by an amoral editor who'll bury dirty laundry for a payoff or because it doesn't fit their agenda/biases.

      • just go look at other content made by the same media outlet. It's no secret Fox News is in the tank for the GOP or that MSNBC is in it for the Clinton wing of the Democratic party. 20 minutes on either site will tell you that. Similarly folks like Secular Talk are part of the left wing progressive movement while Alex Jones and crew again are tanking it for the GOP.

        Now, how to get folks with little or no critical thinking skills to do that is beyond me. It is something that can be taught, but you general
    • Honestly, I've never bought a newspaper in my adult life and I'm near to pushing 40... Almost all of the same content can be found online without the 24 hour time delay. The problem traditional print media has with this isn't losing out on the $1.50 they used to get but the huge advertising revenue from a near captive audience. Online advertising doesn't generate the same revenue.

      Add to that the fact that most commercial papers are now just mouthpieces for their chosen political parties, its little wonde
  • by MindPrison ( 864299 ) on Monday December 10, 2018 @09:21PM (#57783858) Journal

    ...to death for survival these days, anything goes it seems.

    I'm older than 49 myself, and I def. do not trust general media, so I watch a lot of different media and make a "balanced" judgement based on observations from the various sources in order to figure out what "really" happens.

    We've had numerous examples on how news-media can't be 100 percent trusted, for example - remember the independent journalist Tim Pool decided to see how it was in Sweden? Well, he traveled to the questionable areas that allegedly had lots of trouble, and he noticed that the police was following him around, warning him not to stick around.

    Interestingly enough, that's not the story media in Sweden presented to the majority of the population on the national TV channel, they knew "nothing" of this, and denied everything, despite that - anyone who wanted could watch it on Tim Pool's youtube channel, uncut videos with 100% irrefutable evidence, because he was there, and filmed it all, nothing blurry, nothing cut or censored away, he just uncovered the pure reality.

    And media lied it away, to make everything sound "Normal" to the Swedish population. From that day, those of us who wanted it - had clear evidence that it's being tampered with on a high level. To me - well, I suspected it all along, but - I had some kind of childish naive hope that in rich democratic countries like the Scandinavian countries, we would still be spared this, but no. Sadly not.

    So who are we to trust? Trust no one - only your own down to earth judgement, don't buy the first story you hear, find a second opinion - and a third one, and absolutely NOT go by "popular opinion", always seek the truth, not opinions alone.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That would depend on when you saw the reports on Swedish TV.

      There was some coverage after Pool's first two days of walking around Malmo, when he encountered - no trouble. It was later in his visit that he did experience the trouble you describe, and that was also covered in local media - but not a lot, because when there's masked gangs and rioting in your streets, frankly a non-violent encounter happening to some busybody foreign journalist doesn't seem all that newsworthy.

      You're insinuating that there was

  • Print is dead. The story title is misleading.
    BTW I get no news from social media, only stupid people do. Sadly, there are a lot of stupid people.
  • I don't use social media. I get home delivery of the Los Angeles Times(California,USA) which I believe provides reliable info about local and world news and events.Also read a variety of news websites from the US, Europe and Asia. I have always read a lot maybe because my dad read to me and my siblings when I was two or three years old. I trust young people to recognize fact from fiction,
  • If news means keeping up with your schoolmates- go with social media.
    If news means deep celebrity or fashion insights - yeah, social media.
    If news means more verbal vomit from the White House -  social media.
    If news means trends in money markets - go thou to conventional media.
    If news means morning weather and traffic - look in conventional media.
    If news means Brexit or the Middle East - trust the conventional media.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "trust the conventional media"
      That worked so well for past US wars and UK politics.
  • Some one whatsapped me about this...
  • by Amigori ( 177092 ) <eefranklin718.yahoo@com> on Monday December 10, 2018 @10:50PM (#57784130) Homepage
    I still have a newspaper subscription to my house, plus their online edition. The bonuses: a finite amount to read, more local articles vs national, the big sports stat tables on one page, the comics, and the puzzles.

    Social media is good for friends and family, independent news, and news from all corners of the world. But its infinite (essentially)! Easily distracting and the biggest time sink humanity has ever created.

