"This report presents findings from the third wave of the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS3), conducted between 2021 and 2025. In this iteration, we focused on journalists’ perceptions of risk and uncertainty in their profession and sought to identify key factors that shape how journalists navigate
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journalism’s changing environment. These risks and uncertainties arise from four partially overlapping domains: politics, economy, technology, and news consumption. Accordingly, the WJS3 questionnaire addressed journalists’ safety, editorial freedom, professional roles, news influences, and labor conditions. Our survey confirms that journalism is under pressure. Journalists worldwide are often undercompensated, and more than one-third engage in secondary employment. Economic pressures on news organizations have intensified in most countries. Nearly half of journalists have been targeted with hate speech, while psychological, physical, and digital threats are more prevalent in the Global South than in the Global North. More than 300 researchers from 75 countries participated in WJS3. This report provides a concise overview of key global findings. Subsequent publications will analyze specific topics in greater depth; please visit worldsofjournalism.org for more information." (Foreword, page 4)
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"In 'Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes', an international team of prominent scholars examines both long-term media systems and fluctuating trends in media usage around the world. Integrating country-specific summaries and cross-cutting studies of geopolitical regions, this
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interdisciplinary reference work describes key elements in the political, social, demographic, cultural, and economic conditions of media infrastructures and public communication. Enabling the mapping of media landscapes internationally, Media Compass contains up-to-date empirical surveys of individual countries and regions, as well as cross-country comparisons of particular areas of public communication. 45 entries, each guiding readers from a general summary to a more in-depth discussion of a country’s specific media landscape, address formative conditions and circumstances, historical background and development, current issues and challenges, and more." (Publisher description)
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"• 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
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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)
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"The study [conducted in Denmark] distinguishes three audience categories: non-paying, potential-paying, and paying. While all prioritise informative content, paying audiences emphasise symbolic and emotional values, seeking a sense of belonging and personally meaningful content. Non-paying audience
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s stress the need for improved quality. Quantitative analysis reveals that 61% of participants are unwilling to pay for local journalism, while 28% are potentially willing, and 11% are already paying. Surprisingly, the perceived relevance of being informed about local affairs is high across all groups, challenging the notion that non-paying audiences don’t value local news. Participants who do not want to pay for local news do not express wants and needs for symbolic and emotional values of local journalism to the same degree as participants who (might) pay for local journalism. Instead, participants who do not pay and participants who might pay emphasise functional values. The results of the research conducted for this study indicate three paths for local media outlets to increase their audiences: (1) communicate and/or clarify the symbolic and emotional values of local journalism, (2) increase quality regarding the functional values of local journalism, and (3) increase relevance regarding the functional values of local journalism. Few quotes touch upon the economic value of local journalism, with business owners recognising the relevance of staying informed about local events for economic gain. The study suggests that revitalising local journalism requires prioritising unique, emotionally engaging content, clarifying symbolic values, and enhancing functional quality. Understanding audience preferences is crucial for local media outlets to refine their strategies and to ensure the survival and relevance of local journalism in the digital age." (https://journalismfundersforum.com/local-journalism-and-its-audience)
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"Hate is widespread online, hits everyone, and carries negative consequences. Crowd moderation—user-assisted moderation through, e. g., reporting or counter-speech—is heralded as a potential remedy. We explore this potential by linking insights on online bystander interventions to the analogy of
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crowd moderation as a (lost) public good. We argue that the distribution of costs and benefits of engaging in crowd moderation forecasts a collective action problem. If the individual crowd member has limited incentive to react when witnessing hate, crowd moderation is unlikely to manifest. We explore this argument empirically, investigatingseveral preregistered hypotheses about the distribution of individual-level costs and benefits of response options to online hate using a large, nationally representative survey of Danish social mediausers (N = 24,996). In line with expectations, we find that bystander reactions, especially costly reactions, are rare. Furthermore, we find a positive correlation between exposure to online hate and withdrawal motivations, and a negative (n-shaped) correlation with bystander reactions." (Abstract)
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"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
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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)
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"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
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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)
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"The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance explores the concepts, methodologies, and implications of collective intelligence for democratic governance, in the first comprehensive survey of this field. Illustrated by a collection of inspiring case studies and edit
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ed by three pioneers in collective intelligence, this handbook serves as a unique primer on the science of collective intelligence applied to public challenges and will inspire public actors, academics, students, and activists across the world to apply collective intelligence in policymaking and administration to explore its potential, both to foster policy innovations and reinvent democracy." (Publisher description)
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"Bringing together 15 journalism scholars from around the world, this book explores and offers solutions to the common issues and inadequacies of reporting on sexual violence in the media. Presenting a range of conceptual, methodological, and empirical chapters, the book tackles issues related to, o
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r missing, from journalism in three parts: Part I acknowledges and surveys the role journalism plays in shining a light on social injustices and critiques research deficits in reporting on sexual violence; Part II employs cutting-edge research linked to an intersectional lens to amplify the voices that have been silenced in the media coverage; Part III explores how advocacy, campaign, and solutions journalism offers frameworks for ethical reporting on the shadow epidemic of sexual violence during these COVID-normal times." (Publisher description)
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"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
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y with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while news trust in the USA has fallen by a further three percentage points and remains the lowest (26%) in our survey.
