20% get news from social media influencers

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 19/11/2024

About one-in-five say that they regularly get news from influencers on social media. A clear majority of these influencers are men and most of them have no background with a news organisation, a US study by the Pew Research centre shows. 

“News influencers” are defined as individuals who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) or YouTube. They can be journalists who are or were affiliated with a news organisation or independent content creators, but they must be people and not organisations.

Key findings:

• News influencers are most likely to be found on the social media site X, where 85% have a presence. A number of major news media have recently announced that they are leaving Elon Musk-owned X as it is considered too political, aggressive etc. But many news influencers also are on other social media sites, such as Instagram (where 50% have an account) and YouTube (44%).
• Slightly more news influencers explicitly identify as Republican, conservative or pro-Donald Trump (27% of news influencers) than Democratic, liberal or pro-Kamala Harris (21%).
• A clear majority of news influencers are men (63%).
• Most (77%) have no affiliation or background with a news organization.
• 21% say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media, according to a survey of 10,658 Americans conducted in summer 2024. This is especially common among younger adults: 37% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly get news from influencers. But there are minimal differences between Republicans and Democrats on this question.
• 65% say news influencers have helped them better understand current events and civic issues. 
• Far more of the news influencers in the study have an account on X than any other social media site: 85% are on the site, compared with 50% who are on Instagram, the next-most popular site.
• At the same time, it is common for influencers to have a cross-site presence to maximize their audience. About two-thirds of news influencers in the study are on more than one site, including 27% who are on five or more sites.
• Many influencers also share content through podcasts (34%) or newsletters (22%). And across sites, a majority of news influencers (59%) monetize their online presence in some way, whether through subscriptions, donations or merchandise sales.

The study says that while many news influencers are on multiple sites, there is a different mix of influencers on each site. 

“A closer look at five major social media sites, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube, finds that news influencers on TikTok – a fast-growing destination for news in the US – stand out from those on other sites in the following ways: 

• TikTok has the smallest gender gap: 50% of news influencers on TikTok are men, while 45% are women. On all other sites, men outnumber women by a roughly two-to-one margin or more.
• TikTok also stands out as the only site of the five where news influencers who explicitly identify as right-leaning (25% of TikTok news influencers) do not outnumber those who publicly express a left-leaning political ideology (28%).
• News influencers on TikTok are more likely than those on other sites to show support for LGBTQ+ rights or identify as LGBTQ+ in their account profiles (13%).