More people get their news from social media than anywhere else - globally. The platforms we use matter.
"For the first time, social media and video networks are, on average across the markets covered, more popular than both TV and owned news websites and apps as sources of news."
This year’s Reuters Digital News Report has a key finding that’s worth paying attention to:
“Though it has been the case in some individual countries for several years, at the global level (averaging across 48 markets) social media and video networks are for the first time the single most widely used way of accessing online news (used by 54% of all respondents), ahead of news organisations’ own websites and apps (51%). This shifting composition of news consumption is happening among all age groups.”
For the first time, social media is the primary platform for news globally.
News is how we learn about the world and make informed democratic decisions. That means that, more than ever before, we need to care about who owns these networks, who dictates how they function, and which narratives they promote.
X, of course, was purchased by Elon Musk specifically because he wanted to suppress what he called the “woke mind virus”. It’s a propaganda play, which anyone can see if they load a feed on the platform: shocking white supremacist rhetoric is central.
But every proprietary social platform is subject to some version of this. We don’t have the access to view (or even the ability to truly research) how companies like Meta choose to promote and suppress information. We are subject to their business decisions, including the backroom political decisions they make in order to ensure their own survival.
In contrast, open social web platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky are open and verifiable. They run on open protocols that cannot be controlled by a single entity. Their algorithms are either non-existent (in the case of Mastodon) or fully under our control (in the case of Bluesky). Rather than gatekeeping the information we need to be democratic citizens, they give us full control over our information ecosystems.
They’re also full of people who have already self-selected to inhabit more ethical spaces. These turn out to be people who are more likely to both engage with and financially support news. So not only does having an open social web strategy mean you’re engaging in platforms that don’t seek to intermediate democracy, they actually provide better return on investment than more traditional platforms. We need these platforms to exist if we want to have a healthy information landscape; it turns out that engaging in them yields real benefits right now.
News has a choice here: it can shrug its shoulders as an industry and say that it should just meet people wherever they’re at, even if that’s on X. Or newsrooms can choose to promote and prioritize their accounts in spaces that are actually aligned with their values, needs, and business models. I strongly think they should do the latter.
