"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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"The Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) is a tool for assessing the risks for media pluralism in a given country. The Monitor aims to help policymakers, researchers, and civil society to understand the threat to media pluralism in different media systems through research, analysis and the provision of co
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untry data. The present Monitor has been developed and tested by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF), at the European University Institute, and has been funded by the European Union. The CMPF created the prototype of the Monitor and pilot-tested it in 2014 (MPM2014), building on the 2009 Independent Study on Indicators for Media Pluralism in the Member States – Towards a Risk-Based Approach. The results of this second prototype, which was tested in 2015 (MPM2015), are published in this report. During these two rounds of implementation, the CMPF has strengthened the research design of the Monitor, co-ordinated the data collection carried out by national experts, and analysed the results, i.e., it has assessed the risks for media pluralism across EU Member States. This report presents the results and the methodology of the MPM2015 implementation, which measures risks to Media Pluralism in 19 EU countries, namely, Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden." (Executive summary)
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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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"Free journalism is indispensable for monitoring the actions of political representation, holding it accountable, exposing the misuse of power, and defending public interests. Fulfilling these roles assumes that journalists can do their job and pursue public-interest stories to the best of their abi
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lities without fear of retaliation. In this chapter, building on the Media Pluralism Monitor data, we discuss the key issues of concern related to the journalists' safety, focusing on the attacks in the offline and online environment and the political elite's hostile criticism of the media. We analyse these issues in the context of Greece, Slovakia, and Spain, which share several common features regarding their media environment. Yet, these countries differ in risks to journalists' safety. We find, however, that despite different risk levels, the safety of journalists has been deteriorating in all three countries over the years. These findings have important implications for policymakers." (Abstract)
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"Journalists have often been considered the "fourth emergency service". They are first on the scene, alongside paramedics, fi re and police, running towards danger rather than away, and providing independent, veritable and crucial information in the public interest. And yet, unlike frontline workers
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, little (if any) counselling or training is offered to journalists on how to deal with the horrors they witness, and the trauma they absorb from being at the forefront of human suffering. Further, limited to no training is given to student journalists on how to prepare themselves for trauma, be it from war scenes to the everyday "death knock". New research is demonstrating a rise in post-traumatic stress disorder amongst journalists resulting from the "everyday" trauma they encounter. There is also a noticeable increase in reluctance from new journalists to undertake emotionally distressing assignments. Editors in industry are now calling for educators to invest in curricula that centre around understanding how to cope with distress and trauma, and why work like this is vital to facilitate the work journalists do hold power to account. This book investigates the cause and effect of trauma reporting on the journalist themselves and provides a toolkit for training journalists and practitioners to build resilience and prepare themselves for trauma. It draws on national and international experiences enabling readers to gain valuable insight into a range of contemporary issues and the contexts in which they may work. This edited book offers a blend of academic research studies, evidence-based practitioner interviews, and teaching resources drawing on the experiences of journalists and academics nationally and internationally." (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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"This article investigates how all the main quality and tabloid newspapers and the television newscasts of the main broadcasters in Czechia and Slovakia framed immigrants, what the tone of the employed frames was, and who the main framing actors were before and during the EU refugee crisis (2013–2
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016). Using quantitative content analysis (N = 7,910), we show that security and cultural frames are most commonly employed while the victimization frame is much less common. Whereas tabloids use the security and cultural frames more often, the victimization, economic and administrative frames are more often invoked in quality media. We also show that the framing of immigrants is predominantly negative, and that the security and cultural are the most negatively valenced frames. Finally, we document a dominance of political actors and the practical invisibility of immigrants and refugees in the media coverage." (Abstract)
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"The CANnual Report 2022 follows a slightly different editorial concept than before. Since 2016, the publication featured one central topic which all creative agencies wrote about. This year however, weCAN experts write about twelve of the hottest topics in communication across the region. Five of t
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he most influential consumer trends are also featured in the country chapters along with the articles about TikTok, e-commerce, Gen Z – and the war-torn Ukrainian market." (wecan.net)
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"The contributions of this special issue are grouped in three sections: context, theoretical framework and empirical research. The first articles set up two important dimensions of the context we are living in that have to be definitely improved if we want to take advantage of the positive sides of
