Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
As people are exposed to more information from more sources than ever before, how they define and feel about “news” has become less clear-cut. Most people agree that information must be factual, up to date and important to society to be considered news.
53% of Republicans have at least some trust in information from national news outlets in 2025, up from 40% in 2024.
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.
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More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults say they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet “often” or “sometimes.”
As news outlets morph and multiply, both surveys and passive data collection tools face challenges.
Here are five facts about how much Americans have heard about the QAnon conspiracy theories and their views about them.
Videos from independent news producers are more likely to cover subjects negatively and discuss conspiracy theories.
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.
Traffic to digital-native news sites has plateaued in recent years. After rising from 2014 to 2016, it remained steady through 2019.
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.
Many U.S. news organizations are covering the coronavirus pandemic while themselves facing financial pressure from the outbreak.
More than half of these social media news consumers say they have encountered made-up news about COVID-19.
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.
