Does Your Political Party Impact Where You Get Your News?

Published: October 28, 2024

Does Your Political Party Impact Where You Get Your News?

By Movieguide® Contributor

A new study revealed how a person’s political party impacts the sources they trust when receiving their news.

A report from the Pew Research Center highlighted the growing mistrust in national news organizations among Republicans, while their confidence in news from social media sites has steadily risen. In 2016, 70% of American adults who identified as Republican trusted national news sources; this year, that number is 40%. Meanwhile, trust in the news received from social media has risen from 32% to 37%. In comparison, 78% of Democrat-leaning American adults have trust in national news organizations, slightly falling from 83% in 2016.

Regardless of political affiliation, young people are less trusting of national news organizations than older people. For example, 69% of Democrats ages 18 to 29 trust national news organizations, compared to 86% of Democrats ages 50 and older trusting them.

Local news organizations, however, are still believed to be trusted by the majority of Americans, though Democrats (83%) are more trusting of them than Republicans (66%).

This report builds on a previous study from Pew that tracked the growing trust among American adults in social media as a news source. That study revealed that YouTube, Instagram and TikTok rapidly rose in their prevalence as a news source while most other platforms remained flat in their growth.

TikTok-social-media-for-news.html">READ MORE: AMERICANS TURN TO TikTok, social media FOR NEWS

Heading into the election, the prevalence of trust in social media news sources is a cause for concern as AI-generated misinformation is more prominent than ever. There is still little social media platforms can do to combat this problem, so Meta Politics-affecting-2024-election.html">stepped back in its role in Politics at the start of the year so its sites couldn’t be used for harm.

The changes Meta made across its platforms heavily limited the reach of political content and made anything Politics-related harder to find even when users explicitly searched for them.

Politics-affecting-2024-election.html">READ MORE: META STEPS BACK FROM Politics, AFFECTING 2024 ELECTION