“Videos are becoming a more important source of online information, especially among younger people,” highlights the report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, linked to the University of Oxford.
“TikTok continues to be the most popular (…) and the percentage of those who use it to receive news has grown by 13% in all markets and 23% for those between 18 and 24 years old” , explained the text.
The report is based on online surveys carried out by the company YouGov among 95,000 people in 47 countries.
The growth is even greater “in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia,” experts warn.
The figures from Peru stand out, where 27% of users (of all ages) use TikTok as a news source, compared to 3% in Denmark.
Following the trend of recent years, the study shows that two-thirds of respondents worldwide watch at least one short video (a few minutes) on a news topic every week.
Up to 85% of those surveyed in Peru watch short videos weekly to inform themselves, 77% in Mexico (same figure as in Colombia), 76% in Brazil, 75% in Chile and 66% in Argentina. In Spain they are 64%.
These figures decrease, although not dramatically, among the most developed countries: 60% in the United States, 57% in Canada, 45% in France, 49% in Germany.
The big problem for traditional media is that almost three quarters (72%) of this video consumption takes place on platforms and social networks, compared to only 22% on their original sites, which raises questions about their ability to generate income.
He married Mile
Like last year, a dichotomy is observed between the networks.
On Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), whose audiences have aged, traditional media remain dominant, although these networks tend to give less and less space to information.
But on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, with a younger audience, the search for information is carried out more through content creators and influencers than through traditional media and journalists.
“Consumers embrace video because it is easy to access and offers a wide variety of content. But many traditional media remain anchored in a text culture and have difficulty adapting,” says Nic Newman, the text’s lead author.
“The new populist president of Argentina, Javier Milei, has a successful TikTok account with 2.2 million followers,” the text recalls.
And Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, who won a big election victory in February, used artificial intelligence-generated images in his online propaganda.
News written by AI
The study cites German media group KStA, which uses an AI program called Klara Indernach to write more than 5% of its content.
In parallel with these experiments in established media, some sites use AI to pirate content, without authorization or human control, in order to generate traffic and make money.
Asked about AI, consumers surveyed “are generally concerned about its use to process information.”
However, “they are more favorable to the use of AI to perform certain tasks such as transcribing texts or translating, that is, when it helps journalists and not when it replaces them.”
AI models are fed by data they find on the Internet, including press content, to be able to produce texts or images from a simple request formulated in ordinary language by their users.
To obtain remuneration, some media have chosen to reach agreements with the big AI players, such as the American OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT).
This is the case of the French Le Monde, the American press agency The Associated Press (AP), the German group Axel Springer, the Spanish conglomerate Prisa Media or the British newspaper Financial Times.
On the other hand, American newspapers such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune have sued OpenAI for copyright violation.
Doctor demands measures
In the US, renowned Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said the threat social media poses to children requires urgent action and demanded Congress put a label on the apps like it does with cigarettes and alcohol.
“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency, and social media has emerged as a major factor,” Murthy said in a op-ed in the New York Times published today Monday.
Murthy cited several studies, including a American Medical Association study of 2019 published in JAMA that showed that adolescents who spend three hours a day on social media double their risk of depression. Teens Spend Nearly Five Hours a Day on Social Media Apps, Survey Finds Gallup poll .
But Murthy can’t act unilaterally to put a warning label on apps; That requirement would have to come from Congress, whom Murthy pleaded with to pass a bill.
Source: With information from AFP
