Hear
The media crisis is global and it consists of a mixture of the erosion of financing models, the change in news consumption habits and, also, the lack of interest in them.
Like all years, the Reuters Institute, together with the University of Oxford, published its exhaustive report on news uses and consumption in the world. This year, the phrase that summarizes the panorama is “the reset of the platforms.” The new study, Digital News Report 2024, which has just been published, analyzes the changes in journalistic consumption based on a survey of more than 95,000 news consumers in 47 different markets.
The analysis covers key topics such as consumption on platforms; the lower presence of news on many social networks such as Facebook or X (formerly Twitter); the impact of artificial intelligence on content generation and misinformation; in how the information landscape changes due to two simultaneous phenomena: the erosion of trust in the news and the rise of influencers as a vehicle for disseminating information. Some of the most important conclusions from this analysis are:
The mix of trust, disinterest and avoidance of news continues to grow compared to previous years and is at record levels. 39% of those interviewed say that they sometimes or frequently avoid the news (3 points more than last year’s average), with more significant increases in Brazil, Spain, Germany and Finland. In Argentina, interest in news fell from 77% in 2017 to 45% today. In the UK it has almost halved since 2015.
The four key factors that, according to the report, influence the trust or lack thereof that consumers have are the quality standards of the medium, transparency, perceived bias and equity in terms of representation.
It’s been a long time since Facebook decided to show less news on its platforms, but in recent months this trend has accelerated. According to the report, this drop coincides with a “growing dependence” on other content distribution channels, such as messaging applications and video networks. In the last year, news consumption on Facebook (today at 37%) fell 4 percentage points worldwide, but the decline is more pronounced in ArgentinaPhilippines and Colombia.
YoutubeInstead, it grew: three out of ten people use the video platform to inform themselves every week.
To search for information, a fifth turn to WhatsApp (21% of respondents), while for the first time TikTok (13%) surpassed X (10%), with much greater use in the southern hemisphere.
What is notable is that although users look for these platforms to obtain information, they move away from news content. Traditional media, on the other hand, depend on these platforms to spread their content. “This more complicated platform ecosystem, the end of massive traffic from traditional social networks, and increasing competition for attention means that journalists and editors will have to work much, much harder to earn the public’s attention, and Not to mention convincing him to pay for the news,” says Rasmus Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute and editor of the report.
He The most chosen format for information is video. 72% of users consume them on platforms like YouTube or TikTok and only 22% watch those videos on media sites. 66% of our global sample consumes short informational videos each week, while long formats appeal to about half of respondents (51%).
There’s a star format in recent years and it is the “explanatory video”, the one in which a journalist or influencer tells a story and replaces “reading the newspapers” with a mix of opinion and putting it into context. According to the report, the TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat users tend to pay more attention to influencers and celebrities from social networks than to journalists or media, even when it comes to topics related to classic news.
The concern about What is real and what is fake increased three percentage points in the last year: around six out of ten respondents are concerned about this issue (59%). The two countries with the highest index of distrust in the Reuters and Oxford report are those that are going through elections this year: South Africa (81%) and the United States (72%).
Within this panorama, The platforms on which the veracity of the content is most questioned are TikTok and X, due to the circulation in large quantities of videos with conspiracy theories and misinformation around both the war in the Middle East and issues such as the health of the Princess of Wales, for example. This is aggravated in the United Kingdom, the United States and Mexico due to highly realistic images generated by AI and deepfake videos.
Journalism, for its part, is suffering attacks all over the world. Subscriptions stagnate and economic pressures increase. Many people say in the survey that they would pay nothing for news, and a significant proportion of subscribers pay less than full price.
The report details that in In countries like Norway or Sweden, 17% of the audience paid for online news During last year. In Japan and the United Kingdom, the percentages fall sharply with 9 and 8% respectively.
On the other hand, few people pay the full subscription fee and take advantage of the sporadic offers or discounts of each medium. Around four in ten subscribers (41%) pay less than the full price. In the United States, a significant proportion pay a very small amount (often just a few dollars).
Yes ok The public remains cautious about the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) in the news, There is more acceptance if it is used in internal tasks, such as audio transcription or translation, to support journalists rather than replace them. “Most of the public wants humans to remain in controlespecially when it comes to complex topics like politics,” the report states, clarifying that respondents in the United States feel more comfortable with the different uses of AI than those who live in Europe.
The report indicates that the media may They focus too much on updating the most important news and don’t spend enough time providing different perspectives or to tell stories that can provide some basis for occasional optimism. Those interviewed claim to feel satisfied with issues such as politics and sports, but in some there are gaps around local content, health and education.
Digital News Report 2024 dedicates two pages to the analysis of the situation in Argentinawhere he highlights that “the Argentine information environment is agitated, with the new president-elect who promises to privatize or close the already weak public sector media and remove all government advertising. In the face of rampant inflation, this has increased pressure on privately owned news. However, interest and trust in the news remains low.”
The analysis of consumption in Argentina, by analysts Eugenia Mitchelstein and Pablo Boczkowski, analyzes both the increase in video consumption as well as its relevance as a news source. Two-thirds of the audience access short-form videos to obtain information, mainly on social media platforms and via streaming. They also mention the live news channels that emerged during the pandemic such as Luzu TV and Olga, as well as the conversion of radio stations into their live video transmission format, which could reflect the audience’s fatigue with radio and cable television news, which are mostly owned by large private conglomerates, as explained by the report.
