Social media now main source of news in US, research suggests

Prominent podcasters like Joe Rogan are playing a bigger role in news dissemination in the United States, as are AI chatbots, contributing to the further erosion of traditional media, according to a report released on Tuesday.

In the week following the January 2025 US presidential inauguration, more Americans said they got their news from social and video networks than from TV and news websites and apps - the first time that shift has occurred, the report said.

Traditional US news media increasingly risks being eclipsed by online personalities and creators, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said in its annual Digital News Report, which is based on an online survey of almost 100,000 people in 48 markets, including the United States.

The trend is particularly acute among young Americans. Over half of people under age 35 in the US are relying on social media and video networks as their main source for news, the report found. Across the countries that the report surveyed, 44% of people aged 18 to 24 said these networks are their main source of news.

One-fifth of a sampled group of Americans came across news or commentary from podcaster Rogan in the week following the presidential inauguration, the report found, while 14% of respondents said they had come across former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson discussing or commenting on news during that period. Carlson now generates content across multiple social media and video networks.

Top creators during that period also included Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro on the political right, and Brian Tyler Cohen and David Pakman on the left. The vast majority of the most followed commentators who discuss politics are men, the report found.

"These are not just big numbers in themselves," wrote Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate at the Oxford, UK-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. "These creators are also attracting audiences that traditional media struggle to reach. Some of the most popular personalities over-index with young men, with right-leaning audiences, and with those that have low levels of trust in mainstream media outlets, seeing them as biased or part of a liberal elite."

Despite their popularity, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest sources of false or misleading information worldwide, along with politicians, the report found. In the United States, politicians are considered the biggest sources of false or misleading information.

Over 70% of Americans say they remain concerned about their ability to tell what is true from what is false when it comes to news online, a similar proportion to last year. That compared to 58% across all of the surveyed markets.

AI is another emerging theme in news consumption, particularly for young people. Of respondents under age 25, 15% rely on AI chatbots and interfaces for news each week, compared to 7% of respondents overall, the report found.

ChatGPT was the most mentioned AI service for news, followed by Google's Gemini and Meta AI.

The trend is raising concerns about a potential loss of search referral traffic to publisher websites and apps, the report found, as chatbots eliminate the need for users to click on a story link.

Text remains the most preferred way for people worldwide to consume news, although around a third say they prefer to watch the news online and 15% say they prefer to listen.

Younger people are much more likely to prefer watching or listening to the news.

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, is also becoming a more popular source of news in the United States, particularly among right-leaning users and young men, with 23% of sampled Americans consuming news there - up 8 percentage points from last year. Rival networks like Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon are struggling to gain traction globally, with reach of 2% or less for news.

Levels of trust in news across markets are currently stable at 40%, and unchanged for the last three years, the report found.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is funded by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Thomson Reuters.