By Digital Reporter
The 2025, Digital News Report 2025, by the Reuters Institute has availed vast realisations that include growth of X as a news source, the mis and dis information associated with digital news sources, the growing role of video in news dissemination among other realisations.
The report showed a new trend in the growing role twitter, you tube and podcasts have in news dissemination while the alternative news sources have also grown in reach appeal as news sources as traditional news sources continued to fall.
“While overall trust in the news has remained stable for the third year in a row at 40%, two emerging themes bear keen attention. The first is the rise of an alternative media ecosystem: YouTubers, TikTokers, and podcasters. This was evident both in the US and several global majority countries where social media are widely used to access news.”
Furthermore, “Alternative media voices often have a wide reach and appeal to audiences that news publishers have been keen to engage with but the report also shows that, when it comes to underlying sources of false or misleading information, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest threat worldwide along with national politicians.”
On the otherhand, “Engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows. This is particularly the case in the United States where polling overlapped with the first few weeks of the new Trump administration. Social media news use was sharply up (+6pp) but there was no ‘Trump bump’ for traditional sources.” The report highlighted.
The report noted the growth of online media sources as continuing as Facebook, YouTube, Instagra, Watsapp, TikTok and X remained the major sources respectively with X usage increasing following Elon Musk’s X buy out.
“News use across online platforms continues to fragment, with six online networks now reaching more than 10% weekly with news content, compared with just two a decade ago. Around a third of
our global sample use Facebook (36%) and YouTube (30%) for news each week. Instagram (19%) and WhatsApp (19%) are used by around a fifth, while TikTok (16%) remains ahead of X at 12%.” The report realised
Also worth noting in the report is that, “Data show that usage of X for news is stable or increasing across many markets, with the biggest uplift in the United States (+8pp), Australia (+6pp), and Poland (+6pp). Since Elon Musk took over the network in 2022 many more right-leaning people, notably young men, have flocked to the network, while some progressive audiences have left or are using it less frequently.”
The report also noted a shift in trends as people now opt to watch news rather than read highlighting a major shift while podcasts have become a major source of news for the young, educated despite only Northern Europe dominating in State Owned podcasts.
“Changing platform strategies mean that video continues to grow in importance as a source of news. Across all markets the proportion consuming social video has grown from 52% in 2020 to 65% in 2025 and any video from 67% to 75%.In the Philippines, Thailand, Kenya, and India more people
now say they prefer to watch the news rather than read it, further encouraging the shift to personality-led news creators.” The report further highlighted.
On the other hand, “Our survey also shows the importance of news podcasting in reaching younger, better-educated audiences. The United States has among the highest proportion (15%) accessing one or more podcasts in the last week, with many of these now filmed and distributed via video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. By contrast, many northern European podcast markets remain dominated by public broadcasters or big legacy media companies and have been slower to adopt video versions.” The report realised.
Proliferation of the media has created a double edged paradigm shift in news that has strengthened as fractured the conventional news structure by mis and dis information, faster dissemination, self cencorship’s threat, unethical production in a globalised world, with hope on adjustments that maintain professional conduct while enhancing freedom to all party’s.