America's news influencers

News influencers were seemingly everywhere during the 2024 presidential campaign, from the party conventions to a series of podcast appearances by the candidates. A new in-depth Pew Research Center study explores the universe of influencers who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and the Americans who get news from them.

It finds that about one-in-five U.S. adults — including a much higher share of 18- to 29-year-olds (37%) — say they regularly get news from influencers on social media.

Among Americans who get news from them, 65% say news influencers on social media have helped them better understand current events and civic issues. The study also finds that news influencers largely come from outside the newsroom — just 23% of news influencers studied are currently or were previously employed by a news organization.

This report is based on a survey of over 10,000 U.S. adults and their experiences with news influencers, along with an analysis of 500 news influencers across five major social media sites and their posts.

It finds news influencers are most likely to be found on X (formerly Twitter), where 85% have a presence, but many are also on other social media sites. Visit these links for platform-specific data: TikTok, X, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.

“News influencers have emerged as one of the key alternatives to traditional outlets as a news and information source for a lot of people, especially younger folks. And these influencers have really reached new levels of attention and prominence this year amid the presidential election,” according to Galen Stocking, senior computational social scientist at Pew Research Center. “We thought it was really important to look at who is behind some of the most popular accounts — the ones that aren't news organizations, but actual people.”

This is a Pew Research Center report from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Additional key findings include:

• Among Americans who regularly get news from news influencers, most say the information they share is unique and that they provide several types of content, including basic facts, opinions and breaking news.
• Seven-in-ten of these Americans say the news they get from news influencers is at least somewhat different from the news they get from other sources, including roughly a quarter who say it is extremely or very different (23%).
• It is common for Americans who get news from news influencers to see several types of information from these creators, including basic facts (90%), opinions (87%), funny posts (87%) and breaking news (83%).
• A majority of news influencers are men. And the influencers we sampled are slightly more likely to identify explicitly with the political right than the left.
• Among the news influencers in our sample, 63% of influencers are men and 30% are women.
• Although about half of the influencers in our sample do not express a clear political orientation in their account profile or recent posts, slightly more explicitly identify as Republican, conservative or pro-Trump (27% of news influencers) than as Democratic, liberal or pro-Harris (21%).

• Influencers on TikTok stand out from those on other social media sites when it comes to gender, political orientation, and values and identities.
• TikTok has the smallest gender gap among news influencers on the site: 50% of news influencers on TikTok are men, while 45% are women.
• TikTok also stands out as the only site of the five studied where news influencers who explicitly identify as right-leaning (25% of TikTok news influencers) do not outnumber those who publicly express a left-leaning political ideology (28%).
• Among news influencers on TikTok, 13% show support for LGBTQ+ rights or identify as LGBTQ+ in their profile, higher than the shares of influencers on other social media sites who do this.

• Most posts by news influencers about current events or civic issues during the summer of 2024 focused on politics.
• To get a sense of what news influencers are posting about, researchers collected all public posts by the 500 news influencers in our sample for three separate weeks in the summer of 2024, finding that 43% of the posts were about current events or civic issues.
• Among those posts referencing current events or civic issues, more than half (55%) were about U.S. politics, government or the presidential election. Beyond U.S. politics in general, 18% of posts focused on social issues, including race, LGBTQ+ issues and abortion. A similar share of posts (14%) were about international issues, including the Israel-Hamas war (7%).

This report is based on multiple data sources, including an analysis of 500 news influencers that was sampled from a larger pool of 2,058 influencers identified by researchers after a review of 28,266 accounts on X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook; a content analysis of 104,786 posts they produced across three one-week periods in July and August 2024; and a survey of 10,658 U.S. adults from July 15 to Aug. 4, 2024, with a margin of error of 1.2 percentage points.

Read the full report: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/11/18/americas-news-influencers/

List of news influencers studied: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/11/18/appendix-a-news-influencers-studied/

Survey topline: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/11/PJ_2024.11.18_news-influencers_topline.pdf

Methodology: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/11/18/news-influencers-methodology/

For more information about the study or to arrange an interview with the lead researchers, please contact Sogand Afkari, 202-419-3641, safkari@pewresearch.org

About the Pew-Knight Initiative:

The Pew-Knight Initiative supports new research on how Americans absorb civic information, form beliefs and identities, and engage in their communities. Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Knight Foundation is a social investor committed to supporting informed and engaged communities.