67% of Americans get their news from social media, how about you?

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In June, the Digital News Report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism outlined how a study conducted in over 30 countries showed that WhatsApp has become a source of news for many people. Recently, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey in America and 4971 adult people responded. From the survey, they published a report of the results and they showed that 67% of the Americans who participated get at least some of their news from social media.

The more interesting thing that came out of the report was that 55% of the people aged 50 years or older said that they get news from social media site. Normally, you’d think that it is the younger generations that rely on social media to the extent of also getting news from them and they’re more likely to use social media but the older people are a surprise. Now. when it comes to us here in Zimbabwe, we don’t always have the statistics easily.

I’ve shared links to interesting articles with some friends only to be to be told that they can’t open the site. So I end up just summarizing the story to them and they at least get to be updated in a way. From talking to people, I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one. Some are still skeptical of getting news from social media because of the fake news that has circulated on some social media platforms.

So we’re interested in knowing. where do you get your news source from? Do you get your news from social media sites or you’re still the television viewer or maybe you read newspapers. There’s nothing wrong with all those sources. Given how most of us have a bundle of some sort either Facebook or WhatsApp, sometimes it’s even both, the chances of having these social platforms as a news source are great.

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One response

  1. PMZ

    Whatsapp is easy to circulate news updates but the problem starts when users intentionally churn out falls news (to gain popularity, to defame someone or for whatever intention) or changes names in a piece of news to suit their location.

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