Journalists May Prefer Twitter, But Their Readers Often Do Not

Twitter is by far the most-used social media platform among journalists, but that does not necessarily hold true for consumers of their journalism, according to a new study from Pew Research Center. Pew senior researcher Jeffrey Gottfried and senior writer Mark Jurkowitz wrote in the introduction to the study, “More than nine in 10 journalists in the U.S. (94%) use social media for their jobs, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey of reporters, editors and others working in the news industry. But the sites that journalists use most frequently differ from those that the public turns to for news.” The think tank surveyed 11,889 U.S.-based journalists between Feb. 16 and March 17, as well as 11,178 U.S. adults from July 26 through Aug. 8, 2021. Twitter was the most- or second-most-used platform for their job for 69% of journalists, followed by Facebook (52%) and then a wide gap to the rest of the list: Instagram (19%), LinkedIn (17%) and YouTube (14%). The remainder of the platforms in the study came in at under 4%: Reddit, WhatsApp, TikTok, Discord, Twitch and Snapchat. Younger journalists took to Twitter even more, with 83% of respondents saying it was their most-used or second-most-used social platform for work. Meanwhile, those 65 and older were more likely to favor Facebook (54%) than Twitter (45%). Instagram also rated higher with journalists under 50, while LinkedIn and YouTube were more prominent among those 50 and up. Twitter was also particularly popular among Asian-American journalists, cited by 82% of them as one of their most commonly used social networking sites, compared with 71% of Hispanic respondents, 70% of Blacks and 69% of Whites. While just 18% of White journalists cited Instagram as one of the most common sites they used, those numbers rose among Blacks (one-third), Hispanics (29%) ad Asian Americans (24%). Two-thirds of journalists who started out in television news said Facebook was one of their most commonly used social sites, compared with just 38% of those who work for online organizations. The TV group was also the most likely to cite Twitter (80%), while print journalists were the least likely (62%). As for LinkedIn, online and print journalists were more likely to include the professional network among their top two sites than TV and radio journalists. Journalists who work for outlets with right-leaning audiences politically were more likely to way Facebook was one of the top two social networking platforms they used for work (67%, compared with 45% of those at left-leaning outlets), while those at outlets with left-leaning audiences were twice as likely as their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum to cite Instagram (24% versus 12%). The gap was not as dramatic for Twitter, with three-quarters of respondents who work for outlets with left-leaning audiences including it among their most commonly used platforms, compared with 66% of those at outlets with right-leaning audiences. Facebook was the most commonly used social platform among journalists who work at news organizations that focus on a community, city or county, at 77%, compared with 33% among those with a national focus and 30% among those with an international focus. Conversely. 27% of respondents at international news organizations and 25% at national ones cited LinkedIn, compared with just 9% of those at community-focused outlets and 12% at those with a statewide focus. On the news consumption side, just 13% of U.S. adults said they regularly get news on Twitter, trailing well behind Facebook (31%) and YouTube (22%). Overall, just 48% of U.S. adults said they sometimes or often get news from social media sites.