Twitter labeled NPR s main account as state-affiliated media ” a term also used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China
While about half of Americans “sometimes” or “often” get news from social media, they say they remain skeptical about what they’re seeing, according to a new Pew Research Center report on news consumption on social media platforms.
During a year full of misinformation, from vaccines to voter fraud, Pew surveyed 9,220 U.S. adults between August 31 and September 7 about 11 different social media platforms. Of those who get news on social media at least “sometimes,” 59 percent said they expect the information they find there to be inaccurate, a sentiment that remains unchanged from 2019.
(Normally, an annual Pew report on Americans’ news use of social media would include lots of year-over-year comparisons TikTok’s up, Snapchat’s down, that sort of thing. But Pew recently changed how it asks people about news consumption, in an attempt to better capture the diffuse nature of digital media, and as a result, comparisons to many data points from previous years aren�
If you’ve seen surveys about news consumption and thought they sounded pretty bleak, I have some bad news.
A new, yearlong analysis from the Pew Research Center indicates there is “strong evidence” self-reported numbers low as they may seem may be inflated.
This is apparently especially true for Americans. The authors Michael Barthel, Amy Mitchell, Dorene Asare-Marfo, Courtney Kennedy, and Kirsten Worden explain:
Many Americans say that following the news is “very important” to being a good citizen, and those who say this are more likely than others to overestimate their news consumption when their survey responses are compared with passive data tracked on their devices. This suggests that following the news is seen as a “socially desirable” behavior by many people, which may lead them to think aspirationally about their news consumption – i.e., how often they ideally intend to consume the news rather than how often they actually do – when answering surv