Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media Are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable
U.S. adults in this group are less likely to get the facts right about COVID-19 and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
U.S. adults in this group are less likely to get the facts right about COVID-19 and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.
Some 61% of U.S. adults say they follow COVID-19 news at both the national and local level equally, and 23% say they pay more attention to local news.
In March 2020, about three-quarters (74%) of public Facebook posts about COVID-19 linked to news organizations, while just 1% linked to health and science sites.
We thought it would be valuable to combine our study of news coverage itself with data on people’s views about, and exposure to, that coverage.
Those ages 18 to 29 differ from older Americans in their news consumption habits and in their responses to major news events and coverage.
Black adults were much more likely than whites and somewhat more likely than Hispanic adults to frequently discuss the pandemic with others.
The percentage who say journalists have exaggerated the risks of the outbreak has decreased notably in recent weeks.
More than half of these social media news consumers say they have encountered made-up news about COVID-19.
The public’s sense about the pandemic’s impact on the financial well-being of most news organizations is far from clear.
More than two-thirds of adults ages 65 or older said they were following news of the pandemic very closely.
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