The number of web surfers in the United States who use social media to find news nearly doubled since 2013, up from 25 percent to 46 percent, according to new research from the Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism (RISJ) at the University of Oxford. The organization commissioned market research company YouGov to query 50,000 online users in 26 different countries in late January and early February 2016.
The report’s findings should come as no surprise to any publisher that’s paying attention. Facebook is the leading social source of news consumption, and it is the primary news source for 44 percent of survey respondents who use social to find news, followed by YouTube, with 19 percent, and Twitter, with 10 percent.
