Reuters Institute Digital Report

Overview

This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 70,000 online news consumers in 36 countries including the US and UK.

The report focuses on the issues of trust in the era of fake news, changing business models and the role of platforms.

Key findings

Video

Social media

More than half of all online users across the 36 countries (54%) say they use social media as a source of news each week but this ranges from 76% in Chile to 29% in Japan and Germany.

More than one in ten (14%) now say social media is their main source

Fake news

Only a quarter (24%) of survey respondents think social media does a good job in separating fact from fiction, compared to 40% for the news media.

In countries like the US (20%/38%), and the UK (18%/41%), people are twice as likely to have faith in the news media

Ad blocking

Ad blocking has stopped growing and is still largely confined to desktop. Across all countries 24% use them regularly, 7% on mobile.

Almost half (43%) of those had agreed to temporarily turn off  their ad-blocker for particular news sites in the last year.

There has been a surge in the numbers prepared to pay for online news in the United States, growing from 9% to 16% along with a tripling of news donations.

Most of the new payments have come from the young (u35s) and those on the political left with almost a third saying they want to ‘help fund journalism’