• Consumption of traditional media, such as TV and print, declined further in the last year in almost all markets (pre-Ukraine invasion), with online and social consumption not making up the gap. While the majority remain very engaged, others are turning away from the news media and in some cases disconnecting from news altogether. Interest in news has fallen sharply across markets, from 63% in 2017 to 51% in 2022.
• Meanwhile, the proportion of news consumers who say they avoid news, often or sometimes, has increased sharply across countries. This type of selective avoidance has doubled in both Brazil (54%) and the UK (46%) over the last five years, with many respondents saying news has a negative effect on their mood. A significant proportion of younger and less educated people say they avoid news because it can be hard to follow or understand – suggesting that the news media could do much more to simplify language and better explain or contextualise complex stories.
• In the five countries we surveyed after the war in Ukraine had begun, we find that television news is relied on most heavily – with countries closest to the fighting, such as Germany and Poland, seeing the biggest increases in consumption. Selective news avoidance has, if anything, increased further – likely due to the difficult and depressing nature of the coverage.
• Global concerns about false and misleading information remain stable this year, ranging from 72% in Kenya and Nigeria to just 32% in Germany and 31% in Austria. People say they have seen more false information about Coronavirus than about politics in most countries, but the situation is reversed in Turkey, Kenya, and the Philippines, amongst others." (Summary, page 10)
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"The euphoria that has accompanied the birth and expansion of the internet as a "liberation technology" is increasingly eclipsed by an explosion of vitriolic language on a global scale. Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech provides the first distinctly global and interdisciplinary
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perspective on hateful language online. Moving beyond Euro-American allegations of 'fake news,' contributors draw attention to local idioms and practices and explore the profound implications for how community is imagined, enacted, and brutally enforced around the world. With a cross-cultural framework nuanced by ethnography and field-based research, the volume investigates a wide range of cases-from anti-immigrant memes targeted at Bolivians in Chile to trolls serving the ruling AK Party in Turkey - to ask how the potential of extreme speech to talk back to authorities has come under attack by diverse forms of digital hate cultures." (Publisher description)
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"Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France,
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Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research." (Publisher description)
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"To what extent do structures and conduct of leading news media correspond with requirements of contemporary democracies? Based on a root concept of democracy and several empirical indicators, the Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) delivers a panorama of the news media’s performance regarding freed
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om, equality, and control across several countries. In 2011, the MDM analysed 10 democracies. Ten years later, it covers 18 countries worldwide and pinpoints essential strengths and weaknesses during this decade of digitalisation. Around the globe, news are highly attractive to users, and the journalistic ethos of watchdogs and investigators is paramount. On the downside, journalistic job security eroded over time, and gender gaps both in content and employment patterns remain strikingly excessive in most countries. Volume two contains all countries analysed for the first time in 2021: Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Chile, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, and South Korea." (Publisher description)
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"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
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nd on the economic prospects for publishers. It looks at progress on new paid online business models, trust and misinformation, local news, impartiality and fairness in news coverage." (Overview)
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"This collection charts the emergence of modern science communication across the world. This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did
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it all begin? How has development varied from one country to another? What motivated governments, institutions and people to see science communication as an answer to questions of the social place of science? Communicating Science describes the pathways followed by 39 different countries. All continents and many cultures are represented. For some countries, this is the first time that their science communication story has been told." (Publisher description)
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"Global news on anthropogenic climate change is shaped by international politics, scientific reports and voices from transnational protest movements. This timely volume asks how local communities engage with these transnational discourses. The chapters in this volume present a range of compelling ca
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se studies drawn from a broad cross-section of local communities around the world, reflecting diverse cultural and geographical contexts. From Greenland to northern Tanzania, it illuminates how different understandings evolve in diverse cultural and geographical contexts while also revealing some common patterns of how people make sense of climate change. Global Warming in Local Discourses constitutes a significant, new contribution to understanding the multi-perspectivity of our debates on climate change, further highlighting the need for interdisciplinary study within this area." (Publisher description)
