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Commuting by public transport has always provided a convenient opportunity to assess changing forms of media consumption. Seventy years ago, you would have seen a sea of heads buried in newspapers. My eyes were glued to the screen about 15 years ago. At first glance, today’s photos look similar, but subtle differences are overlooked. Previously, these screens tended to display words. Now you can catch a telltale flicker of a never-ending stream of bite-sized videos.
The latter change may seem much more subtle than the former, but we don’t know if that’s true.
Print has been in decline for decades, but perhaps an underappreciated fact is that print news consumption has plummeted. The percentage of adults in the United States who read news articles online has declined from 70 percent to 50 percent since 2013. The proportion of Brits and Americans who don’t use traditional news media at all has now jumped from 8 per cent to around 30 per cent. Although the decline in printed matter was primarily a problem for newspaper companies’ profits, the decline in news consumption overall is also a social problem.
Social media is now mainstream. Today, U.S. adults under 50 are more likely to get their news directly from social feeds than from news articles, whether in print or online, according to the latest digital news report from the Reuters Institute for Journalism. That’s what it means. The trend is similar in most other countries.
These changes have profound implications, some of which we are only now beginning to recognize.
At a fundamental level, the transition from hundreds of characters to 280 characters in the 2010s marked a shift from a modest amount of detail and subtlety in average news reporting to a world of oversimplified interpretations. I meant it. Trade-offs and complexities are not considered.
This is not limited to short formats. Instant feedback in the form of likes and shares quickly tells people that the best performing content is generally exaggerated and hostile, rather than moderate and nuanced. I did. The emerging media landscape has been a detriment to the educated, centrist establishment, but a boon to populists and radicals.
Perhaps an even bigger change is the rapid rise of short-form video, the latest phase of the digital media transition. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are now dwarfed by Facebook, X, and Bluesky among young people, and the same change is underway among adults.
These platforms are fundamentally different. Text-based social media still supports mainstream journalism. Part of the reason is that concise sentences are helpful and chronological feeds reward news. When we pivot to video, the balance tilts the other way. On TikTok and Instagram, charisma, energy, and outgoing power are currency. Being first is more important than being very attractive.
This is further data from Reuters data showing that even though social media has started cannibalizing news websites, the most prominent news accounts on text-based social platforms are still mainstream journalists and news organizations. It’s backed up. In the world of video, people are more likely to rely on influencers and content creators than traditional sources for lifestyle content as well as news.
This is another standard for political outsiders. Startup media are by definition less friendly to established politicians, and their independence from traditional big brands means they are free to host and publish programs that mainstream media would not. also means Studies have shown that modern news influencers are slightly to the right politically, but even those with different politics are anti-establishment.
Changes in the way people listen to news are part of the same pattern. Podcasts are typically listened to privately through earphones, but they are very different from radio. Radio culture and content was formed in an era when couples and families listened together in their cars and kitchens. This makes the situation more granular and makes controversial output more comfortable. In this world, it is much easier for the often iconoclastic “manosphere” of digital media to flourish than for older media.
The emerging media landscape of 2024 is very different in form and function, tone, and built-in incentives than it was in 2014, let alone 2004 or 1994. It would be really strange if this didn’t affect our politics.
john.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch
