Influencers overtaking journalists as news source: report

PARIS — TikTok influencers and celebrities are increasingly taking over from journalists as the main source of news for young people, according to a report published Wednesday by the Britain-based Reuters Institute.

The report found that 55 percent of TikTok and Snapchat users and 52 percent of Instagram users get their news from "personalities" -- compared to 33 to 42 percent who get it from mainstream media and journalists on those platforms, which are most popular among the young.

The figures were based on interviews with some 94,000 people across 46 countries, conducted for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, part of Britain's University of Oxford.

"While mainstream journalists often lead conversations around news in Twitter and Facebook, they struggle to get attention in newer networks like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok," the report said.

Lead author Nic Newman highlighted people like Britain's Matt Welland, who discusses current affairs and daily life on TikTok for his 2.8 million subscribers.

"Or it could be a celebrity like a footballer talking about a topical news event," he told AFP, such as footballer Marcus Rashford's 2020 campaign to get free school meals for children from poor families.

For young people, "news" is not just the traditional focus on politics and international relations, but "anything new that is happening in any walk of life: sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, current affairs, culture, arts, technology..." he added.

'FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE'

Facebook remains the leading source of news among social networks worldwide, but its influence is dropping, with 28 percent saying they use it to get news, compared with 42 percent in 2016.

This likely reflects Facebook's shift away from news-sharing towards a focus on friends and family, as well as young people's preference for more video-based apps like TikTok and YouTube.

TikTok now reaches 44 percent of 18-24-year-olds, and 20 percent get their news from the app, up five percent on last year.

The biggest challenge for traditional news outlets is the falling number who go direct to their websites -- just 22 percent, down 10 points since 2018 -- rather than relying on social media links.

In his foreword, Reuters Institute director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen said this shift presented "a much more fundamental change" for the news industry than even the shift from paper to digital a generation ago.

"Legacy media... now face a continual transformation of digital as generations come of age who eschew direct discovery for all but the most appealing brands, (and) have little interest in many conventional news offers oriented towards older generations' habits, interests, and values," he said.

These new audiences are aware of the risks of relying on algorithms, with only 30 percent thinking this is a good way to get a balanced diet of news -- but that is still considered better than relying on journalists, who scored just 27 percent.

None of this is good news for media firms reliant on subscribers and ad revenue.

The report found that 39 percent of subscribers had canceled or renegotiated subscriptions, though the overall share of people paying for news across 20 countries surveyed remained stable compared with last year at 17 percent.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook to use its News Feed to compete more directly with YouTube

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would begin to promote videos more prominently inside its News Feed, leveraging the social network's centerpiece product to build interest in episodic shows and compete more directly with YouTube.

Facebook, in a blog post, also said it was tweaking the kinds of advertisements that run in videos on the network.

Facebook's News Feed, which comprises posts from friends and businesses, is the first thing its 2.1 billion users see when they open the mobile app or go to the website, making it valuable online real estate.

A complex ranking system determines which posts people see first, and last year, Facebook released a statement of "News Feed values" emphasizing that posts from friends and family would come first.

Facebook, though, is investing more money in video. In August it created a video service, called Watch, initially with shows from the likes of Vox and Discovery Communications Inc but with plans to let people submit shows as they do on Alphabet Inc's YouTube.

With the update, people in the News Feed are more likely to see videos that Facebook thinks they want to watch, based on their search history and pages they have liked. They will also see new episodes of a show if they watched an earlier episode.

"Engaging one-off videos that bring friends and communities together have always done well in News Feed and will continue to do so," the company said in the blog post.

Though Facebook's revenue is growing quickly and the number of users worldwide is still rising, the company is struggling to keep people spending time on the site and sees video as a possible answer, Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said.

"They see that YouTube is still growing, rapidly. Facebook is not. So you can make the argument that they're trying to increase total time spent," Wieser said in an interview.

One advertising change announced by Facebook could also increase time spent. In its blog post, Facebook said it would no longer allow ads in the middle of videos unless the videos are at least three minutes long, which Wieser said may encourage companies to produce longer videos.

Facebook also said that next year it would begin testing ads in its Watch service that run at the beginning of videos, known as pre-roll ads, something the company previously avoided.

source: news.abs-cbn.com