Young people, low-income workers and Hispanic Americans are more likely to consume news from social media influencers, according to a study released by the Pew Research Center on Nov. 18. Those three demographics also grew in support for President-elect Donald Trump, culminating in his recent victory.
Nearly one in five Americans regularly get their news from social media influencers, the study found. Young Americans especially rely on these “news influencers,” with nearly 40% of adults under 30 habitually consuming their news content. Associated Press polling determined that nearly half of Americans under 30 voted for Trump in 2024, compared to around a third in the 2020 election.
“Attention to media outlets like television is decreasing, whereas attention towards news sources on social media is increasing over time. I don’t know whether there’s a replacement effect there, but we do know that more and more people do get their news from these avenues,” said Regina Widjaya, a computational social scientist at Pew and an author of the news influencer study.
According to Widjaya, 91% of American adults under 30 said they consume news on digital devices at least sometimes, compared with roughly 50% or less who include traditional media formats like television, radio and print in their media diet.
The Pew study found that white Americans were the least likely (17%) to regularly get their news from influencers compared to Hispanic (30%), Asian (29%) and Black Americans (27%). Reuters reported that Trump saw a stark 14-percentage-point increase among Hispanic voters, and he also made gains among Americans without college degrees.
Social media influencers and content creators played an unprecedented role in the 2024 election. Hundreds of content creators were invited to political conventions. Both major presidential campaigns courted the massive audiences of online personalities, whether candidates were chatting with podcast hosts or starring in viral videos.
Influencers aren’t required to disclose that a post was sponsored by a political campaign, unlike traditional media outlets. This leaves content consumers to decipher genuine support from, essentially, political advertisements.
The sums paid by campaigns for an endorsement aren’t trivial. For example, the social media firm People First Marketing paid influencers up to $100,000 for a political endorsement, the Washington Post reported.
“People do develop personal relationships with news influencers,” said Galen Stocking, a senior computational social scientist at Pew and another author of the study.
“We found that one in three of those Americans who say they’re regularly getting news from news influencers say they feel connected to a news influencer. Now, we don’t know if that has a persuasive impact or anything like that, but what that speaks to is that news influencers are important in the news diets of many Americans.”
Conducted over the summer of 2024, the Pew study examined 500 popular news influencers and the content they post. Pew defined a news influencer as an individual who posts about current events and politics with at least 100,000 followers, including those affiliated with news organizations and those who are not. Then, researchers surveyed over 10,000 Americans to learn how they interact with news influencers.
Among the sample of news influencers, an overwhelming majority were men, outnumbering women almost two-to-one. Additionally, 27% identified with Republican values and 21% aligned with the Democratic party; the remainder did not express a political orientation. This contradicts largely Republican concerns that social media platforms censor or limit conservative viewpoints, the study said. Over three-quarters of all influencers had no prior journalism experience.
The Associated Press reported that young male voters swung dramatically to the right during this election, potentially fueled by the Trump campaign’s efforts to solicit non-traditional outlets such as podcasts. On Oct. 25, Trump sat down for a three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, whose podcast was the most popular on Spotify in 2023 and whose listenership leans towards young men.
The Pew study found that women (23%) were more likely to regularly consume news from influencers than men (19%). Trump also saw a slight bump in votes among women this year compared to the 2020 general election.
The researchers found that around 85% of news influencers have accounts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter before Elon Musk’s acquisition in 2022. Musk — who later took on a personal role in the Trump campaign — significantly changed the platform’s verification system and content moderation.
Journalists particularly felt the effects of those changes and the Columbia Journalism Review posited that many have abandoned the platform. Despite this, X was still the most visited app during the election compared to competitors such as Bluesky and Threads, Axios reported. Meanwhile, Musk has used his personal account to push his own political agenda. Overall, 12% of Americans go to X for news — only a slight decrease from 15% in 2020, according to Widjaya.
TikTok was an outlier on several counts. It had the smallest gender gap among influencers, and it was the only platform that had more left-leaning influencers (28%) compared to right-leaning (25%). Meanwhile, Facebook had three times as many right-leaning accounts as left-leaning.
TikTok has had the most growth as a social media news source, with 17% of Americans accessing news on TikTok this year compared to only 3% in 2020, according to Widjaya. An earlier Pew study found that just under 40% of young Americans regularly get their news from TikTok.
Most Americans (65%) who get their news from news influencers find them helpful in understanding current events, the study found.
“People are finding real value in these experiences, and I think that’s really important to remember as we see this trend develop,” Stocking said.
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