This year’s report comes at a time when around half the world’s population have been going to the polls in national and regional elections, and as wars continue to rage in Ukraine and Gaza. In these troubled times, a supply of accurate, independent journalism remains more important than ever, and yet in many of the countries covered in our survey we fnd the news media increasingly challenged by rising mis- and disinformation, low trust, attacks by politicians, and an uncertain business environment.

Our country pages this year (pp. 61-163) are filled with examples of layofs, closures, and other cuts due to a combination of rising costs, falling advertising revenues, and sharp declines in trafc from social media. In some parts of the world these economic challenges have made it even harder for news media to resist pressures from powerful businesspeople or governments looking to infuence coverage and control narratives.

There is no single cause for this crisis; it has been building for some time, but many of the immediate challenges are compounded by the power and changing strategies of rival big tech companies, including social media, search engines, and video platforms. Some are now explicitly deprioritising news and political content, while others have switched focus from publishers to ‘creators’, and pushing more fun and engaging formats – including video – to keep more attention within their own platforms. These private companies do not have any obligations to the news, but with many people now getting much of their information via these competing platforms, these shifs have consequences not only for the news industry, but also our societies. As if this were not enough, rapid advances in artifcial intelligence (AI) are about to set in motion a further series of changes including AI-driven search interfaces and chatbots that could further reduce trafc fows to news websites and apps, adding further uncertainty to how information environments might look in a few years.

Our report this year documents the scale and impact of these ‘platform resets’. With TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube on the rise, we look at why consumers are embracing more video consumption and investigate which mainstream and alternative accounts – including creators and infuencers – are getting most attention when it comes to news. We also explore the very diferent levels of confdence people have in their ability to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content on a range of popular third-party platforms around the world. For the frst time in our survey, we also take a detailed look at consumer attitudes towards the use of AI in the news, supported by qualitative research in three countries (the UK, US, and Mexico). As publishers rapidly adopt AI, to make their businesses more efcient and to personalise content, our research suggests they need to proceed with caution, as the public generally wants humans in the driving seat at all times.

With publishers struggling to connect with much of the public, and growing numbers of people selectively (and in some cases continuously) avoiding the news, we have also explored diferent user needs to understand where the biggest gaps lie between what audiences want and what publishers currently provide. And we look at the price that some consumers are currently paying for online news and what might entice more people to join them.

This 13th edition of our Digital News Report, which is based on data from six continents and 47 markets, reminds us that these changes are not always evenly distributed. While journalism is struggling overall, in some parts of the world news media remain proftable, independent, and widely trusted. But even in these countries, we fnd challenges around the pace of change, the role of platforms, and how to adapt to a digital environment that seems to become more complex and fragmented every year. The overall story is captured in this Executive Summary, followed by Section 2 with chapters containing additional analysis, and then individual country and market pages in Section 3.

