The landscape of local news in the U.S. has changed significantly in recent decades as Americans have been turning away from print and television and toward digital media. In 2025, 21% of Americans say they follow local news very closely, down from 37% in 2016.
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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.
Among black Americans, 72% say coverage has been good or excellent and 85% say Trump’s message has been completely or mostly wrong.
Black adults were much more likely than whites and somewhat more likely than Hispanic adults to frequently discuss the pandemic with others.
Amid the back-and-forth between Twitter and President Trump, here are facts about Americans’ attitudes toward social media companies.
Americans’ confidence in checking COVID-19 information aligns closely with their confidence in checking the accuracy of news stories broadly.
With Election Day six months away, 52% of Americans are paying fairly close or very close attention to news about the presidential candidates.
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.
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.
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.
The percentage who say journalists have exaggerated the risks of the outbreak has decreased notably in recent weeks.
U.S. adults largely value journalists’ role in society but see their influence declining – and they differ over what a journalist is.
Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to both use and trust many major news sources.
Far fewer are hearing about the administration’s relationship with the media than was the case early in President Donald Trump’s first term.
This study explores the makeup of the social media news influencer universe, including who they are, what content they create and who their audiences are.
