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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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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025
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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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News Can Help! The Impact of News Media and Digital Platforms on Awareness of and Belief in Misinformation

Sacha Altay, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Nielsen, Richard Fletcher

International Journal of Press/Politics, volume 29, issue 2 (2024), pp. 459-484

"Does the news media exacerbate or reduce misinformation problems? Although some news media deliberately try to counter misinformation, it has been suggested that they might also inadvertently, and sometimes purposefully, amplify it. We conducted a two-wave panel survey in Brazil, India, and the UK ... more

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Comparing the Platformization of News Media Systems: A Cross-Country Analysis

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Richard Fletcher

European Journal of Communication, volume 38, issue 5 (2023), pp. 484-499

"Platformization has been used to describe how platforms such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, WhatsApp and TikTok have become increasingly important for how people communicate and access information, including news. But to what extent have news media systems in different countries become platformized? ... more

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023
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Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Kirsten Eddy, Craig T. Robertson, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 158 pp.

"Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) now say they prefer to start their news journeys with a website or app – that’s down 10 percentage points since 2018. Publishers in a few smaller Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are ... showing a weaker connection with news brands’ own websites and apps than previous cohorts – preferring to access news via side-door routes such as social media, search, or mobile aggregators. • Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news. It also faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok. The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. • When it comes to news, audiences say they pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists in networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This contrasts sharply with Facebook and Twitter, where news media and journalists are still central to the conversation. • Much of the public is sceptical of the algorithms used to select what they see via search engines, social media, and other platforms. Less than a third (30%) say that having stories selected for me on the basis of previous consumption is a good way to get news, 6 percentage points lower than when we last asked the question in 2016. Despite this, on average, users still slightly prefer news selected this way to that chosen by editors or journalists (27%), suggesting that worries about algorithms are part of a wider concern about news and how it is selected. • Despite hopes that the internet could widen democratic debate, we find fewer people are now participating in online news than in the recent past. Aggregated across markets, only around a fifth (22%) are now active participators, with around half (47%) not participating in news at all. In the UK and United States, the proportion of active participators has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2016. Across countries we find that this group tends to be male, better educated, and more partisan in their political vie ws. • Trust in the news has fallen, across markets, by a further 2 percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, four in ten of our total sample (40%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while Greece (19%) has the lowest after a year characterised by heated arguments about press freedom and the independence of the media." (Summary, page 10) more

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024
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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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Born in the Fire: What We Can Learn from How Digital Publishers in the Global South Approach Platforms

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Federica Cherubini

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 33 pp.

"Based on interviews with a strategic sample of 11 publishers in eight low- and middle-income countries, the authors of this report analyse how various digital publishers across a range of Global South countries approach digital platforms: both big platform companies such as Google and Meta; rapidly ... more

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How We Follow Climate Change: Climate News Use and Attitudes in Eight Countries

Ejaz Waqas, Mitali Mukherjee, Richard Fletcher, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 40 pp.

"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 ... more

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022
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Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Craig T. Robertson, Kirsten Eddy, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 161 pp.

"Trust in the news has fallen in almost half the countries in our survey, and risen in just seven, partly reversing the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, around four in ten of our total sample (42%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the countr ... 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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An Ongoing Infodemic: How People in Eight Countries Access and Rate News and Information About Coronavirus a Year Into the Pandemic

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Anne Schulz, Richard Fletcher

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2021), 37 pp.

"In almost all countries, news organisations are the single most widely used source of information about coronavirus. Furthermore, news organisations have become even more central to how people stay informed about coronavirus in the last year because, while overall reach has declined compared to ear ... more

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Digital News Report 2021
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Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Anne Schulz, Simge Andi, Craig T. Robertson, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2021), 163 pp.

"This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 92,000 online news consumers in 46 markets including India, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, Colombia and Peru for the first time. The report looks at the impact of coronavirus on news consumption a ... 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

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Overcoming Indifference: What Attitudes Towards News Tell Us About Building Trust

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

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2021), 69 pp.

"This report contains a range of findings about news audiences in each of the four countries [Brazil, India, United Kingdom, United States], focusing on audiences overall as well as different segments of the public categorised according to their degree of trust towards news brands in their country. ... more

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Navigating the ‘infodemic’: How People in Six Countries Access and Rate News and Information About Coronavirus

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Richard Fletcher, Nic Newman, J. Scott Brennen, Philip N. Howard

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2020), 34 pp.

"In this report, we use survey data collected in late March and early April 2020 to document and understand how people in six countries (Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Spain, the UK, and the US) accessed news and information about COVID-19 in the early stages of the global pandemic, how they rate ... more

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Few Winners, Many Losers: The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Dramatic and Unequal Impact on Independent News Media

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Federica Cherubini, Simge Andi

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2020), 31 pp.

"This report presents findings from an analysis of 165 responses to a survey of a strategic sample of known and identified independent news media organisations on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted them, combined with interviews with a critical sample of seven independent news media operating in ... more

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Women and Leadership in the News Media 2020: Evidence from Ten Markets

Simge Andi, Meera Selva, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2020), 6 pp.

"In this RISJ factsheet we analyse the gender break-down of top editors in a strategic sample of 200 major online and offline news outlets in ten different markets across four continents. Looking at a sample of ten top online news outlets and ten top offline news outlets in each of these ten markets ... more

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Types, Sources, and Claims of COVID-19 Misinformation

J. Scott Brennen, Felix M. Simon, Philip N. Howard, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2020), 13 pp.

"In this RISJ factsheet we identify some of the main types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation seen so far. We analyse a sample of 225 pieces of misinformation rated false or misleading by factcheckers and published in English between January and the end of March 2020, drawn from a colle ... more

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Digital News Report 2020

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Anne Schulz, Simge Andi, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2020), 111 pp.

"The bulk of this report is based on data collected by a survey of more than 80,000 people in 40 markets and reflects media usage in January/February just before the coronavirus hit many of these countries. But the key trends that we document here, including changes in how people access news, low tr ... more

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The Handbook of Journalism Studies
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Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Thomas Hanitzsch (eds.)

New York; London: Routledge, 2nd ed. (2020), xix, 573 pp.

"This second edition of The Handbook of Journalism Studies explores the current state of research in journalism studies and sets an agenda for future development of the field in an international context. The volume is structured around theoretical and empirical approaches to journalism research and ... more

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