Social media news consumption drops

The proportion of people claiming to use social media to access news fell from 49% in 2019 to 45% this year, the study found.

The research involved 2,066 face-to-face and 2,510 online interviews conducted between 9th November and 8th December 2019 and also between 24th February and 30th March 2020.

Trust in social media also fell from 38% in 2019 to 35%, according to the research, while belief in its impartiality fell from 37% to 34%. Ofcom also found that 36% of respondents thought social media news was accurate, compared with 39% last year.

People who obtain news from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were also less inclined to share or retweet articles or videos than they were in 2019.

Television remained the most popular platform to access news, and was used by 75% of respondents.

The internet is the next most popular platform for news ( 65%), followed by radio ( 42%). Print newspapers were read by 35% of people, but when combined with newspaper websites and apps, overall use increased to 47%.

BBC One was the single most popular news source, used by 56% of people, although use of BBC channels fell from 85% to 83%. ITV ( 41%) and Facebook ( 34%) were the second and third biggest sources of news.

The study found 6% of respondents used podcasts to listen to the news, with YouTube the most popular platform.