☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: Democrats and left-leaning influencers consider media strategy after election
- New from Pew Research Center: Who Americans think of as news influencers on social media
- In other news: Mississippi judge orders newspaper to remove editorial criticizing public officials
- Looking ahead: Knight Foundation to invest $25 million in local nonprofit news initiative American Journalism Project
- Chart of the week: The specific people who come to mind when Americans think of news influencers
🔥 Featured story
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory, Democrats and left-leaning influencers are grappling with the changing digital media ecosystem and its role in the election outcome.
A recent Pew Research Center study of news influencers on social media found that slightly more news influencers explicitly identify with the political right than the left.
We also analyzed news influencers’ posts leading up to the election, finding that about twice as many posts by all the news influencers in our sample mentioned Trump (12%) as mentioned Democratic candidate Kamala Harris (6%) during the study period. A slightly higher percentage of posts that mentioned Trump were supportive of him (27%) compared with the share of posts about Harris that were supportive of her (19%).
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
In a new Center analysis, we asked the 21% of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media to name the first news influencer who comes to mind. Respondents gave a wide variety of answers.
Half named individual people, ranging from journalists to opinion commentators to politicians to content creators. A small share mentioned media outlets. And 42% gave no response or said they couldn’t think of a news influencer. This suggests that even for many Americans who say they regularly get news from news influencers, it is difficult to quickly think of a specific one.
This analysis is from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
📌 In other news
- Mississippi judge orders newspaper to remove editorial criticizing public officials
- Trump Media and Rumble sue Brazilian judge, alleging censorship
- U.S. State Department orders embassies and consulates to cancel news subscriptions
- A profile of Hasan Piker, the online news pundit attracting young, left-leaning men
- The New York Times greenlights AI tools for internal use
- Italy’s national journalist union submits legal action against government over spyware concerns
- Pentagon spokesperson invites conservative radio hosts to broadcast from the Pentagon
📅 Looking ahead
Earlier this week, the American Journalism Project announced that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will invest $25 million in the venture philanthropy initiative to “accelerate the growth of nonprofit local news organizations nationwide.” (The Knight Foundation is also a partner to Pew Research Center through the Pew-Knight Initiative.)
These efforts follow decades of steep decline in newspaper revenues nationwide. According to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, most U.S. adults (63%) think their local news outlets are doing very or somewhat well financially, although this share is down somewhat since 2018 (from 71%). While 85% of Americans say local news is at least somewhat important to the well-being of their local community, just 15% say they have paid for local news in the past year (whether through subscriptions, donations or memberships).
According to a 2022 Center analysis, nonprofit news organizations are playing an increasing role in covering state capitols. The number of nonprofit news reporters who cover state capitols nearly quadrupled between 2014 to 2022, and these journalists accounted for 20% of the nation’s total statehouse press corps in 2022, up from 6% eight years before.
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart is a look into our new analysis of who Americans think of as news influencers on social media.
In an open-ended question, we asked U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from news influencers to name the first one who comes to mind for them. The most frequently mentioned news influencers included Philip DeFranco (volunteered by 3%), Tucker Carlson (2%), Ben Shapiro (2%), V Spehar from Under the Desk News (2%), Carlos Eduardo Espina (2%) and President Donald Trump (2%).
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Sarah Naseer, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang and Emily Tomasik. It is edited by Michael Lipka and copy edited by Anna Jackson.
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