"On average in the 16 countries surveyed, 56% of internet users frequently use social media to stay informed about current events, far ahead of television (44%). However, it is worth noting that differences exist among population groups: television is the primary source in the most developed countri
...
es (55% compared to 37% for social media), while it lags significantly in countries with high (42% vs 63%) or medium/low levels of Human Development Index (HDI) (37% vs 68%) [...] The significance of social media as a source of information, especially during election campaigns, is even more crucial given that citizens believe disinformation is highly prevalent there. Across all 16 countries, 68% of internet users told us that social media is the place where disinformation is most widespread, far ahead of groups on online messaging apps (38%) and media websites/apps (20%). This sentiment is overwhelmingly prevalent in all countries, age groups, social backgrounds, and political preferences. This is even more important and citizens feel that the issue of disinformation is a real threat: 85% express concern about the impact and influence of disinformation on their fellow citizens." (Analysis of key results)
more
"According to the most recent Afrobarometer survey, Angolans broadly agree that the media should act as a watchdog over the government, constantly investigating and reporting on government mistakes and corruption. Citizens value media freedom and reject the notion that public information should be t
...
he exclusive preserve of government officials. However, views are mixed on whether media freedom exists in practice. Television and radio still outpace social media and the Internet as popular news sources in Angola, but not by much – especially among young and educated citizens." (Summary)
more
"De acordo com a mais recente pesquisa do Afrobarometer, os Angolanos concordam amplamente que a imprensa deve agir como um fiscalizador do governo, investigando os seus erros e os casos de corrupção para os reportar. Os cidadãos valorizam a liberdade de imprensa e rejeitam a noção de que a inf
...
ormação pública deva ser propriedade exclusiva dos funcionários do governo. No entanto, as opiniões divergem sobre se a liberdade de imprensa existe na prática. A televisão e a rádio continuam a ser as principais fontes de notícia da maioria dos Angolanos, comparativamente as redes sociais e a Internet, embora a diferença não seja tão expressiva, sobretudo entre os cidadãos jovens e mais educados." (Resumo)
more
"The survey data show that most Zimbabweans treasure a media that is free from the shackles of government interference and that acts as a watchdog over government, investigating and reporting on its mistakes and corruption. Despite this dominant preference, only a minority think the country currentl
...
y has a free media, suggesting that citizens want the government to do more to ensure that journalists can deliver on their mandate freely and safely. Majorities also endorse the right of ordinary citizens and the media to access various types of government information, including budgets and expenditures for local government, bids and contracts, and salary information for teachers and local government officials. As for where Zimbabweans obtain their news, radio still rules the roost among news sources, though social media is challenging its dominance among young, urban, and educated citizens." (Conclusion)
more
"Impartial news, or news without a partisan slant or overt point-ofview, is overwhelmingly preferred by news audiences worldwide, yet what such preferences mean remains poorly understood. In this study, we examine what people mean when they say they prefer impartial news. We draw on qualitative inte
...
rviews and focus groups with 132 individuals in Brazil, India, the UK, and the US, conducted in early 2021. Our results show while the idea of impartial news is widely embraced in abstract, ranging from notions of reporting “just the facts” to more nuanced views about how feasible impartiality is to achieve, there is no shared understanding of impartiality in practice. People’s perceptions of impartiality are rooted in two intertwined folk theories: the notion that news production and editorial decisions are guided largely by (a) partisan political agendas or (b) commercial considerations, determining what stories were chosen, ignored, or crafted in order to deceive and manipulate. There is some country variation around the importance of these folk theories, but their recurrence suggests that demonstrating impartiality to audiences requires convincing them not only that news content is balanced but also that editorial decisions were not driven by ulterior motives." (Abstract)
more
"Unter Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen gibt es eine zunehmend große Gruppe, die ein geringes Interesse am aktuellen Weltgeschehen hat, kaum Informationsangebote etablierter Medien nutzt und mit journalistischen Angeboten entsprechend kaum noch erreicht werden kann: die gering Informationsorient
...