A SUMMARY OF SOME OF THE KEY FINDINGS FROM OUR 2024 RESEARCH

• In many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States, we fnd a signifcant 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, across 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 ffh (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the frst time.
• Linked to these shifs, 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 shifing, the majority continue to identify platforms including social media, search, or aggregators as their main gateway to online news. Across markets, only around a ffh 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 fnd an increasing focus on partisan commentators, infuencers, 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 fgure 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.
• As publishers embrace the use of AI we fnd widespread suspicion about how it might be used, especially for ‘hard’ news stories such as politics or war. There is more comfort with the use of AI in behind-the-scenes tasks such as transcription and translation; in supporting rather than replacing journalists.
• Trust in the news (40%) has remained stable over the last year, but is still four points lower overall than it was at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while Greece (23%) and Hungary (23%) have the lowest levels, amid concerns about undue political and business infuence over the media.
• Elections have increased interest in the news in a few countries, including the United States (+3), but the overall trend remains downward. Interest in news in Argentina, for example, has fallen from 77% in 2017 to 45% today. In the United Kingdom interest in news has almost halved since 2015. In both countries the change is mirrored by a similar decline in interest in politics.
• At the same time, we find a rise in selective news avoidance. Around four in ten (39%) now say they sometimes or often avoid the news – up 3 percentage points on last year’s average – with more significant increases in Brazil, Spain, Germany, and Finland. Open comments suggest that the intractable conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East may have had some impact. In a separate question, we find that the proportion that say they feel ‘overloaded’ by the amount of news these days has grown substantially (+11pp) since 2019 when we last asked this question.
• In exploring user needs around news, our data suggest that publishers may be focusing too much on updating people on top news stories and not spending enough time providing diferent perspectives on issues or reporting stories that can provide a basis for occasional optimism. In terms of topics, we fnd that audiences feel mostly well served by political and sports news but there are gaps around local news in some countries, as well as health and education news.
• Our data show little growth in news subscription, with just 17% saying they paid for any online news in the last year, across a basket of 20 richer countries. North European countries such as Norway (40%) and Sweden (31%) have the highest proportion of those paying, with Japan (9%) and the United Kingdom (8%) amongst the lowest. As in previous years, we fnd that a large proportion of digital subscriptions go to just a few upmarket national brands – reinforcing the winner takes most dynamics that are often linked with digital media.
• In some countries we find evidence of heavy discounting, with around four in ten (41%) saying they currently pay less than the full price. Prospects of attracting new subscribers remain limited by a continued reluctance to pay for news, linked to low interest and an abundance of free sources. Well over half (55%) of those that are not currently subscribing say that they would pay nothing for online news, with most of the rest prepared to offer the equivalent of just a few dollars per month, when pressed. Across markets, just 2% of non-payers say that they would pay the equivalent of an average full price subscription.
• News podcasting remains a bright spot for publishers, attracting younger, well-educated audiences but is a minority activity overall. Across a basket of 20 countries, just over a third (35%) access a podcast monthly, with 13% accessing a show relating to news and current afairs. Many of the most popular podcasts are now flmed and distributed via video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.

THE GREAT PLATFORM RESET IS UNDERWAY

Online platforms have shaped many aspects of our lives over the last few decades, from how we fnd and distribute information, how we are advertised to, how we spend our money, how we share experiences, and most recently, how we consume entertainment. But even as online platforms have brought great convenience for consumers – and advertisers have focked to them – they have also disrupted traditional publishing business models in very profound ways. Our data suggest we are now at the beginning of a technology shif which is bringing a new wave of innovation to the platform environment, presenting challenges for incumbent technology companies, the news industry, and for society.

Platforms have been adjusting strategies in the light of generative AI, and are also navigating changing consumer behaviour, as well as increased regulatory concerns about misinformation and other issues. Meta in particular has been trying to reduce the role of news across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, and has restricted the algorithmic promotion of political content. The company has also been reducing support for the news industry, not renewing deals worth millions of dollars, and removing its news tab in a number of countries.3

The impact of these changes, some which have been going on for a while, is illustrated by our frst chart which uses aggregated data from 12 mostly developed markets we have been following since 2014. It shows declining, though still substantial, reach for

Facebook over time – down 16pp since 2016 – as well as increased fragmentation of attention across multiple networks. A decade ago, only Facebook and YouTube had a reach of more than 10% for news in these countries, now there are many more networks, ofen being used in combination (several of them are owned by Meta). Taken together, platforms remain as important as ever – but the role and strategy of individual platforms is changing as they compete and evolve, with Facebook becoming less important, and many others becoming relatively more so.

The previous chart also highlights the strong shif towards video- based networks such as YouTube, TikTok (and Instagram), all of which have grown in importance for news since the COVID-19 pandemic drove new habits. Faced with new competition, both Facebook and X have been refocusing their strategies, looking to keep users within the platform rather than link out to publishers as they might have done in the past. This has involved a prioritisation of video and other proprietary formats. Industry data show that the combined efect of these changes was to reduce trafc referrals from Facebook to publishers by 48% last year and from X by 27%.4 Looking at survey data across our 47 markets we fnd much regional and country-based variation in the use of diferent networks, with the fastest changes in the Global South, perhaps because they tend to be more dependent on social media for news.

