Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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News Habits & Media

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Pew Research Center photo illustration.

Local News Fact Sheet

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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    Turkey’s leader urges more aid for Syrian rebels, but most Turks say no

    As Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with President Obama today, his calls for more Western aid to Syrian rebels put him at odds with Turkish public opinion. A Pew Research survey conducted earlier this spring found that 68% of Turks opposed Western countries sending weapons and other supplies to anti-government rebels in Syria — […]

  • report

    Alan Murray on Journalism in the Digital Age

    Pew Research Center President Alan Murray discusses the digital trends shaping the news industry based on findings from the State of the News Media report and his experience at the Wall Street Journal.

  • report

    Benghazi Investigation Does Not Reignite Broad Public Interest

    Overview The public paid limited attention to last week’s congressional hearings on Benghazi. Fewer than half (44%) of Americans say they are following the hearings very or fairly closely, virtually unchanged from late January when Hillary Clinton testified. Last October, 61% said they were following the early stages of the investigation at least fairly closely. […]

  • report

    Gun Control and the Media

    The Twitter debate about gun control has taken many twists and turns since the Newtown killings, according to a new Pew Research Report that looks at the mainstream coverage and social media conversation on that issue. Which terms did the media most often invoke when discussing gun control? And how big a factor was President Obama in driving the narrative about it?

  • presentation

    The State of Digital Marketing in the Networked Age

    Pew Internet Director Lee Rainie will discuss the Project’s latest research into internet trends, mobile connectivity, and use of social media and what they mean for marketers.

  • report

    Gun Debate Draws More Interest than Immigration Policy Debate

    Overview As Congress returns to Washington to resume work on gun control and immigration legislation, the public is paying far closer attention to news about the gun control debate than news about the debate over immigration policy. A national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted April 4-7 among 1,003 adults, finds 37% say they […]

  • report

    Network News: A Year of Change and Challenge at NBC

    After an unusual uptick in the overall audience for evening news in 2011, the trend line returned to its normal in 2012. The combined viewership for the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts dropped 2%, to 22.1 million, resuming the downward trajectory of nearly three decades. It now appears that 2011 may have been an outlier, with the bigger audience attributable to an unusual number of major news events that year, including the Arab Spring, the Japanese earthquake and the killing of Osama bin Laden. Even a presidential election couldn’t keep some viewers from deserting network news in 2012.

  • report

    Digital: As Mobile Grows Rapidly, the Pressures on News Intensify

    For more than a decade, as the desktop/laptop era of computing took hold, news organizations were at a severe disadvantage competing against a raft of financially and technologically stronger tech companies. Now, the rapid advance of the mobile era threatens a whole new level of upheaval, as both the costs and technological challenges of keeping up in the swiftly evolving news ecosystem multiply.

  • report

    Newspapers: Stabilizing, but Still Threatened

    If the newspaper industry had theme music in 2013, it might use “Been down so long it looks like up to me,” the much-recycled line from a 1920s blues song. For the first time since the deep recession that began in 2007, newspaper organizations have grounds for a modicum of optimism.

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Pew Research Center illustration for America's News Influencers report; photos via Getty Images

America’s News Influencers

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.

Features