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.
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.
Despite the spread of the conspiracy theories, about three-quarters of U.S. adults say they have heard or read nothing at all about them.
Among the changes: Smartphones and social media became the norm, church attendance fell, and same-sex marriage and legalizing marijuana gained support.
Getting news from social media is an increasingly common experience; nearly three-in-ten U.S. adults do so often.
Photos that exclusively show men make up the majority of photos that show people; representational differences persist across topics
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