Title: Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as news source | Pew Research Center
Headings: Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as a news source
Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as a news source
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Content: Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as news source | Pew Research Center
Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as a news source
By Elisa Shearer
Social media sites have surpassed print newspapers as a news source for Americans: One-in-five U.S. adults say they often get news via social media, slightly higher than the share who often do so from print newspapers (16%) for the first time since Pew Research Center began asking these questions. In 2017, the portion who got news via social media was about equal to the portion who got news from print newspapers. Social media’s small edge over print emerged after years of steady declines in newspaper circulation and modest increases in the portion of Americans who use social media , according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year. Overall, television is still the most popular platform for news consumption – even though its use has declined since 2016. News websites are the next most common source, followed by radio, and finally social media sites and print newspapers. And when looking at online news use combined – the percentage of Americans who get news often from either news websites or social media – the web has closed in on television as a source for news (43% of adults get news often from news websites or social media, compared with 49% for television). Among the three different types of TV news asked about, local TV is the most popular – 37% get news there often, compared with 30% who get cable TV news often and 25% who often watch national evening network news shows. For the first time, we also asked respondents if they got news from a streaming device on their TV – 9% of U.S. adults said that they do so often. There is a large amount of overlap between those who stream TV news and those who get news on broadcast television – a majority of those who get news from streaming TV often (73%) also say that they get news often on broadcast or cable TV.