The Pew Research Center study of more than 2,000 Americans found that for both Facebook and Twitter, 63% of users surveyed said they were getting news there – up from 52% for Twitter and 47% for Facebook in 2013.
The Pew Research Center study of more than 2,000 Americans found that for both Facebook and Twitter, 63% of users surveyed said they were getting news there – up from 52% for Twitter and 47% for Facebook in 2013.
With 66% of US adults currently using Facebook and 17% using Twitter, that indicates that one in 10 Americans are getting news from Twitter, while four in 10 are getting it from Facebook.
These changes can be tied to many factors including personal behavior, increased activity by news organisations, as well as changes in the platforms’ filtering algorithms or content structures,” claimed the report’s authors. They added that the trend cuts across demographics including gender, race, age, education and household income. “There was not, in other words, any one demographic driving the shift.”
Although both social networks have the same portion of users getting news on these sites, there are significant differences in their potential news distribution strengths. The proportion of users who say they follow breaking news on Twitter, for example, is nearly twice as high as those who say they do so on Facebook (59% vs. 31%) – lending support, perhaps, to the view that Twitter’s great strength is providing as-it-happens coverage and commentary on live events.
On both platforms, entertainment is the most popular news category: 78% of Twitter news users and 74% of Facebook news users report regularly seeing posts about it on these services. National government and politics (72% of Twitter news users and 61% of Facebook news users); sports (70% and 55% respectively); and local people and events (63% and 69%) are also popular topics.
“Roughly a quarter of both Facebook (28%) and Twitter (23%) news users at least sometimes post or tweet about news,” added the report, which also noted differences in the importance ascribed to the social networks as news sources, according to age. 49% of Twitter news users aged 18-34 say it’s the most or an important way they get news, versus 31% of people aged 35 and older. For Facebook, the respective percentages are 49% and 34%.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.