ierten, im Folgenden kurz GIO genannt. Junge Menschen, die sich diesem Informationstyp zuordnen lassen, haben in der Regel eine niedrige formale Bildung und oft einen Migrationshintergrund. Da bislang allerdings wenige (vor allem qualitative) Befunde dazu vorliegen, was diese jungen Menschen – neben soziodemografischen Merkmalen – auszeichnet, bestand das Ziel der vorliegenden Studie darin, ihre Informationsbedürfnisse, Nutzungspraktiken und Einstellungen genauer zu beleuchten. Hierzu wurden im Sommer 2023 in vier Großstädten in Deutschland zehn Fokusgruppen (n=46) mit solchen Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen durchgeführt, die sich aufgrund ausgewählter soziodemografischer Merkmale der Gruppe der GIO zurechnen lassen. Die Fokusgruppen fanden in den Städten Hamburg, Bottrop (Nordrhein-Westfalen), Dresden (Sachsen) und Nürnberg (Bayern) statt. Im Folgenden werden die wichtigsten Ergebnisse zusammenfassend dargestellt.
• Das allgemeine Bedürfnis, über das aktuelle Weltgeschehen Bescheid zu wissen und sich dementsprechend aktiv zu informieren, ist in der untersuchten Gruppe sehr gering ausgeprägt. Das hängt zum einen mit einer wahrgenommenen Distanz zu „typischen“ politikbezogenen Nachrichtenthemen zusammen; zum anderen damit, dass die Teilnehmenden in soziale Gruppen und Gefüge eingebunden sind, in denen es kaum relevant ist, Bescheid zu wissen.
• Nichtsdestotrotz gibt es gesellschaftlich relevante Themen, mit denen sich die Teilnehmenden beschäftigen und die sie in der Freundesgruppe besprechen. Ausschlaggebend sind dabei persönliche Berührungspunkte; Themen müssen die eigene Person und Identität (Religion, Herkunft und Interessen) oder das engste Familien- und Freundesumfeld betreffen.
• Den Bedürfnissen entsprechend lassen sich die Nutzungspraktiken der befragten Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen als beiläufige, passive und nahezu exklusive Informationsaufnahme im Kontext der Nutzung sozialer Medien – allen voran TikTok, YouTube und Instagram – zusammenfassen. Das Wissen über aktuelle Ereignisse basiert auf zufälligen Nachrichtenkontakten, die im Zusammenspiel mit dem Algorithmus der jeweiligen Plattform entstehen. Eine gezielte Informationssuche findet nur anlassbezogen und in der Regel mittels einer Google-Suche statt.
• Gering Informationsorientierte haben ein schmales Informationsrepertoire, zu dem kaum journalistische Angebote zählen und auch nicht ergänzend hinzugezogen werden; vielmehr haben einzelne Social Media Content Creator wie Herr Anwalt oder Rezo die Rolle als Informationsquelle eingenommen, da diese a) die richtigen Themen, auf b) die richtige – neutrale – Art mit c) der entsprechenden unterhaltenden Darstellungsweise behandeln und d) als vertrauenswürdig wahrgenommen werden, wodurch sie e) das Interesse von jungen Leuten wecken. Allgemein präferieren die Befragten visuelle Formate, die den über TikTok kultivierten Konsumgewohnheiten sowie ihren impulsgesteuerten Nutzungspraktiken gerecht werden.
• Trotz der großen Relevanz und Beliebtheit von TikTok und anderen Plattformen wird deutlich, dass diese für die Teilnehmenden ein schwierig zu navigierendes und unsicheres Informationsumfeld darstellen. Dies liegt zum einen am überwiegend negativen und „toxischen“ Content, der dort verbreitet wird. Zum anderen führen sowohl „Fake-Accounts“ als auch „Fake-Inhalte“ zu Unsicherheiten und in der Konsequenz zu fehlendem Vertrauen in die Inhalte in sozialen Medien allgemein – eine Differenzierung nach Accounttyp bzw. Absender wird dabei oftmals nicht getroffen." (Überblick über die wichtigsten Ergebnisse, S.5)
more
"Lower levels of news use are generally understood to be associated with less political engagement among citizens. But while some people simply have a low preference for news, others avoid the news intentionally. So far little is known about the relationship between active news avoidance and civic e
...
