Berke Citak via Unsplash
Social media and video platforms have overtaken both television and news organisations' own websites and apps to become the most popular way people get their news, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026.
The annual study, based on responses from 97,520 people across 48 markets, found 54% used social media and video platforms for news in the past week, ahead of TV on 52% and news organisations' own sites and apps on 51%.
It is the first time social platforms have topped both at a global level.
Mitali Mukherjee, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, said the shift forms part of an intensifying "platformisation" of news consumption.
Measured a different way, the report also tracks which single source people name as their main way of getting news.
By that measure, social media and video networks rose to 30% globally this year, up from 22% five years ago.
Social platforms now lead news websites and apps in 30 of the 48 markets surveyed.
The report found this is partly down to falling TV and website use rather than runaway growth in social platforms, whose share of news audiences has stayed largely stable over the past five years.
Meta said in 2025 it would increase the volume of news content on Facebook, which the report said is likely to have lifted usage levels.
News websites and apps still lead social platforms in 18 markets, concentrated in the Nordic countries, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and parts of Central Europe, plus Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore in Asia.
Australia sits on the other side of that line, among the 30 markets where social platforms have overtaken news websites and apps.
TV remains Australia's most-used news source overall, at 57% to social media's 56%, a gap the report says is too small to be statistically meaningful.
Online video is driving the global shift. A majority of people in all 48 markets now watch online news video weekly, while video consumption on publishers' own sites and apps has fallen five percentage points this year.
TikTok's news use grew to 20% globally and Instagram's to 26%. A quarter of respondents, 27%, said they now watch on-demand news via apps such as YouTube on their smart TVs.
AI chatbots are also growing as a news source, used weekly by 10% of respondents globally, up from 7% last year.
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