Facebook declines
as a source of news for users, WhatsApp picks up, and trust in news across
nearly 40 countries covered in the report averages 44%.
This year’s report contains signs
of hope for the news industry following the green shoots that emerged 12 months
ago. Change is in the air with many media companies shifting models towards
higher quality content and more emphasis on reader payment. Latest report finds
that the move to distributed content via social media and aggregators has been
halted — or is even starting to reverse, while subscriptions are increasing in
a number of countries. Meanwhile notions of trust and quality are being
incorporated into the algorithms of some tech platforms — as they respond to
political and consumer demands to fix the reliability of information in their
systems.
And yet these changes
are fragile, unevenly distributed, and come on top of many years of digital
disruption, which has undermined confidence of both publishers and consumers. Data
shows that consumer trust in news remains worryingly low in most countries,
often linked to high levels of media polarization, and the perception of undue
political influence. Adding to the mix are high levels of concern about
so-called ‘fake news’, partly stoked by politicians, who in some countries are
already using this as an opportunity to clamp down on media freedom.
On the business side,
pain has intensified for many traditional media companies in the last year with
any rise in reader revenue often offset by continuing falls in print and
digital advertising. Part of the digital-born news sector is being hit by
Facebook’s decision to downgrade news and the continuing hold platforms have
over online advertising.
With data covering nearly
40 countries and five continents, this report is a reminder that the digital
revolution is full of contradictions and exceptions. Countries started in
different places, and the speed and extent of digital disruption partly depends
on history, geography, politics, and regulation. These differences are captured
in individual country pages that can be found towards the end of this report.
They contain important industry context written by local experts —alongside key charts
and data points from each market. The overall story is captured in this
executive summary, followed by chapters containing additional analysis on key
themes.
Summary of some of the most
important findings
The use of social
media for news has started to fall in a number of key markets — after years of
continuous growth. Usage is down six percentage points in the United States,
and is also down in the UK and France.1 Almost
all of this is due to a specific decline in the discovery, posting, and sharing
of news in Facebook.
At the same time, there
is rise in the use of messaging apps for news as consumers look for more
private (and less confrontational) spaces to communicate. WhatsApp is now used
for news by around half of our sample of online users in Malaysia (54%) and
Brazil (48%) and by around third in Spain (36%) and Turkey (30%).
Across all countries,
the average level of trust in the news in general remains relatively stable at
44%, with just over half (51%) agreeing that they trust the news media they themselves use most of the time. By contrast, 34% of respondents say
they trust news they find via search and fewer than a quarter (23%) say they
trust the news they find in social media.
Over half (54%) agree
or strongly agree that they are concerned about what is real and fake on the
internet. This is highest in countries like Brazil (85%), Spain (69%), and the
United States (64%) where polarised political situations combine with high
social media use. It is lowest in Germany (37%) and the Netherlands (30%) where
recent elections were largely untroubled by concerns over fake content.
Most respondents
believe that publishers (75%) and platforms (71%) have the biggest
responsibility to fix problems of fake and unreliable news. This is because
much of the news they complain about relates to biased or inaccurate news from
the mainstream media rather than news that is completely made up or distributed
by foreign powers.
There is some public
appetite for government intervention to stop fake news, especially in Europe
(60%) and Asia (63%). By contrast, only four in ten Americans (41%) thought
that government should do more.
For the first time we
have measured news literacy. Those with higher levels of news literacy tend to
prefer newspapers brands over TV, and use social media for news very
differently from the wider population. They are also more cautious about
interventions by governments to deal with misinformation.
With Facebook looking
to incorporate survey-driven brand trust scores into its algorithms, we reveal
in this report the most and least trusted brands in 37 countries based on
similar methodologies. We find that brands with a broadcasting background and
long heritage tend to be trusted most, with popular newspapers and digital-born
brands trusted least.
News apps, email
newsletters, and mobile notifications continue to gain in importance. But in
some countries users are starting to complain they are being bombarded with too
many messages. This appears to be partly because of the growth of alerts from
aggregators such as Apple News and Upday.
The average number of
people paying for online news has edged up in many countries, with significant
increases coming from Norway (+4 percentage points), Sweden (+6), and Finland
(+4). All these countries have a small number of publishers, the majority of whom
are relentlessly pursuing a variety of paywall strategies. But in more complex
and fragmented markets, there are still many publishers who offer online news
for free.
Last year’s
significant increase in subscription in the United States (the so-called Trump
Bump) has been maintained, while donations and donation-based memberships are
emerging as a significant alternative strategy in Spain, and the UK as well as
in the United States. These payments are closely linked with political belief
(the left) and come disproportionately from the young.
Privacy concerns have
reignited the growth in ad-blocking software. More than a quarter now block on
any device (27%) — but that ranges from 42% in Greece to 13% in South Korea.
Television remains a
critical source of news for many — but declines in annual audience continue to
raise new questions about the future role of public broadcasters and their
ability to attract the next generation of viewers.
Consumers remain
reluctant to view news video within publisher websites and apps. Over half of
consumption happens in third-party environments like Facebook and YouTube.
Americans and Europeans would like to see fewer online news videos; Asians tend
to want more.
Podcasts are becoming
popular across the world due to better content and easier distribution. They
are almost twice as popular in the United States (33%) as they are in the UK
(18%). Young people are far more likely to use podcasts than listen to speech
radio.
Voice-activated
digital assistants like the Amazon Echo and Google Home continue to grow
rapidly, opening new opportunities for news audio. Usage has more than doubled
in the United States, Germany, and the UK with around half of those who have
such devices using them for news and information.
Social Media Reverse
Source : thehoot.org
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