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.
American News Pathways 2020 Project
How the public navigated news in 2020
Pew Research Center’s yearlong initiative focusing on how Americans’ news habits and attitudes related to what they heard, perceived and knew about the 2020 U.S. presidential election and COVID-19. MORE >
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.
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Among black Americans, 72% say coverage has been good or excellent and 85% say Trump’s message has been completely or mostly wrong.
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Majorities of Americans Say News Coverage of George Floyd Protests Has Been Good, Trump’s Public Message Wrong
Among black Americans, 72% say coverage has been good or excellent and 85% say Trump’s message has been completely or mostly wrong.
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Black U.S. adults follow many COVID-19 news topics more closely, discuss the outbreak more frequently
Black adults were much more likely than whites and somewhat more likely than Hispanic adults to frequently discuss the pandemic with others.
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Americans are following news about presidential candidates much less closely than COVID-19 news
With Election Day six months away, 52% of Americans are paying fairly close or very close attention to news about the presidential candidates.
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Americans Who Rely Most on White House for COVID-19 News More Likely to Downplay the Pandemic
People in this group are most likely to say the outbreak has been made too big of a deal and journalists have been exaggerating the risks.
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44% of Americans say they talk about the coronavirus outbreak most or almost all of the time
31% of U.S. adults say they discuss the outbreak with other people most of the time; another 13% say they talk about it almost all of the time.
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SXSW 2020 Online Session: Misinformation and the 2020 U.S. Election
Amy Mitchell (Pew Research Center), Philip Howard (University of Oxford), Jane Lytvynenko (Buzzfeed News) and Lori Robertson (Factcheck.org) discuss misinformation during the coronavirus outbreak, and ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as part of SXSW 2020’s virtual sessions.
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Fewer Americans now say media exaggerated COVID-19 risks, but big partisan gaps persist
The percentage who say journalists have exaggerated the risks of the outbreak has decreased notably in recent weeks.
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Most Americans say COVID-19 has changed news reporting, but many are unsure how it’s affected the industry
The public’s sense about the pandemic’s impact on the financial well-being of most news organizations is far from clear.
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About Seven-in-Ten U.S. Adults Say They Need to Take Breaks From COVID-19 News
61% give equal attention to national and local coronavirus news.
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