The Surprising Place 17% of Americans Get Their News
By Movieguide® Contributor
A new study finds that half of TikTok’s users get their news from the app — but not from official news outlets.
“About half of TikTok users (52%) — equivalent to 17% of all U.S. adults — say they regularly get news on the site,” the Pew Research Center reported. “But many TikTok users appear not to be actively following journalists or news media outlets on the site.”
The group added that “fewer than 1% of all the TikTok accounts that Americans follow” are institutional news sources.
However, after breaking down the numbers, the Pew Research Center found that, while only 0.4% of TikTok users are journalists or media outlets, “14% of adult TikTok users still follow five or more accounts that fall into this category.”
READ MORE: AMERICANS TURN TO TIKTOK, SOCIAL MEDIA FOR NEWS
News outlets and journalists aren’t the only people TikTok users are getting their news from.
A March 2024 survey from the Pew-Knight Initiative reported, “Among U.S. adults who say they regularly get news on TikTok, around two-thirds say they ever get news on the platform from influencers or celebrities (68%) or from news outlets or journalists (67%).”
“Other sources of information, such as advocacy or nonprofit organizations (55%) and friends, family and acquaintances (48%), are less common,” the group continued.
Aaron Smith, the managing director of Pew Research Center’s data labs, said, “To the extent that people are getting news about politics or current events on TikTok, it is coming from people who don’t necessarily look like traditional journalists, and it’s probably interspersed with a lot of very non-traditional content — like skits, funny dances or promotional content.”
“It speaks to this broader notion that people’s world news or politics comes as a side dish to their main course of gossipy entertainment news and the content of the creator that they happen to be interested in,” he continued.
READ MORE: WHY DO PEOPLE GET THEIR NEWS FROM TIKTOK?
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