Platforms Become the Leading Global News Source as TV and Publisher Sites Lose Reach
Social-media and video networks have become the most widely used global source of news, overtaking television and news organizations’ websites and apps for the first time in the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s tracking.
The finding comes from the institute’s 2026 Digital News Report, published June 16 by the University of Oxford-based research group. The report covers 48 markets and is based on almost 100,000 interviews with online news consumers.
Across the markets surveyed, 54% of respondents said they used social-media or video networks as a source of news. The shift puts platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Google Discover, Meta services and X at the center of how audiences encounter news, even as publishers continue to produce much of the reporting distributed through those systems.
Video is driving the change
Online news video has become a particularly important part of the transition. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they consumed online news video, and online news video now exceeds television news in 45 of the 48 markets covered by the report.
That does not establish that online video has surpassed television in total viewing time. The report measures whether people reported using a source during the week, rather than the number of minutes they spent watching it.
Publisher-owned websites and apps are also losing ground as destinations for video. News video on those properties fell to 23% in the latest measurement, a decline of 5 percentage points in one year. The report identifies a 10-point decline in on-site publisher video consumption since 2021.
The broader trend is visible beyond video. Since 2020, reported use of television news has fallen by 13 percentage points, while use of news organizations’ websites and apps has dropped by 12 points.
Creators and misinformation concerns
Individual news creators and creator groups are becoming another major route to information. Twenty-seven percent of the global sample said they received information from news creators each week.
The report defines news creators as individuals or groups that distribute content primarily through social and video networks and influence public debate. It says audiences often view creators as more entertaining and easier to understand than traditional news media, a perception that can help explain their growing reach.
The expansion of platform-based news is occurring alongside rising concern about misinformation. Sixty-two percent of respondents said they were concerned about fake news online, up 4 percentage points globally.
In the United States, 10% of respondents said they had used TikTok for news during the previous week. That figure is a U.S.-specific finding within a report whose 54% platform-use figure represents the global sample across the covered markets.
Pressure on publishers’ business models
The audience shift has direct implications for how news organizations attract readers and generate revenue. Publishers increasingly depend on third-party platforms for distribution, while losing some of the direct traffic that brings audiences to their own websites and apps.
Publishers surveyed for the report expect traffic from search engines to decline by 43% over the next three years. That is an expectation about the future, not a measured decline that has already occurred.
Reader payments remain limited. The share of respondents paying for online news stayed at 17% in the basket of 20 tracked countries.
Those figures leave publishers facing a difficult balance: adapting video and distribution strategies for platforms and creators while trying to preserve direct relationships with audiences. The report documents the audience trends and publisher expectations, but it does not establish that platforms caused every decline in publisher traffic or identify what share of third-party video was produced by established news organizations.
The report also cautions that its survey measures reported weekly use, not viewing minutes. Because the survey is conducted online, it may overrepresent internet users and underrepresent people who are offline, particularly in markets with lower internet penetration.
Even with those limits, the findings mark a significant change in the news environment: platforms and creators are increasingly shaping discovery and viewing, while television and publisher-owned properties face a continuing struggle to retain reach, trust and revenue.
Sources
- Overview and key findings of the 2026 Digital News Report, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
- From broadcast news to streaming and platforms: The changing landscape of news video, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
- How news creators are impacting politics and media around the world, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
- Digital News Report 2026, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
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