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"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
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ust, and rising concern about misinformation have been a backdrop against which journalists, editors, politicians, and public health officials have been battling to reach ordinary people with key messages over the last few months. We know that this crisis has substantially increased the amount and frequency of news consumption as well as influenced attitudes to the news media, at least temporarily. We’ve captured this in a second set of polling data collected in April when the crisis was at its peak in some countries. This has helped us to see the impact of the crisis in terms of sources of news and also reminded us of the critical role that the news media play at times of national crisis, including documenting that people who rely on news media are better informed about the virus than those who do not. While many media companies have been enjoying record audience figures, news fatigue is also setting in, and the short-term and long-term economic impact of the crisis is likely to be profound – advertising budgets are slashed and a recession looms, threatening news media, some of whom are struggling with adapting to a changing world. Against this background, this year’s report also focuses on the shift towards paying for online news in many countries across the world, with detailed analysis of progress in three countries (the UK, USA, and Norway). This year, our report carries important data about the extent to which people value and trust local news, perhaps the sector most vulnerable to the economic shocks that will inevitably follow the health crisis itself. And we also explore the way people access news about climate change as well as attitudes to media coverage for the first time." (Foreword)
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"The chapters in this collection offer original interrogations of the representation of humanitarian crisis and catastrophe, and the refraction of humanitarian intervention and action, from the mid-twentieth century to the present, across a diverse range of media forms: traditional and contemporary
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screen media (film, television and online video) as well as newspapers, memoirs, music festivals and social media platforms (such as Facebook, YouTube and Flickr). Addressing humanitarian media culture as it evolved over a period of more than seventy years, the chapters offer a critical assessment of the historical precedents of our contemporary humanitarian communications. The contributors to the book are all specialists in the fields of media and communications, film studies, cultural studies, history or sociology: these different disciplinary perspectives inform their approaches to and understanding of the relationship between humanitarianism and media culture. Our authors reveal and explore the signific nt synergies between the humanitarian enterprise, the endeavour to alleviate the suffering of particular groups, and media representations, and their modes of addressing and appealing to specific publics." (Introduction, page 2)
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"Despite the efforts of the news industry, we find only a small increase in the numbers paying for any online news – whether by subscription, membership, or donation. Growth is limited to a handful of countries mainly in the Nordic region (Norway 34%, Sweden 27%) while the number paying in the US
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(16%) remains stable after a big jump in 2017. • Even in countries with higher levels of payment, the vast majority only have ONE online subscription – suggesting that ‘winner takes all’ dynamics are likely to be important. One encouraging development though is that most payments are now ‘ongoing’, rather than one-offs. In some countries, subscription fatigue may also be setting in, with the majority preferring to spend their limited budget on entertainment (Netflix/Spotify) rather than news. With many seeing news as a ‘chore’, publishers may struggle to substantially increase the market for high-priced ‘single title’ subscriptions. As more publishers launch pay models, over two-thirds (70%) of our sample in Norway and half (50%) in the United States now come across one or more barriers each week when trying to read online news. In many countries, people are spending less time with Facebook and more time with WhatsApp and Instagram than this time last year. Few users are abandoning Facebook entirely, though, and it remains by far the most important social network for news. Social communication around news is becoming more private as messaging apps continue to grow everywhere. WhatsApp has become a primary network for discussing and sharing news in non-Western countries like Brazil (53%) Malaysia (50%), and South Africa (49%). People in these countries are also far more likely than in the West to be part of large WhatsApp groups with people they don’t know – a trend that reflects how messaging applications can be used to easily share information at scale, potentially encouraging the spread of misinformation. Public and private Facebook Groups discussing news and politics have become popular in Turkey (29%) and Brazil (22%) but are much less used in Western countries such as Canada (7%) or Australia (7%). Concern about misinformation and disinformation remains high despite efforts by platforms and publishers to build public confidence. In Brazil 85% agree with a statement that they are worried about what is real and fake on the internet." (Summary, page 9)
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