How Many Americans Receive Their News from Social Media Apps?

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9 must have social networking apps | by InstaCash | ZeroWaste | Medium

This weeks article goes further into the effects of social media on today's American political sphere. According to this weeks article based on PEW research responses from 9,200 Americans, 71% of the participants said that they use social media apps to receive some of their news. The article then goes further and looks at specific apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and more. According to this weeks article, Facebook is the leader when it comes to individuals receiving their news from there. 36% of adults (that took part in the survey) that are Facebook users regularly get their news from the site, while 68% said that they just use the site. For other social media apps, Twitter has 15% who regularly get their news from the site and 25% just use it. For Instagram the numbers were 11% to 40%, and this number difference does not surprise me since Instagram is mostly just pictures. For YouTube the numbers were 23% to 74% respectively. 

The numbers from this article are another example of how social media apps are becoming one of the biggest sources for news in today's American political sphere. Additionally, these numbers also point out an issue, which is that so many individuals are stating to get a majority if not all of their news from one source. The youth of social media makes it hard to fully understand when dealing with fake news reports and false statements and how to properly address them. 

Source: 

Hutchinson, Andrew. “New Research Shows That 71% of Americans Now Get News Content via Social Platforms.” Social Media Today, 12 Jan. 2021, www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-research-shows-that-71-of-americans-now-get-news-content-via-social-pl/593255/.


Comments

  1. Reshad DanielsMarch 7, 2021 at 11:15 PM

    Great article, Dylan! Being that social media is the number one source for news (esp when it comes to younger people) what are some ways fake news can be combatted to ensure that we forming educated opinions/decisions?

    ReplyDelete

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