According to a report by the Reuters Institute, TikTok influencers and celebrities are increasingly becoming the primary source of news for young people, replacing journalists. The report stated that 55 percent of TikTok and Snapchat users and 52 percent of Instagram users get their news from “personalities,” while only 33-42 percent get it from mainstream media and journalists on those platforms. The study was based on interviews with 94,000 people across 46 countries.
The report noted that mainstream journalists are struggling to gain attention on newer social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. The lead author, Nic Newman, highlighted the examples of Matt Welland, a British TikTok user who discusses current affairs and daily life for his 2.8 million subscribers, and footballer Marcus Rashford’s 2020 campaign to get free school meals for children from poor families.
For young people, news is not just limited to politics and international relations. It includes anything new happening in any walk of life, such as sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, current affairs, culture, arts, and technology.
The Decline of Facebook as a News Source
Although Facebook remains the leading source of news among social networks worldwide, its influence is declining. Only 28 percent of people say they use Facebook to get news, compared to 42 percent in 2016. This is likely due to Facebook’s shift away from news-sharing towards a focus on friends and family, and young people’s preference for more video-based apps like TikTok and YouTube.
TikTok now reaches 44 percent of 18-24-year-olds, and 20 percent get their news from the app, up by five percent from the previous year. The biggest challenge for traditional news outlets is the falling number of people who go directly to their websites, with only 22 percent doing so, down by 10 points since 2018, rather than relying on social media links.
The Impact on the News Industry
The shift from journalists to social media personalities as news sources presents a more fundamental change for the news industry than the shift from paper to digital a generation ago, according to Reuters Institute director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. Legacy media now faces a continual transformation of digital as generations come of age who have little interest in many conventional news offers oriented towards older generations’ habits, interests, and values.
The report revealed that 39 percent of subscribers had canceled or renegotiated subscriptions, although the overall share of people paying for news across 20 countries surveyed remained stable compared with last year at 17 percent. The report also found that new audiences are aware of the risks of relying on algorithms, with only 30 percent thinking this is a good way to get a balanced diet of news, but still considered better than relying on journalists, who scored just 27 percent. This is not good news for media firms reliant on subscribers and ad revenue.
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