About one in five Americans say they regularly get news from “news influencers” on social media. According to a new study Pew Research Center.
The rise of social media celebrities is especially true among the youngest users and comes amid heightened polarization surrounding the U.S. presidential election.
“We view news influencers as their audience’s authoritative sources of what’s going on in the world,” Galen Stocking, senior computational social scientist at the Pew Research Center, told CNBC. “What we found in doing this is that For one thing, 65% said they find the information they get from news influencers helps them better understand the world.”
Nearly 40% of adults under 30 who participated in the study said they get information from independent social media figures, the largest share of any age group.
Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist and Columbia University professor, said this shift has been occurring since at least 2016.
“Part of it is convenience,” Smickel said. “You have access to all the information you need on your phone. So because social media is pushing information at you, it’s hard to ignore the ease of having information at your fingertips.”
But Smicle said convenience can become a habit that’s hard to break and could lead to wider spread of misinformation.
“When you get information through social media, how do you know how original it is?” he said. “It’s hard to verify that, and unfortunately the algorithm doesn’t care. It just keeps sending you the same type of information.”
The Pew Research Center defines about 500 accounts as “news influencers,” and about two-thirds of them were active on multiple platforms between July and August.
Social media site X remains the most popular, with 85% of influencer respondents saying they have visited the site. Yuan-Has Instagram in second place, followed by YouTube, Most popular platforms Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) ranks third. TikTok is the sixth most popular among influencers, behind Meta’s Threads and Facebook.
The risk of misinformation
Questions about the influence of independent social media creators on politics broke out before and after the presidential election.
Both candidates have used social media to appeal to young voters, most notably President-elect Donald Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast and Vice President Kamala Harris joining “Call in Her Dad” Podcast – Both podcasts have large followings on social media.
Vice President Kamala Harris is interviewed by Alex Cooper on the “Call Her Dad” podcast.
call her daddy
“The ease with which you can provide information to voters increases exponentially, and I can keep flooding you with information to the point where at a certain point you stop looking for it,” Smickel said.
Social media is also a much cheaper option for candidates trying to reach a larger audience, especially when you add influencers who can post news about the candidate and their platform, Smicle said.
Syracuse University professor Joshua Dahl said candidates may also be able to get their message across more easily through podcasts rather than traditional online interviews. Dahl said online interviews in recent elections have tended to be more offensive than interviews on independent podcasts or social media accounts.
“It might be good for voters to have a tough sit-down interview, but if it’s a series of quick-fire trap questions, I don’t know if the campaign would agree to do that,” he said.
One result, Smickel believes, is that misinformation spreads more easily.
“The Internet uses some standards to determine what is real,” he said. “These guardrails have been spread through social media.”
Alaina Wood, one of the news influencers listed in the Pew report, said misinformation often becomes too widespread to be combated before it has real impact.
Wood’s content is primarily grounded in climate news, particularly her series highlighting positive climate stories. She said after eastern Tennessee communities were hit by Hurricane Helene in September, misinformation began to spread about people being accused of stealing after the storm.
“Everyone agrees that it really helps to try to deal with misinformation before it becomes fact,” she said. The problem, Wood said, is that videos that correct misinformation often don’t spread as widely as the original clips.
More men, conservative
Previous Pew Research Center findings More women’s consumer news There are more influencers than men on sites such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, but a new survey shows that nearly two-thirds of news influencers are men.
The disparity is most pronounced on YouTube and Facebook, where 68% and 67% of news influencers respectively are male. About 50% of respondents on TikTok are male, compared with 48% female, and 2% identify as non-binary or gender indeterminate.
Joe Rogan (left) on his podcast with former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Trump National Multi-Purpose in Miami, Florida, on October 22, 2024. Speaking during a roundtable discussion with Latino community leaders at Lar Miami Resort (right).
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Matteo Recanatini, another influencer listed in the report who often clashes with other creators online around misinformation and national politics, said he noticed There are significant differences in the gender distribution of viewers and their political ideologies across platforms.
“I was laughed at on YouTube,” he told CNBC. “It doesn’t stop me from posting what I post. But I would say the vast majority of people who respond to my videos are very conservative. And I would say YouTube is probably the closest thing to MAGA.”
Among influencers who responded to Pew researchers with an explicit political leaning, 52% identified more with right-leaning politics, the report said. The disparity is amplified on some platforms, including Facebook, where three times as many respondents identify as conservative than liberal.
Recanatini said his audience on TikTok, where he began following him on social media and remains his primary platform today, is more liberal and predominantly female.
“Most people interact with content they like, which feeds algorithms and creates echo chambers,” Recanatini said. “If you don’t realize this, you end up thinking that there are 100 people around you. % of people feel a certain way just because you have this affinity for the information you consume.”
Create an island
Political stratification on social media is likely to only intensify over time.
X’s owner, Elon Musk, has become a close ally of Trump, drawing criticism from many on social media and prompting some to leave the platform entirely.
Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and one of the influencers listed in the Pew report, announced that he would be leaving X on the Monday after the election.
“For a while, Twitter was a way to educate the public about journalism, and it was free,” He wrote on X. “I think I’ve been effective in this role at times. I don’t know how that’s done anymore.”
Weibo startup Bluesky, which positioned itself as an alternative to X, gained more than 1.25 million new users in the week after Trump’s victory.
“I’m fully aware that people’s decision not to post on X amplifies the echo chamber,” Recanatini said. “So that’s creating a more radical audience because that’s all they’re hearing.”
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