New Delhi: Social media has emerged as the top source of news for Indians, in a survey seeking to track digital news trends.
According to the Digital News Report 2022 from the UK-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 63 per cent of the Indian respondents had used social media to access news in the week preceding the survey period. The figure was 59 per cent for TV, and 49 per cent for print media.
As many as 53 per cent of the respondents used YouTube to access news, while 51 per cent used WhatsApp, the report says.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022 is based on an online survey of 2,035 Indians, many of whom were given the option to complete the survey in Hindi. India was one of over 40 countries covered in the survey.
The news space in India, including broadcast and digital platforms, has failed to offset information disseminated by social media platforms, says the 164-page report, released Wednesday in collaboration with educational institutions from different countries.
The report pegs internet penetration in India at 54 per cent.
“India is a strongly mobile-focused market, with 72 per cent accessing news through smartphones and just 35 per cent via computers,” the report says.
A note on the methodology in the India section clarifies that respondents of the survey are “generally more affluent, younger, have higher levels of formal education, and are more likely to live in cities than the wider Indian population”.
Apart from findings suggesting that countries around the world witnessed reduced news consumption over the past year, the survey also says there has been a surge in “selective news avoidance”, a term used in the context of news consumers who say they avoid news, often or sometimes.
The reasons for “selective news avoidance” among respondents from around the world included “too much politics and Covid-19” in the news, and “negative effect” on mood.
The report’s main data set, however, was collected before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, which it says “clearly increased news consumption across all news sources”.
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‘Legacy media facing stiff competition from digital-born brands’
The India section of the report was authored by Anjana Krishnan, a research associate from the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), who wrote that several television channels in the country have become “infamous for sensationalising news and conducting polarised debates”.
Explaining the competition among news websites, Krishnan wrote: “Legacy media platforms are facing stiff competition online from vibrant, digital-born brands that pursue independent journalism. Many rely on non-profit revenue models, such as grants and reader donations to supplement advertisements.”
The India section of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022 also says that the government faces a major challenge in the form of identification of fake news and fake websites.
“The popularity of social media is a concern for policymakers as these platforms are also rife with misinformation, as well as incessant trolling and abuse. Independent reporting suggests such behaviour is sometimes coordinated by actors close to major political parties,” wrote Krishnan.
Trust in news
Trust in the news has “fallen in almost half” of the 46 countries where the survey was conducted, the report says.
“Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69 per cent), while news trust in the USA has fallen by a further three percentage points and remains the lowest (26 per cent) in our survey,” the report adds.
The survey also found that younger audiences are now moving towards social media platforms for news with TikTok emerging as a “significant player in the news ecosystem”. According to the report, at least 15 per cent of 18-24 year olds use TikTok for news around the world.
“These social natives, who have come into adulthood in the last five or ten years, are much less likely to visit a traditional news website or to pay for online news – and they are often wary of giving up their data. Deeply networked, they are increasingly accessing news in video or audio on networks like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Spotify,” the report says.
In addition to this, the report states that persuading younger people to pay for news remains a “critical issue” for the industry, with the “average age of a digital news subscriber almost 50”.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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Source: The Print