TikTok remains most popular with younger groups and, although its use for any purpose is similar to last year, the proportion using it for news has grown to 13% (+2) across all markets and 23% for 18–24s. These averages hide rapid growth in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. More than a third now use the network for news every week in Thailand (39%) and Kenya (36%), with a quarter or more accessing it in Indonesia (29%) and Peru (27%). This compares with just 4% in the UK, 3% in Denmark, and 9% in the United States. The future of TikTok remains uncertain in the US following concerns about Chinese infuence and it is already banned in India, though similar apps, such as Moj, Chingari, and Josh, are emerging there.

The growing reach of TikTok and other youth-orientated networks has not escaped the attention of politicians who have incorporated it into their media campaigns. Argentina’s new populist president, Javier Milei, runs a successful TikTok account with 2.2m followers while the new Indonesian president, Prabowo Subianto, swept to victory in February using a social media campaign featuring AI-generated images, rebranding the former hard-line general as a cute and charming dancing grandpa. We explore the implications for trust and reliability of information later in this report.

In previous research (Digital News Report 2021, 2023) we have shown that when it comes to online news, most audiences still prefer text because of its fexibility and control, but that doesn’t mean that video – and especially short-form video – is not becoming a much bigger part of media diets. Across countries, two-thirds (66%) say they access a short news video, which we defned as a few minutes or less, at least once a week, again with higher levels outside the US and Western Europe. Almost nine in ten of the online population in Thailand (87%), access short-form videos weekly, with half (50%) saying they do this every day. Americans access a little less ofen (60% weekly and 20% daily), while the British consume the least short-form news (39% weekly and just 9% daily).

Live news streams and long-form recordings are also widely consumed. Taking the United States as an example, we can see how under 35s consume the most of each format, with older people being relatively less likely to consume live or long-form video.

One of the reasons why news video consumption is higher in the United States than in most European countries is the abundant supply of political content from both traditional and non-traditional sources. Some are creators native to online media. Others have come from broadcast backgrounds. In the last few years, a number of high-profle TV anchors, including Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, and Don Lemon, have switched their focus to online platforms as they look to take advantage of changing consumer behaviour. Carlson’s interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin received more than 200m plays on X and 34m on his YouTube channel. In the UK, another controversial fgure, Piers Morgan, recently lef his daily broadcast show on Talk TV in favour of the fexibility and control ofered as an independent operator working across multiple streaming platforms. (It is worth noting that many of these platform moves came only afer the person in question walked out on or were ditched by their former employers on mainstream TV.)

The jury is currently out on whether these big personalities can build robust trafc or sustainable businesses within platform environments. There is a similar challenge for mainstream publishers who fnd platform-based videos harder to monetise than those consumed via owned and operated websites and apps. YouTube and Facebook remain the most important platforms for online news video overall (see next chart) but we see signifcant market diferences, with Facebook the most popular for video news in the Philippines, YouTube in South Korea, and X and TikTok playing a key role in Nigeria and Indonesia respectively. YouTube is also the top destination for under 25s, though TikTok and Instagram are not far behind. Older viewers still like to consume much of their video through news websites, though the majority say they mostly access video via third-party platforms. Only in countries such as Norway do we fnd that getting on for half of users (45%) say their main video consumption is via websites, a refection of the strength of brands in that market, a commitment to a good user experience, and a strategy that restricts the number of publisher videos that are posted to platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

Where do people pay attention when using online platforms?

One of the big challenges of the shif to video networks with a younger age profle is that journalists and news organisations are ofen eclipsed by news creators and other infuencers, even when it comes to news. This year we repeated a question we asked frst in 2021 about where audiences pay most attention when it comes to news on various platforms. As in previous years, we fnd that across markets, while mainstream media and journalists ofen lead conversations in X and Facebook, they struggle to get as much attention in Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok where alternative sources and personalities, including online infuencers and celebrities, are ofen more prominent.

