21% of Americans answered that they get news information from influencers on social media. What kind of people tend to use influencers as a source of information?
In recent years, the percentage of people who obtain information from social media influencers rather than from mass media such as television and newspapers has been on the rise. A survey of approximately 10,000 people conducted by the American think tank Pew Research Center revealed that 21% of adult Americans obtain information about current affairs from individuals known as 'news influencers.'
Influencers Who Often Post About News, and Who Sees Their Content | Pew Research Center
20% of Americans Get Their News From Influencers | PCMag
https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-of-americans-get-their-news-from-influencers
The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds
https://www.usermag.co/p/the-majority-of-news-influencers
News influencers are predominantly men and more likely conservative, study finds | Mashable
https://mashable.com/article/influencer-politics-men-conservative
Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 10,658 Americans from July to August 2024. The results revealed that 21% of Americans said they 'regularly get information from news influencers on social media.'
According to the Pew Research Center, a 'news influencer' is an individual who regularly posts about current events on social media and has more than 100,000 followers on either Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), or YouTube.
When surveyed by generation, the people who most commonly said they 'get their information from news influencers' were 18-29 year-olds at approximately 37%, followed by 30-49 year-olds at 26%, then dropping to 15% for those 50-64, and just 7% for those 65 and over.
In terms of race, 30% of Hispanics, 29% of Asians, 27% of Blacks, and 17% of Whites answered that they get information from news influencers. In addition, 26% of low-income people said they get information from influencers, while only 16% of high-income Americans said the same.
There is also no clear political division among those who follow news influencers: 21% of Republicans and 22% of Democrats surveyed said they get their news from news influencers.
The survey revealed that 65% of participants get information from news influencers on social media because they want to better understand a topic, and 70% believe that the information they get from news influencers is different from the news they get from other sources. However, only 31% of participants said that they get information from news influencers because they want to feel a personal connection with them.
In addition, Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 500 popular news influencers, and found that about 85% of news influencers have accounts on X, about 75% of news influencers use multiple social media platforms, and 27% of them use five or more social media platforms.
Additionally, many influencers share their content through podcasts and newsletters, and across the site, roughly 59% of news influencers monetize their online presence in some way, whether that be through subscriptions, donations or merchandise sales.
In addition, the survey showed that the male-female ratio of news influencers surveyed was 63:30. It was also reported that Facebook, YouTube, and X had a relatively high proportion of males.
Additionally, 27% of news influencers expressed right-wing political leanings in their account profiles, posts, or websites, compared with 21% of left-wing news influencers.
While roughly half of the news influencers surveyed did not declare a clear political leaning, the Pew Research Center survey found that Facebook news influencers were most likely to express right-wing views, followed by X, YouTube, and Instagram.
On the other hand, TikTok has the smallest gender gap among the social media surveyed, with a male to female ratio of 50:45, and it was also revealed that among the top five (which includes Facebook, X, YouTube, and Instagram), TikTok is the only one where the proportion of right-wing news influencers is lower than the proportion of left-wing news influencers.
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