Instagram To Overtake Twitter as a news source : Research Suggests
Instant, photo sharing app is going to overtake Twitter as news source as per the report done by Reuters Institute Digital News.
Use of Instagram has doubled since 2018 as per the report.It also has seen the photo sharing app is strongest among youngsters and nearly a quarter of UK about 18-24 age group users used Instagram as source of news about Coronavirus.
Due to Fake news, social media has faced big challenging fighting false news and even in most cases, people have got trapped in false news and they have shared such false news without fact checking. Hence there is also serious % of people who still don’t trust social media when it comes to news and prefer to go offline or websites.
As per the report it says 26% of people said they trusted social media as a source of information about the virus. A similar percentage said they trusted news that had been shared via chat apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
National governments and news organisations, by contrast, were both trusted by about 59% of respondents.
Instagram is now used by more than a third of all people who answered the survey, and two-thirds of under-25s. And 11% use it for news, putting it just one point behind Twitter.
“Instagram’s become very popular with younger people”, said Nic Newman, lead author of the report. “They really respond well to stories that are told simply and well with visual images”.
Stand-out visual stories in recent months have helped – climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the coronavirus have all seen massive engagement on the platform.
“It’s not that one necessarily replaces the other,” Mr Newman said. “They might use Facebook and Instagram, or might use Twitter and Instagram.”
Instagram is owned by Facebook, which now reaches 85% of people each week. The company’s dominance in how stories are being told “remains incredibly important”, he added. The firm also owns WhatsApp
Instagram To Overtake Twitter As News Source
Source: Reuters Institute
The report also shares about users shifting behaviour towards Instagram for news and it says it is mainly due to the increasing preference for visual stories. In recent years, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus and climate change stories have seen increased engagement on the platform.
The report adds that the coronavirus crisis caused an uptick in news consumption for mainstream media in the six countries where the surveys were conducted
TV and online news sources have seen an increase in consumption with more people turning towards television as the main source for news.
Thes study has been commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and has been conducted by YouGov through online questionnaire.
Reference Links :
https://www.exchange4media.com/digital-news/instagram-to-overtake-twitter-as-news-source-over-the-next-year-reuters-report-105434.html
