Pew Research Center and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation have found out in their new study that Twitter & Facebook are becoming the dominant news sources for US adults.
It is not too surprising, since prior Pew research has demonstrated that overall social media use across various platforms has been steadily increasing from 2012 to 2014. Only two years ago, just about half of all adult Americans said they used Twitter and Facebook to get their news; in 2015, that number has spiked to 63 percent for both platforms. Many news agencies today concentrate on having their reporters and journalists write quicker and promote their stories on social media sites in the hopes of getting more clicks and eyeballs to the news site. According to USA Today, the homepages of news agencies still possess brand value, particularly to loyal readers, so there will always be eyeballs on the online front pages of Fox News or CNN. However, more publishers are realizing that social media referrals are the number one source of site traffic and readers, thus they are broadening their reach across Twitter and Facebook.
Pew found Twitter beats Facebook in important news-engagement categories: 59 percent of Twitter users rely on the micro-blogging platform to follow breaking news, but only 31 percent of Facebookers do the same. 46 percent of Twitter users follow news organizations or journalists’ accounts, but only 28 percent of Facebookers do the same…..
See full story on digitaltrends.com
Photo Credit: The New York Times/Twitter