Digital News Landscape

The share of Americans who say they often get news from a podcast is quite small, at just 7%; 16% of adults say they sometimes do.

Fully 70% of U.S. adult Twitter news consumers say they have used Twitter to follow live news events, up from 59% who said this in 2015.

Pew Research Center’s political typology sorts Americans into cohesive, like-minded groups based on their values, beliefs, and views about politics and the political system. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics.

While newspapers have seen steep job losses from 2008 to 2020, digital-native news organizations have seen considerable gains.

Americans inhabited different information environments, with wide gaps in how they viewed the election and COVID-19.

About half of U.S. adults say they get news from social media “often” or “sometimes,” and this use is spread out across a number of different sites. Facebook stands out as a regular source of news for about a third of Americans.

More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults say they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet “often” or “sometimes.”

As news outlets morph and multiply, both surveys and passive data collection tools face challenges.

Videos from independent news producers are more likely to cover subjects negatively and discuss conspiracy theories.

U.S. adults in this group are less likely to get the facts right about COVID-19 and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.