News on Twitter: Consumed by Most Users and Trusted by Many
Fully 70% of U.S. adult Twitter news consumers say they have used Twitter to follow live news events, up from 59% who said this in 2015.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Fully 70% of U.S. adult Twitter news consumers say they have used Twitter to follow live news events, up from 59% who said this in 2015.
Here is how the average adult Twitter user in the U.S. tweeted about the news in 2021, as well as how these patterns have changed since 2015.
In recent years, several new options have emerged in the social media universe, many of which explicitly present themselves as alternatives to more established social media platforms. Free speech ideals and heated political themes prevail on these sites, which draw praise from their users and skepticism from other Americans.
Roughly half of Americans say that they have been getting some (30%) or a lot (18%) of news and info about COVID-19 vaccines on social media.
About half of U.S. adults say they get news from social media “often” or “sometimes,” and this use is spread out across a number of different sites. Facebook stands out as a regular source of news for about a third of Americans.
Both Democrats and Republicans express far more distrust than trust of social media sites as sources for political and election news.
Many Americans turned to Google to learn about the Flint water crisis. An analysis of aggregated searches over time illustrates how, in today’s digital environment, public interest shifts as a story unfolds.
During the early days of the administration, similar storylines were covered across outlets, but the types of sources cited and assessments of Trump’s actions differed.
This project – using the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as a case study model – examines the question of how media coverage of a current issue in the news relates to public interest in the issue and its relevance to their own lives.
On cellphones, longer news stories get about twice the engaged time from readers as shorter pieces do. They also get roughly the same number of visitors.
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