It is a similar story across many markets, though diferences emerge when we look at specifc online networks and at a country level. In the following chart we compare attention around news content on YouTube, the second largest network overall. We fnd that alternative sources and online infuencers play a bigger role in both the United States and Brazil than is the case in the United Kingdom.

But who are these personalities and celebrities and what kind of alternative sources are attracting attention? To answer these questions, we asked respondents that had selected each option to list up to three mainstream accounts they followed most closely and then three alternative ones (e.g. alternative accounts, infuencers, etc). We then counted and coded these responses.

In the United States, in particular, we fnd a wide range of politically partisan voices including Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones (recently reinstated on X), Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, and many more. These voices come mostly from the right, with a narrative around a ‘trusted’ alternative to what they see as the biased liberal mainstream media, but there is also signifcant representation on the progressive left (David Pakman and commentators from Meidas Touch). The top 10 named individuals in the US list are all men who tend to express strong opinions about politics.

Partisan voices (from both lef and right) are an important part of the picture elsewhere, but we also fnd diverse perspectives and new approaches to storytelling. In France, Hugo Travers, 27, known online as Hugo Décrypte, has become a leading news source for young French people for his explanatory videos about politics (2.6m subscribers on YouTube and 5.8m on TikTok). Our data show that across all networks he gets more mentions than traditional news brands such as Le Monde or BFMTV. According to our data, the average audience age of his followers is just 27, compared to between 40 and 45 for large traditional brands such as Le Monde or BFMTV.

Youth-focused brands Brut and Konbini were also widely cited in France, while in the UK, Politics Joe and TLDR News, set up by Jack Kelly, attract attention for videos that try to make serious topics accessible for young people. The most mentioned TikTok news creator in the UK is Dylan Page, who has more than 10m followers on the platform. In the United States, Vitus Spehar presents

a fun daily news round-up, ofen from a prone v on the foor, @underthedesknews (a satirical dig at the classic TV format).

Coverage of war and confict

We also found a number of accounts sharing videos about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. With mainstream news access restricted, young social media infuencers in Gaza, Yemen, and elsewhere have been flling in the gaps – documenting the ofen- brutal realities of life on the ground. Because these videos are posted by many diferent accounts and ordinary people, it is hard to quantify the impact, but our methodology does pick up a few individual infuencer accounts as well as campaigning groups that pull together footage from across social media. As one example, the Instagram account Eye on Palestine appears in our data across a number of countries. The account says it brings ‘the sounds and images that ofcial media does not show’. WarMonitor, one of a number of infuential accounts that have been recommended

by prominent fgures such as Elon Musk, has added hundreds of thousands of followers during the Israel–Palestine confict.

Finally, celebrities such as Taylor Swif, the Kardashians, and Lionel Messi were widely mentioned by younger people, mostly in reference to Instagram, despite the fact that they rarely talk about politics. This suggests that younger people take a wide view of news, potentially including updates on a singer’s tour dates, on fashion, or on football.

Motivations for using social video

In analysing open comments, we found three core reasons why audiences are attracted to video and other content in social and video platforms.

First, respondents, including many younger ones, say the comparatively unfltered nature of much of the coverage makes it come across as more trustworthy and authentic than traditional media. ‘I like the videos that were taken by an innocent bystander. These videos are unedited and there is no bias or political spin,’ says one.5 There is an enduring belief that videos are harder to falsify, while enabling people to make up their own mind, even as the development of AI may lead more people to question it.

Secondly, people talk about the convenience of having news served to you on a platform where you already spend time, which knows your interests, and where ‘the algorithm feeds suggestions based on previous viewing’.