  • Most newspapers these days do nothing but repost trending topics from social media and impart their own lies and biases to boot.

    Why wouldn't most people go directly to social media to get the same information sooner and with less spin?

    Journalism is dead. Honest and accurate reporting is a lot of work and it doesn't make much money anymore.
  • Intelligence requires efforts.
    It's like you get stock quotations from your neighbour TV instead of nyse.com.

  • Until the invasion of Iraq, I never got news from any designated channels. My informative behaviour changed, though, as a result of the national downward slide that I found distasteful.

    I imagine the youth of today that don't have a perception of "before" will be similar now to how I was before.

  • Just because it's social media doesn't mean it's any worse. You still are allowed to think rationally and interpret the information for yourself. It's more dangerous to have a "trusted" source of information you never question or cross check, which can happen in any medium.
  • My local newspaper is pay walled and I don't think it's worth $285 a year just to read the first couple of pages and throw all the other bullshit away. I'm saving trees and money. Television? I thought that died with those phones you plug into the wall.
  • by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2018 @05:43AM (#57784892)

    This is nonsense as news is the original social media feed.

  • I stopped buying newspapers over 20 years ago. Very little news, mostly advertising. Price increases for a paper that was onion skin thin. Complete waste of money. The online versions are cheaper but with just as many ads so screw them too. TV/Radio and Twitter are basically my sources today. Newspapers can blame themselves for putting themselves out of business. The post office is no better, they're pricing themselves out too and the service seems to be getting worse. More news stories of mail being dump
  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2018 @09:05AM (#57785482) Journal

    ... it helps people realize that what is "news" has always been subjective.

    It's not like the three big sellers of laundry detergent ads, or the big syndicate sellers of classified and print ads, had some sort of magical truthy dust that made their "news" super accurate.

    • ... it helps people realize that what is "news" has always been subjective.

      It's not like the three big sellers of laundry detergent ads, or the big syndicate sellers of classified and print ads, had some sort of magical truthy dust that made their "news" super accurate.

      In other words, hopefully the very crappiness of Facebook "news" helps people learn that.

  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2018 @09:43AM (#57785698) Journal

    The headline makes it sound like a bad thing. But in reality, I have a lot of Facebook friends who are into news related to science and tech, as well as politics and current events. They're often posting URLs linking back to relevant news articles of interest. And especially these days, they're all rather careful to pick and choose the sources because of all the "Fake news!" backlash.

    (Even if I already know about something that happened that's clearly legitimate news, like a celebrity death or a new tech announcement from Apple or Intel, I try to find a respected news site with the article to link to, vs. some blog page that covered it.)

    Facebook is just kind of an aggregator of knowledge people feel like sharing. It helps me find news items of interest without sitting through a whole night's TV news broadcast to get only 30 second summaries of things, and a whole lot of "fluff" I don't care about at all.

  • But I also do not get my news from Social Media.
    I have a list of sites that I go to for the news.
    CNN
    Local News Site
    CBSNews
    USA Today
    LA Times
    ABC News
    Washington Post
    National Review
    Time

    Yes, I am republican. I am sure it breaks the few bigoted liberals here that they don't see Fox news listed. Can't stand Fox news, reminds me of MSNBC. Just as uninformed, just as biased, and just as bigoted.
  • by Cro Magnon ( 467622 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2018 @10:43AM (#57786022) Homepage Journal

    Seriously, the good thing about a forum like this is, if someone spouts BS, the people will jump on them. Of course, if it's not BS, they'll still get jumped on, but at least there's a chance of reading both sides.

    • It's good to have your own ideas challenged, too. Noone has a monopoly on truth, and life experience will always prove that.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Wow what a surprise, didn't see that coming! :-(
  • by eepok ( 545733 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2018 @12:03PM (#57786610) Homepage

    News comes FROM a source and is delivered VIA a medium.

    Facebook does not participate in journalism or news distribution. People post articles from news media organizations on Facebook and people read them.

    Similarly, one doesn't "get their news" from Google News. They get news from Reuters, New York Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, WSJ, etc. and its delivered via Google News.

    Of course, one could also "get their news" from the New York Times via their print newspaper, but that's arguably inconsequentially different from reading the NYT online.

Fundamentally, there may be no basis for anything.

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