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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025
Deep Insights

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Craig T. Robertson, Amy Ross Arguedas, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2025), 170 pp.

"• Engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows. This is particularly the case in the United States where polling overlapped with the first few weeks of the new Trum ... p administration. Social media news use was sharply up (+6pp) but there was no ‘Trump bump’ for traditional sources. • Personalities and influencers are, in some countries, playing a significant role in shaping public debates. One-fifth (22%) of our United States sample says they came across news or commentary from popular podcaster Joe Rogan in the week after the inauguration, including a disproportionate number of young men. In France, young news creator Hugo Travers (HugoDécrypte) reaches 22% of under-35s with content distributed mainly via YouTube and TikTok. Young influencers also play a significant role in many Asian countries, including Thailand. • News use across online platforms continues to fragment, with six online networks now reaching more than 10% weekly with news content, compared with just two a decade ago. Around a third of our global sample use Facebook (36%) and YouTube (30%) for news each week. Instagram (19%) and WhatsApp (19%) are used by around a fifth, while TikTok (16%) remains ahead of X at 12%. • Data show that usage of X for news is stable or increasing across many markets, with the biggest uplift in the United States (+8pp), Australia (+6pp), and Poland (+6pp). Since Elon Musk took over the network in 2022 many more right-leaning people, notably young men, have flocked to the network, while some progressive audiences have left or are using it less frequently. Rival networks like Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon are making little impact globally, with reach of 2% or less for news. • Changing platform strategies mean that video continues to grow in importance as a source of news. Across all markets the proportion consuming social video has grown from 52% in 2020 to 65% in 2025 and any video from 67% to 75%. In the Philippines, Thailand, Kenya, and India more people now say they prefer to watch the news rather than read it, further encouraging the shift to personality-led news creators. • Our survey also shows the importance of news podcasting in reaching younger, better-educated audiences. The United States has among the highest proportion (15%) accessing one or more podcasts in the last week, with many of these now filmed and distributed via video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. By contrast, many northern European podcast markets remain dominated by public broadcasters or big legacy media companies and have been slower to adopt video versions. • TikTok is the fastest growing social and video network, adding a further 4pp across markets for news and reaching 49% of our online sample in Thailand (+10pp) and 40% in Malaysia (+9pp). But at the same time people in those markets see the network as one of the biggest threats when it comes to false or misleading information, along with Facebook. • Overall, over half our sample (58%) say they remain concerned about their ability to tell what is true from what is false when it comes to news online, a similar proportion to last year. Concern is highest in Africa (73%) and the United States (73%), with lowest levels in Western Europe (46%). • When it comes to underlying sources of false or misleading information, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest threat worldwide (47%), along with national politicians (47%). Concern about influencers is highest in African countries such as Nigeria (58%) and Kenya (59%), while politicians are considered the biggest threat in the United States (57%), Spain (57%), and much of Eastern Europe." (Executive summary, page 10-11) more

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Women and Leadership in the News Media 2025: Evidence from 12 Markets

Amy Ross Arguedas, Mitali Mukherjee, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2025), 11 pp.

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Strategies for Building Trust in News: What the Public Say They Want Across Four Countries

Sayan Banerjee, Amy Ross Arguedas, Benjamin Toff et al.

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 76 pp.

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024
Deep Insights

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Craig T. Robertson, Amy Ross Arguedas, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 167 pp.

"In many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States, we find a significant further decline in the use of Facebook for news and a growing reliance on a range of alternatives including private messaging apps and video networks. Facebook news consumption is down 4 percentage points, acr ... oss all countries, in the last year. • News use across online platforms is fragmenting, with six networks now reaching at least 10% of our respondents, compared with just two a decade ago. YouTube is used for news by almost a third (31%) of our global sample each week, WhatsApp by around a fifth (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the first time. • Linked to these shifts, video is becoming a more important source of online news, especially with younger groups. Short news videos are accessed by two-thirds (66%) of our sample each week, with longer formats attracting around half (51%). The main locus of news video consumption is online platforms (72%) rather than publisher websites (22%), increasing the challenges around monetisation and connection. • Although the platform mix is shifting, the majority continue to identify platforms including social media, search, or aggregators as their main gateway to online news. Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) identify news websites or apps as their main source of online news – that’s down 10 percentage points on 2018. Publishers in a few Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are showing a weaker connection with news brands than they did in the past. • Turning to the sources that people pay most attention to when it comes to news on various platforms, we find an increasing focus on partisan commentators, influencers, and young news creators, especially on YouTube and TikTok. But in social networks such as Facebook and X, traditional news brands and journalists still tend to play a prominent role. • Concern about what is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to online news has risen by 3 percentage points in the last year with around six in ten (59%) saying they are concerned. The figure is considerably higher in South Africa (81%) and the United States (72%), both countries that have been holding elections this year. • Worries about how to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content in online platforms is highest for TikTok and X when compared with other online networks. Both platforms have hosted misinformation or conspiracies around stories such as the war in Gaza, and the Princess of Wales’s health, as well as so-called ‘deep fake’ pictures and videos." (Executive summary, page 10) more

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News for the Powerful and Privileged: How Misrepresentation and Underrepresentation of Disadvantaged Communities Undermine Their Trust in News

Amy Ross Arguedas, Sayan Banerjee, Richard Fletcher et al.