ngagement in society, a void this study has set out to fill. Based on a four-wave general population panel survey in the Netherlands, conducted between April and July 2020 (N = 1,084) during a crisis situation, this research-in-brief investigates the development of news avoidance and pro-social civic engagement over time. Results suggest that higher news topic avoidance results in higher levels of civic engagement. The study discusses different explanations for why less news can mean more engagement." (Abstract)
more
"In recent years, links between selective news exposure and political polarisation have attracted considerable attention among communication scholars. However, while the existence of selective exposure has been documented in both offline and online environments, the evidence of its extent and its im
...
pact on political polarisation is far from unanimous. To address these questions, and also to bridge methodological and geographical gaps in existing research, this paper adopts a media repertoires approach to investigate selective news exposure and polarisation in four Eastern European countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Serbia. Using a combination of population surveys, expert surveys and qualitative interviews, the data for the study were collected between November 2019 and May 2020. We identify five types of news repertoires based on their relative openness to counter-attitudinal sources, and show that selective news repertoires are present in 29% of the entire sample. Our findings also reveal significant cross-country differences, with the more selective news repertoires more prominent in countries characterised by higher levels of polarisation. Furthermore, while the selection of news sources is in line with" (Abstract)
more
"The Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) assesses the performance of leading news media in mature democracies with regard to the three core dimensions of democracy: freedom, equality, and control. After monitoring 10 countries in 2011, the MDM project expanded to cover the leading news media of 18 dem
...
ocracies in 2021. In this book, the most salient results from the MDM were selected to undergo cross-country and longitudinal comparison, searching for patterns and tendencies across countries, with a particular focus on the influence of digitalisation. Some of the key results are the ubiquitousness of the news media’s financial crisis, increasing consumption gaps as younger generations prefer online platforms, and persisting gender inequalities, both in news content and in newsrooms. However, the volume also shows that the reach of news media remains high, the watchdog role and investigative journalism are increasingly relevant in daily practice, and that public service media, in general, continues to play a vital role for democracy. These results have implications for media policies, regulations, and practices to improve news quality and, ultimately, democracy worldwide." (Publisher description)
more
"The movement that mobilized to oppose Alyaksandr Lukashenka in August 2020 was notable for its ability to bridge divisions of social class, geography, age, and identity. Almost uniquely among post-Soviet revolutionary movements, the Belarusians who rose up were not divided from those who did not al
...
ong clearly discernible sociodemographic, ethnic, linguistic, or regional lines. They were, however, separated by one very stark barrier: the one separating the country’s two distinct media systems, one controlled by the state, and one independent. Drawing on an original survey conducted in September 2020, just as the protest movement was reaching its peak, this article finds that respondents’ choice of news media was the strongest and most consistent predictor of their political opinions. Media, then, appear to have served not merely as aggregators of and conduits for social processes generated elsewhere, but as the producers of social and political force in their own right." (Abstract)
more
"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
"By adapting Giddens’s structuration approach, this study aims to assess audience behavior and its relationship with journalism by comparing the use behavior and attitudes of three age groups—adolescents, young adults, and adults—as characterized by distinct media socialization and use pattern
...
s. We identify types of information orientation—that is, a typology of behavior and attitudes towards news and information—for the examination of news audiences. Based on a representative face-to-face survey (N = 1,508) with German adolescents (14–17 years old), young adults (18–24 years old), and adults (40–53 years old), we identify four types that can be characterized by a certain pattern of news-related attitudes, the use of sources, and their relevance to opinion formation, as well as the perceived information level of participants. We examine how these types of information orientation differ between and among the three age groups and explore their relationship with audiences’ socio-political knowledge. The findings show that not all young people are necessarily less interested and engaged with news and journalism than older people. Moreover, it is a combination of interest with the use and perceived relevance of journalistic sources that is relevant for positive effects on information levels." (Abstract)
more
"In this report, we use online survey data collected in August and September 2022 to document and understand how people in eight countries - Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA - access news and information about climate change. A large majority of our respondents ac
...
ross these countries recognise that almost all climate scientists believe that climate change is caused by humans and are worried about the impact, but above and beyond basic understanding of the scientific consensus and recognition of the climate crisis, it is important to understand people's attitudes towards climate change news, including who they trust as sources of information, how climate news makes them feel, and how well they think news media are performing covering it. Finally, we take some preliminary steps in understanding how each of these are correlated with climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours." (Executive summary)
more
"Wie denken gewöhnliche Russ:innen wirklich über die Entscheidung von Präsident Putin, in die Ukraine einzumarschieren? Obwohl einiges dafürspricht, dass frühere Umfragen, die Zustimmungswerte um 60 % für den Krieg zeigen, als genuine Signale der russischen öffentlichen Meinung gewertet werde
...
