• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 18, 2024

Today's post is about new research released this morning about the role "news influencers" posting on social media are having on America, and based on one of its findings, you might want to take what I have to say about it with a grain of salt (see data at bottom about how members of news organization identify -- or not -- politically).

That said, the new study from the Pew Research Center suggests a significant number of Americans across the political spectrum -- especially young adults -- are increasingly getting their news filtered through one or more intermediaries dubbed "news influencers" posting on social media.

While that likely is not surprising to many readers, I think the magnitude of it should be, especially the fact that a significant percentage of Americans say they are following news influencers whom they agree with (see data above).

Pew did not discuss how this may or may not compound broader shifts in the consumption of news disseminated directly by increasingly polarized news organizations, reinforcing the confirmation bias of Americans across the spectrum, nor did it analyze the quality of and sourcing of the news being published or republished by news influencers.

But the data reveals news influencers are being embraced by the most political extreme people on both ends of the political spectrum.

I encourage you to read the report, "America's News Influencers," in its entirety, but here are a few highlights worth thinking about.

• Four in ten Americans under 30 now get their news from news influencers.

• X has the greatest concentration (85%) of news influencers publishing on its platform, followed by Instagram (55%), YouTube (44%), Facebook (32%), Threads (30%), and TikTok (27%).

• News influencers skew predominantly male (63%) vs. female (30%).

Released this morning by the Pew Research Center