Measuring News Consumption in a Digital Era
As news outlets morph and multiply, both surveys and passive data collection tools face challenges.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
As news outlets morph and multiply, both surveys and passive data collection tools face challenges.
Americans inhabited different information environments, with wide gaps in how they viewed the election and COVID-19.
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.
Roughly one-quarter of American adults use Twitter. And when they share their views on the site, quite often they are doing so about politics and political issues.
Videos from independent news producers are more likely to cover subjects negatively and discuss conspiracy theories.
More than half of these social media news consumers say they have encountered made-up news about COVID-19.
Both Democrats and Republicans express far more distrust than trust of social media sites as sources for political and election news.
Americans who closely follow political news are more likely to have confidence that the public will accept election results. And that’s true across party boundaries.
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.
A step-by-step guide on how to use the American News Pathways interactive tool, which displays how Americans’ news habits and attitudes relate to what they hear, perceive and know about the 2020 U.S. presidential election and COVID-19.
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