Dr. Pradeep Mahapatra
While news industry worldwide continue to struggle with defects in business models, loss of public faith and news avoidance by the consumers in the post-Covid19-pandemic New Normal, the growing trend of accessing news from online non-news sites turns the media environment more toxic. After 300 years of supremacy of the print media in dissemination of news, new mediums such as radio, television and cinema appeared during the twentieth century and adjusted themselves in the prevailing structural framework. However, spread of internet during the last decade of twentieth century and emergence of social media from the beginning of twenty-first century challenged many of the established norms.
Technological innovations during the past hundred years directed the news consumers from reading newspapers to listening radio broadcast to view television reporting, which finally aggregated all three formats of text, audio and video in one platform online. In the process the traditional procedure of operation was kept intact. Experienced and trained professionals continued to develop stories in the newsrooms while consumers accessed the same from select outlets. Popularisation of social media offered the consumers not only the opportunity to access news, but also to take part in content development and publication of news. User-generated content contributed towards disruption in the traditional news ecosystem.
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While consumption of videos from news publication websites and apps accounted 22 per cent, non-news sites extended to 72 per cent.
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Major measurement organisations like ‘Statista’ indicate that as of April 2024, while about 67 per cent of the global population were internet users, 62.6 per cent identified as social media users. ‘Digital News Report’ released by ‘Reuters Institute of the Study of Journalism’ of ‘University of Oxford’ during June 2024 revealed that worldwide people increasingly accessed news videos. While 66 per cent preferred short videos, 51 per cent attracted towards longer formats. But news videos were not sourced from news websites or apps, but from non-news platforms like social media. While consumption of videos from news publication websites and apps accounted 22 per cent, non-news sites extended to 72 per cent.
Social media allow people without professional journalistic background to create news stories and cover events that legacy media may neglect. Traditional news platforms are open for everybody, but social media posts are circulated with-in one’s own virtual network. However, each of the recipient can share posts among their friends and followers enabling the content to reach wide demographies beyond geographic boarders in short period of time. But all the posts may not receive such privilege.
Social media offers opportunities to the consumers to discover news, share or repost and comment. Research findings indicate that generally social media users circulate more negative news. Subjects of news stories differ from what newspaper editors prioritize. Politics claims a major portion of news circulated in the social media platforms. Results of a survey conducted among 7,000 samples published in Political Communication revealed that out of 10 political news stories, people access 3.4 items from news platforms and 6.6 items from online non-news sites.
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Among other important factors related to sourcing news from the social media, the algorithms impact users feeds which in turn control flow of information
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Some other research findings indicated that online news consumers visiting news sites show more interest to content other than news. A paper published in Science Advances during 2020 suggested that news constitutes about 4 per cent of total online consumption. Often news is accessed from platforms dedicated to entertainment, celebrity gossip and e-commerce. People who have less interest in politics come across political news from online non-news sties.
Pew Research Center of Untied States conducted a survey to understand news consumption habits of citizens with a sample strength of 10,000 adults in March 2024. Empirical evidence was established that about half of the people, who took part in the research, accessed news from social media at least some times. The news measurement included 37 per cent from Facebook. 33 per cent Instagram and 65 per cent from X. Majority told that though they do not visit the social media sites for news, often they come across news in the social media platforms. Generally they confront news posted by influencers and other people they do not know personally.
About 85 per cent of Facebook users and 72 per cent of Instagram users said that they get news through posts by their family members, friends and acquaintances. Most of the social media consumers are aware that news on social media platforms may be inaccurate. While up to 75 per cent of X users come accross breaking news, it is limited to 58 per cent in Facebook and 44 per cent in Instagram. Younger users across platforms are much more likely to see breaking news in the social media.
Among other important factors related to sourcing news from the social media, the algorithms impact users feeds which in turn control flow of information. While the opportunity to access the full spectrum of news is available in the traditional news platforms, individual accounts in social media platforms depend upon their friends to post and algorithms to select for publication. Such environment tend to polarization which spells bad effects on the society. Similarly research shows that with more media choices, news consumption typically declines. Both the reasons contribute towards negative effects on news consumption from online non-news sites.
(English translation of the original Odia newsletter by the author circulated on June 21, 2024. https://pmjournalism.substack.com/p/044 It is an open-access content, free for translation and reproduction)
Dr. Pradeep Mahapatra is a retired faculty of Journalism, Berhampur University, Odisha.https://about.me/pradeepmahapatra
References:
Social media as a news source
Shearer, Elisha et al. How American get news on Tik-Tok, X, Facebook and Instagram. June 12, 2024
Non-news sites expose people to more political content than news sites. Why ? Nieman Journalism Lab. Sept 5, 2023