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 58 pp.

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The Trust Gap: How and Why News on Digital Platforms is Viewed More Sceptically Versus News in General

Camila Mont'Alverne, Sumitra Badrinathan, Amy Ross Arguedas et al.

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 71 pp.

"Drawing on an original dataset of survey responses collected in the summer of 2022 across four countries - Brazil, India, the UK, and the US - they examine the relationship between trust in news and how people think about news on digital platforms, especially Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, and YouTube ... more

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Echo Chambers, Filter Bubbles, and Polarisation: A Literature Review

Amy Ross Arguedas, Craig T. Robertson et al.

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 42 pp.

"This literature review examines, specifically, social science work presenting evidence concerning the existence, causes, and effect of online echo chambers and consider what related research can tell about scientific discussions online and how they might shape public understanding of science and th ... more

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Snap Judgements: How Audiences Who Lack Trust in News Navigate Information on Digital Platforms

Amy Ross Arguedas, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila Mont'Alverne, Benjamin Toff, Richard Fletcher, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 43 pp.

"In this report, we qualitatively examine how audiences who lack trust in most news organisations in their countries navigate the digital information environment, especially how they make sense of the news they encounter while using social media, messaging applications, or search engines. Drawing on ... a sample of 100 individuals in four countries – Brazil, India, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US) – we centre on how they use Facebook, WhatsApp, and Google, based on a unique interviewing approach anchored in their concrete everyday experiences. Participants were asked to describe and respond to what they actually saw on their screens as they navigated these platforms in real time while speaking to members of our research team. This research is focused on individuals with minimal trust in most news sources and below-average interest in politics – a population often neglected in audience research since these individuals tend to be least likely to consume news. However, for that same reason, understanding the way they encounter and engage with information online is of particular importance. Indeed, in line with prior survey-based research (Toff et al. 2021c), we found these individuals tended to be indifferent towards, or even opposed to, the idea of receiving news through platforms, which they said they primarily used for other purposes. What we found is that when they did encounter news on platforms and sought to assess how credible the information might be, they often relied on cues for making quick, in-the-moment judgements, which were particularly important since many of these users rarely clicked through to the original sources of news. The mental shortcuts people discussed, summarised in Figure 1, involved (1) pre-existing ideas they held about news in general or specific news brands (where the information was coming from), but also several other factors: (2) social cues from family and friends (who shared or engaged with the news), (3) the tone and wording of headlines (whether or not it was perceived as clickbait), (4) the use of visuals (which they often saw as important evidence for what could or could not be trusted), and (5) the presence of advertising (whether or not information appeared to be sponsored). Additional (6) platform-specific cues also played a role in shaping judgements about what to trust. These involved design decisions around how information appears on platforms (e.g. what labels appear, what is given most prominence), which in turn affect many of these other cues." (Introduction and key findings, page 3) more

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Listening to What Trust in News Means to Users: Qualitative Evidence from Four Countries

Benjamin Toff, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila Mont’Alverne, Amy Ross Arguedas, Richard Fletcher, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2021), 50 pp.

"This report examines how people in Brazil, India, the UK, and the US view news media in their countries, the factors they use when determining whether sources are trustworthy, and what ‘trust in news’ ultimately means to them [...] While we note throughout the report areas of difference between ... more

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 Deep Insights

Women and Leadership in the News Media 2025: Evidence from 12 Markets

Strategies for Building Trust in News: What the Public Say They Want Across Four Countries

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 Deep Insights

News for the Powerful and Privileged: How Misrepresentation and Underrepresentation of Disadvantaged Communities Undermine Their Trust in News

The Trust Gap: How and Why News on Digital Platforms is Viewed More Sceptically Versus News in General

Echo Chambers, Filter Bubbles, and Polarisation: A Literature Review

Snap Judgements: How Audiences Who Lack Trust in News Navigate Information on Digital Platforms

Listening to What Trust in News Means to Users: Qualitative Evidence from Four Countries

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025
Deep Insights

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024
Deep Insights