Document details

Digital News Report 2018

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2018), 143 pp.

Contains many diagrams

"The use of social media for news has started to fall in a number of key markets after years of continuous growth. Usage is down six percentage points in the United States, and is also down in the UK and France. Almost all of this is due to a specific decline in the discovery, posting, and sharing of news in Facebook. At the same time, we continue to see a rise in the use of messaging apps for news as consumers look for more private (and less confrontational) spaces to communicate. WhatsApp is now used for news by around half of our sample of online users in Malaysia (54%) and Brazil (48%) and by around third in Spain (36%) and Turkey (30%). Across all countries, the average level of trust in the news in general remains relatively stable at 44%, with just over half (51%) agreeing that they trust the news media they themselves use most of the time. By contrast, 34% of respondents say they trust news they find via search and fewer than a quarter (23%) say they trust the news they find in social media. Over half (54%) agree or strongly agree that they are concerned about what is real and fake on the internet. This is highest in countries like Brazil (85%), Spain (69%), and the United States (64%) where polarised political situations combine with high social media use. It is lowest in Germany (37%) and the Netherlands (30%) where recent elections were largely untroubled by concerns over fake content." (Key findings, page 9)