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Covid-19’s effects to bring about real social relations and a good communication of science [...] The following articles deal with three important core components needed to set up a theoretical framework, from which this issue intends to start a serious scholarly conversation around the lessons learned from the Covid’s impact on social communication: (1) how a person knows and shapes his/her judgment in practical affairs when s/he is critically involved in them, (2) why and how science has surrendered to technology in the last decades, (3) and how practical knowledge is socially shared [...] The context and theoretical framework having been set up, the issue enters into the empirical part of our research: several papers examine the news coverage of the Church dealing with the pandemic in a good sample of newspapers around the world, one paper looks at how social media have engaged in the response to the pandemic by the Catholic Church, and another at how local churches have managed the challenges of the pandemic [...] The analysis of worldwide media coverage aims to find out how the mainstream press has portrayed the role of Christian churches and other religious bodies in dealing with the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. All researchers have broadly shared a common qualitative methodology: looking for the frames and inducing the topoi (common places) underlying the resulting frames of the examination of news and editorial items." (Pages 2-4)
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"In this contribution, using a case-study approach, we focus on the assassination of Ján Kuciak and his fiancée and explore the impact and consequences that it had on the community of investigative journalists in Slovakia. By conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with top investigative
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journalists (N = 12), we seek to answer two questions: How have they coped with the murder of their colleague? And, how has this incident changed their everyday journalistic practices and routines when it comes to achieving and maintaining safety? We identified 12 coping actions which, based on their function, were organised into five higher order families of coping: emotional purging; sharing and support seeking; avoidance and displacement; defiance and defence; and spreading the legacy and giving meaning to the tragedy. Regarding safety and security practices, the journalists claim that their approach has fundamentally changed. A variety of measures to stay safe, both online and offline, were adopted both on the organisational and on the individual level. However, many of these measures are not used consistently, mostly because they are not deemed necessary when covering non-sensitive topics, but also because of their impracticality in everyday journalistic work, and sceptical and fatalistic approach of the journalists to safety." (Abstract)
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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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"What are root causes of trust and distrust in media in different political contexts? How is media use shifted from one source to another with the change of political culture? What factors shape media perception across cultures and across political regimes? Are there commonalities or are they differ
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ent? Given the common instrumentalization of media in conflict environments and the growing ubiquity of political media capture, we may also ask, whether unfettered trust in media is normatively desirable under any circumstances. Put differently: Isn’t distrust a healthy response to propaganda and media manipulation? How is the concept of media literacy connected to trust or media scepticism? Do we need to be more sceptical rather than gullible? Against the backdrop of these (and other) questions, the Forum Media and Development (fome) dedicated its 2021 annual symposium to the question of trust in media, namely the question how media perception is shaped differently by different political contexts and media structures across the globe. Fome is the German platform for international media development initiatives (fome.info), a network that includes 24 organizations working towards strengthening free and independent media in developing and transitioning countries. The 2021 fome-symposium ran under the heading “Believe it or Not! Enquiries about TRUST in media (assistance)” and was organized by MiCT. The proceedings of the conference can be found online at https://fome.info/symposium-2021-documentation. Finally, this themed issue of the Global Media Journal – German Edition is curated as an extension of the conference and an effort to follow up upon some of the most pressing questions deriving from it." (Editorial)
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"It all started at the ECREA 2021 Post Conference “Disinformation Studies: Perspectives to An Emerging Research Field”, which took place online, on September 10, 2021. The debate there quickly widened and was joined by other colleagues. The book that we bring you here is the result of part of th
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at debate, which does not end with this publication." (https://labcomca.ubi.pt)
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"This policy report provides an overview of the challenges and opportunities that the media are facing in Slovakia. Based on a number of interviews that took place with key Slovak media stakeholders, it finds that the Slovak media landscape is currently the freest of the Visegrad countries, despite
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an increase in both government and oligarch control of media. These findings are in line with its RSF Press Freedom Ranking of 33rd place in 2020, up two places on the previous year. The murder of investigative reporter, Ján Kuciak, in 2018 was a turning point which established sense of solidarity amongst the media profession which is coupled with an apparent desire amongst some of the public to investigative journalism, demonstrated through their financial support of a number of influential independent media titles. There are some concerns in relation to mainstream media ownership which appears to remain firmly in the grip of a select number of financial groups and oligarchs with strong business and economic interests although a recent sale of shares in leading publication the Denník SME to the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), a non-for-profit investment fund for independent media raises some hope. The government also continues to control the public media through politicised appointment processes and public advertising spend. The popularity of websites, which are typified by health disinformation and anti-European Union narratives, is a further cause for concern as similar narratives are now being disseminated by some of the online media. The tradition for investigative journalism is strong in Slovakia, however, and it is having some impact on policy and tackling corruption." (Executive summary)
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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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