Influencers are outranking journalists as news sources on TikTok and other platforms that win with younger audiences

• Journalists rank behind influencers in driving news conversation on TikTok and other younger social platforms.
• Mainstream news does well on Facebook and Twitter, but falls behind elsewhere.

Journalists are getting outflanked by influencers when it comes to reaching audiences around news topics on younger-skewing platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.

The 2023 version of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, which was released on Tuesday, looked at news consumption trends around the world.

One striking finding was that while mainstream journalists have done well on legacy social-media platforms like Facebook, they have not had the same impact on more recent entrants like TikTok.

"We find that, while mainstream journalists often lead conversations around news in Twitter and Facebook, they struggle to get attention in newer networks like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, where personalities, influencers, and ordinary people are often more prominent, even when it comes to conversations around news," the researchers wrote.

"Mainstream news" beat out "personalities" (influencers and celebrities) on Facebook and Twitter in the study, which encompassed about 94,000 adults in 46 markets surveyed by YouGov early this year. But "personalities" won out on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube (by a smaller margin).

Some mainstream outlets have broken out on TikTok. NPR's "Planet Money," for instance, built a hit TikTok account by engaging in comments and making a young staffer the star of its videos. But these are the exceptions rather than the rule, as the Reuters report notes lingering concerns among publishers over the lack of solid monetization options and TikTok's ties to China.

Individual journalists may also find the format of some newer social networks makes it harder for them to build an audience. Journalists can use text and links to promote their work and commentary on Facebook and Twitter, but need to learn short-form video skills to post on TikTok.

While TikTok was the fastest-growing network in the Reuters report, Facebook remained the most important overall, with 28% of consumers using it for news in the last week. That, however, was down 14 percentage points from its peak of 42% in 2016.

"Facebook has been distancing itself from news for some time, reducing the percentage of news stories people see in their feed (3% according to the company's latest figures from March 2023), but in the last year it has also been scaling back on direct payments to publishers and other schemes that supported journalism," the researchers wrote.

YouTube came in second at 20%, followed by Whatsapp (16%), Instagram (14%), Twitter (11%), TikTok (6%, up from 1% in 2020), Messenger (6%), and Snapchat (2%).

"Although the averages for TikTok are relatively low, usage is much higher with younger groups and in some Asia-Pacific, Latin American, and African countries," the researchers wrote.

The Reuters report also found a difference in the topics that resonated on different platforms, which could hinder the efforts of some journalists and news organizations.

"Twitter users are more likely to pay attention to hard news subjects such as politics and business news than users of other networks, whereas TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook users are slightly more likely to consume fun posts (or satire) that relate to news," the researchers wrote.