The findings, drawn from a survey of more than 10,000 U.S. adults and an analysis of social media posts posted this summer by influencers, provide an indication of how Americans consumed the news during the height of the U.S. presidential campaign that President-elect Donald Trump ultimately won.
The study examined accounts run by people who post and talk regularly about current events - including through podcasts and newsletters - and have more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X or TikTok. They include people across the political spectrum, such as the progressive podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen and conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, as well as non-partisan personalities like Chris Cillizza, a former CNN analyst who now runs his own newsletter.
The report found that news influencers posted mostly about politics and the election, followed by social issues like race and abortion and international events, such as the Israel-Hamas war. Most of them – 63% - are men and the majority – 77% - have no affiliation, or background, with a media organization. Pew said about half of the influencers it sampled did not express a clear political orientation. From the ones that did, slightly more of them identified as conservative than as liberal.
As opposed to entertainment pundits on cable news
That was my first thought: I’m not really familiar with the content of any influencers, but I assume the best of them are better than the worst of the more conventional news sources.
I take psychic damage every time I discover where the people around me get their news from. They dont even corroborate sources!
That’s the benefit of a place like Lemmy: you get a lot of different news from a lot of different sources, so you can corroborate and read different viewpoints on the same issue.
And it’s full of people who will call bullshit and provide evidence.
Or people on Lemmy.
Or the first you know of some news is memes making jokes about it.