They are short, easy-to-watch clips that are sufcient to provide news in a nutshell

Male, 39, USA

Thirdly, social video platforms are valued for the diferent perspectives they bring. For some people that meant a partisan perspective that aligns with their interests, but for others it related to the greater depth around a personal passion or a wider range of topics to explore.

I can fnd something on nearly any topic, many diferent worldviews and perspectives, long videos for deep-dives, short form for a quick look, and everything in between. Female, 23, USA

It is important to note that very few people only use online video for news each week – around 4% across countries according to our data. The majority use a mix of text, video, and audio – and a combination of mainstream brands that may or may not be supplemented by alternative voices. But as audiences consume more content in these networks, they sometimes worry less about where the content comes from, and more about the convenience and choice delivered within their feed. Though there are examples of successful video consumption within news websites and apps, for  most publishers the shift towards video presents a difficult

balancing act. How can they take advantage of a format that can engage audiences in powerful ways, including younger ones, while developing meaningful relationships – and businesses – on someone else’s platform?

TO WHAT EXTENT DO PEOPLE FEEL CONFIDENT ABOUT IDENTIFYING TRUSTWORTHY NEWS IN DIFFERENT ONLINE PLATFORMS?

In this critical year of elections, many worry about the reliability of content, about the scope for manipulation of online platforms by ‘bad actors’, over how some domestic politicians and media personalities express themselves, and about the opaque ways in which platforms themselves select and promote content.

Across markets, the proportion of our respondents that say they are worried about what is real and what is fake on the internet overall is up 3pp from 56% to 59%. It is highest in some of the countries holding polls this year, including South Africa (81%), the United States (72%), and the UK (70%).

Taking a regional view, we find the highest levels of concern in Africa (75%) and lower levels in much of Northern and Western Europe (e.g. Norway 45% and Germany 42%).

Previous research shows that these audience concerns about misinformation are often driven less by news that is completely ‘made up’ and more about seeing opinions and agendas that they may disagree with – as well as journalism they regard as superficial and unsubstantiated. In this context it is perhaps not surprising that politics remains the topic that engenders the most concern about ‘fake or misleading’ content, along with health information and news about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Against this backdrop of widespread concern, we have, for the frst time, asked users of specifc online platforms, how easy or difcult they fnd it to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content. Given its increasing use for news – and its much younger age profle – it is worrying to find that more than a quarter of TikTok users (27%) say they struggle to detect trustworthy news, the highest score out of all the networks covered. A further quarter have no strong opinion and around four in ten (44%) say they fnd it easy. Fact-checkers and others have been paying much more attention to the network recently, with Newsguard reporting in 2022 that a fifth (20%) of a sample of searches on prominent news topics such as Ukraine and COVID vaccines contained isinformation.6 Most recently it was at the centre of a food of unfounded rumours and conspiracies about the  Princess of Wales afer her hospital operation. A significant proportion of X users (24%) also say that it is hard to pick out trustworthy news. This may be because news plays an outsized role on the platform, or because of the wide range of views expressed, further encouraged by Elon Musk, a self- declared free speech advocate, since he took over the company.

The numbers are only a bit lower in some of the largest networks such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and WhatsApp, which have all been implicated in various misinformation problems too.

While there is widespread concern about diferent networks, it is also important to recognise that many people are confdent about their ability to tell trustworthy and untrustworthy news and information apart. In fact, around half of respondents using each network say they fnd it easy to do so, including many younger and less educated users – even if these perceptions may or may not be based on reality. All of the major social and video platforms recognise these challenges, and have been boosting their technical and human defences, not least because of the potential for a food of AI-generated synthetic content in this year’s elections.

In exploring country diferences, we fnd that people in Western European countries such as Germany (see the next chart) are less confdent about their ability to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy information on X and TikTok than respondents in the United States. This may refect very diferent ofcial and media narratives about the balance between free speech and online harms. The EU has introduced legislation such as the Digital Services Act, imposing greater obligations on platforms in the run-up to June’s EU Parliament elections.7 X is currently being investigated over suspected breaches of content moderation rules.