n können, untersucht dieser Beitrag eine Reihe von Gründen, warum diese Umfrageergebnisse mit großer Vorsicht behandelt oder gar ignoriert werden sollten. Gründe dafür sind u. a. die staatliche Zensur, die Selbstzensur der Bevölkerung und eine verzerrte Beantwortung der Fragen, das Vorhandensein von Protesten sogar in einem autoritären Umfeld in Russland, als auch die Tatsache, dass einige der früheren Umfragen nach einem hypothetischen Einmarsch fragten, über den viele Russ:innen wohl nicht ausreichend nachgedacht haben könnten. Allerdings führt der Beitrag an, dass die plausibelste Erklärung für den offensichtlichen anfänglichen Rückhalt für den Krieg in der Manipulation der öffentlichen Meinung durch staatliche Kontrolle der Kommunikationskanäle und der weitverbreitete Einsatz von Zensur, Propaganda und Desinformation im eigenen Land als auch im Ausland liegt." (Seite 6)
more
"El análisis de la información disponible sobre ocho indicadores de concentración en Internet en Uruguay muestra que en casi todas ellas unas pocas empresas tienen una posición dominante en el mercado o servicio relevado." (Conclusiones, página 16)
"More than 13 million people have been displaced by the war in Ukraine in the last six months, with 1.6 million refugees entering Romania since February. As of August 2022, more than 87 thousand people are still seeking shelter in Romania with the support of the Government and partners including civ
...
il society, the private sector, volunteers, and international aid organisations. And while there has been an extraordinarily swift response to create services to support these newly arrived communities, information and communication challenges have hampered their effectiveness. This research was conducted between July – September 2022 and includes the perspectives of close to 1,200 refugees and 20 service providers and field data collected from Bucharest, Iasi, Brasov and Constanta." (Publisher description)
more
"This report examines the widespread use of encrypted messaging apps (EMAs) in developing countries and emerging democracies has prompted news outlets in these regions to experiment with them as mechanisms for distributing the news. From news products designed specifically for sharing via EMAs to pr
...
ivate channels used to circumvent restrictions in repressive media environments, media outlets are testing how best to use these apps to reach audiences even in the face of technical challenges, resource demands, and sometimes, political pressure. The document concludes that a) news outlets are turning to EMAs to reach new audiences and to bypass state censorship in authoritarian contexts; b) many newsrooms are experimenting with monetizing EMA content, however, it is still too early to tell whether EMAs can provide a reliable revenue stream; c) platform dependency is a big issue when it comes to using EMAs for news-policy changes can have a big impact on how news outlets interact with their audiences." (Publisher description)
more
"This book explores innovative approaches to digital and data journalism in Latin America, brought by both legacy media and newcomers to the industry, with the purpose of examining this changing media landscape. As part of the Global South, Latin America has shown significant influence in the promot
...
ion of data and digital technologies applied to journalism in recent years. In this region, news entrepreneurs are becoming an essential source of innovation in news production, circulation, and distribution. The book considers news media, particularly in Latin America, as an open set of practices intertwined in the evolution of technology. It discusses the transformation of the Latin American news media ecosystem and considers how it has shaped the industry despite local differences. The study fills a significant gap in academic scholarship by addressing the multiple external factors, mainly political and economic, which have contributed to the relative lack of studies on the patterns of journalism in this region." (Publisher description)
more
"Eight in 10 adult Zimbabweans (80%) say they have heard about social media. More than four in 10 (42%) citizens say they get news from social media “every day” or “a few times a week.” Among those who have heard about social media the vast majority (91%) say social media helps keep people i
...
nformed about current events. Half (49%) believe that social media helps people have more impact on political processes. But seven in 10 (71%) also see social media as making people more likely to believe false information, and 44% say it makes people more intolerant of opposing views. Overall, six in 10 (61%) say the effects of social media on society are “somewhat positive” or “very positive.” Two-thirds (65%) of Zimbabweans say social media and the Internet help make people more informed and active citizens, and hence unrestricted access to these platforms must be protected." (Key findings, page 1-2)
more