How Americans Navigated the News in 2020: A Tumultuous Year in Review
Americans inhabited different information environments, with wide gaps in how they viewed the election and COVID-19.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Media & Society
All
Media & Society
Publications
Filtering by:
Reset
-
-
Experts Say the ‘New Normal’ in 2025 Will Be Far More Tech-Driven, Presenting More Big Challenges
A plurality of experts think sweeping societal change will make life worse for most people. Still, a portion believe things will be better in a ‘tele-everything’ world.
-
Though not especially productive in passing bills, the 116th Congress set new marks for social media use
Voting members of the 116th Congress collectively produced more than 2.2 million tweets and Facebook posts in 2019 and 2020.
-
Republicans who relied on Trump for news more concerned than other Republicans about election fraud
In studying voters’ views of election fraud, we found these views varied by whether people got their news from the Trump campaign.
-
As CDC warned against holiday travel, 57% of Americans say they changed Thanksgiving plans due to COVID-19
A third of U.S. adults say they changed their Thanksgiving plans “a great deal,” while roughly a quarter changed their plans “some.”
-
Many Americans are unsure whether sources of news do their own reporting
Roughly half of Americans or more were able to correctly identify whether three of the six sources asked about do their own reporting.
-
5 facts about the QAnon conspiracy theories
Here are five facts about how much Americans have heard about the QAnon conspiracy theories and their views about them.
-
Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they’ve seen their own news sources report facts meant to favor one side
59% of Americans say made-up information that is intended to mislead causes a “great deal” of confusion about the 2020 presidential election.
-
Americans blame unfair news coverage on media outlets, not the journalists who work for them
About eight-in-ten Americans (79%) say news organizations tend to favor one side when presenting the news on political and social issues.
-
How Americans see U.S. tech companies as government scrutiny increases
We have studied Americans’ attitudes toward tech companies for years. Here are takeaways from our recent research.
