Accessing news via social media has overtaken traditional online news for the first time, according to the Digital News Report: Australia 2025 released today by the University of Canberra’s News and Media Research Centre.
Television still beats all but young news consumers can’t get enough of short videos and Australians are becoming increasingly comfortable with news produced by AI.
Women continue to avoid news as the gender gap in news consumption widens, but overall, Australians’ interest in local news has grown significantly and is among the highest globally.
Trust in news has risen slightly this year, and is highest among people who have undertaken news literacy education,” said Sora Park, lead author at the News and Media Research Centre.
“In fact, these consumers have higher interest in news and are more likely to pay for it. This suggests that increasing media literacy across the population could not only help boost trust in news but also be part of the economic solution in the years to come.”
Almost three quarters (74%) of Australians are concerned about misinformation. The majority (57%) believe that influencers are a misinformation threat, and the social media platforms Facebook and TikTok the riskiest platforms for it.
“This year, Australians were the most concerned about misinformation, globally. Where Australians saw influencers and online personalities as a misinformation threat, in the United States politicians were seen as the major threat,” said Professor Park.
While TV continues to top the list as the main source of news for 37% of Australians, for the first time, social media (26%, +1 percentage points) overtook online (23%, -5 pp) as the main source of news.
Traditional news brands were among the most popular source of news on social media.
Of the major platforms, Facebook recorded the strongest growth with 38% of Australians sourcing their news from the Meta platform. The popularity of TikTok, X and WhatsApp also grew as sources of news.
“With the increase in reliance on social media platforms for news consumption, policies on social media content moderation must be reviewed and tightened,” said Professor Park.
“This year’s report found that Australians were divided on this front with 33% thinking platforms are not removing enough content, while 21% thought too much was being removed.”
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