Although the digital world is seen as constantly changing, trends in digital news consumption in Argentina have remained remarkably stable in recent years: Infobae has established itself as the leading media, trust in the news is low, and the influence of Facebook gives way to the increase in the popularity of other social networks.
These are the key results of the chapter Argentinian of the 2024 edition of Reuters Institute Digital News Report for the Study of Journalism University of oxford, Englandpublished today.
The report – which includes 47 countries on all continents – is based on an online survey carried out by the firm YouGov in January and February of this year to a representative sample of almost 100,000 people in total in those countries.
Infobae, the number one news outlet in Argentina
For the sixth consecutive year, Infobae is the leading news outlet in Argentina. According to the findings of the Reuters Institute Report40% of the people who responded to the survey say they have visited Infobae at least once the week prior to it. In second place is the TN cable signal with 34%, in third place is the TN site with 30% and in fourth place is the news channel Telefé with 27%.
InfobaeTN and Telefé, in this order, have led the measurements of the Report Reuters Institute from 2019 to present. What’s new in 2024 is the expansion of the distance between Infobaeon the one hand, and TN (6 percentage points) and Telefé (13 percentage points), on the other.
Trust in news remains at a low level
Trust in the news among the people surveyed is only 30%. This places Argentina in 42nd place of the 47 countries included in the Report. This figure is the same as last year, but registers a decrease of 11 percentage points compared to the moment when this indicator began to be measured in 2018.
In addition to estimating trust in news in general, the Reuters Institute Report measures trust in the media that the people surveyed use to find out about current events. Only 36% of them say they trust the news they consume, the same percentage as in 2023 and far from the 52% in 2018.
In short, the years go by and trust in the news does not rebound. The evolution of this trend is worrying, not only for the media industry but for the political system and citizens as a whole, given the key role that news plays in democratic processes.
The use of social networks for news consumption
The years pass and the influence of Facebook as a way to access news on social networks. While 60% used it for this purpose in 2018, only 37% do so in 2024. The decline in this network has accentuated in the last two years, going from 56% in 2022 to 46% in 2023 and 37% in 2024.
However, it is not all bad news for Goalthe company that owns Facebook, since the latter’s decline is partly offset by the increase in the use of Instagram for news purposes, which went from 13% in 2018 to 33% in 2024.
News consumption on other social networks in 2024 ranks behind these two, with 33% in WhatsApp31% in Youtube15% in TikTok and 11% in x.
Has the mature stage of digital media arrived?
Since its inception, several decades ago, the digital world has been characterized by its dynamics of constant, and at many times even dizzying, change. However, the stability of trends in digital news consumption in Argentina It gives rise to the question: are we facing the beginning of a stage of maturity in digital media? If this were the case, the opportunities and challenges for the future would be different from those that have marked the recent past.
Another option is that the current one is a stage of temporary stability in the face of the imminent changes that could bring about the uses of artificial intelligence both to produce and consume news.
Stability versus change, the looming crossroads in the universe of digital news.
