News consumers around the world are now turning more to social media and video platforms than traditional outlets for information, a report said Tuesday, warning that old-style business models are under threat.
The year 2026 marks “a significant milestone: for the first time, social media and video network consumption is now ahead of other news sources as the most widely used source of news globally,“ at 54%, wrote Jim Egan, lead author of the report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
The annual report from the institute, attached to the University of Oxford, is a closely-watched tracker of trends reshaping the news media.
Researchers based their findings on online surveys of almost 100,000 people in 48 countries, run earlier this year by pollster YouGov.
This year’s edition found 54% of respondents said they got news from social media or video platforms in the week before the survey — rising to 56% if AI chatbots like ChatGPT were included.
That outstripped the 52% who referenced TV news, 51% for newspaper apps or websites, and 21% for radio.
While it was the first time new platforms topped the old in the average of the global survey, individual countries had already passed the turning point. In some countries, though, notably in Europe, traditional media websites and apps remain ahead for now.
“It is better to think of this more as a drift rather than a shift, but it is nevertheless an important moment,” Egan wrote.
Across the global survey, three out of 10 respondents said social media or video platforms were their main source of news.
Among those age 18 to 24, the proportion rose to half.
Different social networks also breed different usage patterns.
Most of the respondents visited X or YouTube specifically to find news.
But on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, users were likelier to stumble across news while doing something else.
Television remained the leading news source only among those age 45 to 54 and over-55s.
The responses about traditional media apps and websites were also grim, with none of the age tranches surveyed saying they were their first port of call for news.
“This has obvious implications in terms of prospects for audience reach, engagement, and for monetisation potential,” wrote Egan, a former senior executive at the BBC.
The scale of the challenge in finding the revenues to pay for reporting is clear from the fact that just 17% of respondents said they pay for information online.
Meanwhile, internet giants such as Google and Meta have captured a giant share of the advertising market — at the expense of traditional media.
The 180-page report reinforces large-scale trends acting on the media for years, including the growing...