"Trust in the news has fallen in almost half the countries in our survey, and risen in just seven, partly reversing the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, around four in ten of our total sample (42%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the countr
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y with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while news trust in the USA has fallen by a further three percentage points and remains the lowest (26%) in our survey.
• Consumption of traditional media, such as TV and print, declined further in the last year in almost all markets (pre-Ukraine invasion), with online and social consumption not making up the gap. While the majority remain very engaged, others are turning away from the news media and in some cases disconnecting from news altogether. Interest in news has fallen sharply across markets, from 63% in 2017 to 51% in 2022.
• Meanwhile, the proportion of news consumers who say they avoid news, often or sometimes, has increased sharply across countries. This type of selective avoidance has doubled in both Brazil (54%) and the UK (46%) over the last five years, with many respondents saying news has a negative effect on their mood. A significant proportion of younger and less educated people say they avoid news because it can be hard to follow or understand – suggesting that the news media could do much more to simplify language and better explain or contextualise complex stories.
• In the five countries we surveyed after the war in Ukraine had begun, we find that television news is relied on most heavily – with countries closest to the fighting, such as Germany and Poland, seeing the biggest increases in consumption. Selective news avoidance has, if anything, increased further – likely due to the difficult and depressing nature of the coverage.
• Global concerns about false and misleading information remain stable this year, ranging from 72% in Kenya and Nigeria to just 32% in Germany and 31% in Austria. People say they have seen more false information about Coronavirus than about politics in most countries, but the situation is reversed in Turkey, Kenya, and the Philippines, amongst others." (Summary, page 10)
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"Radio remains overwhelmingly the most common source for news in Africa. On average across 34 surveyed countries, two-thirds (68%) of respondents tune in at least a few times a week. Digital media use for news is growing quickly. Between 2014/2015 and 2019/2021, the share of Africans who get news fr
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om social media or the Internet at least a few times a week almost doubled, from 24% to 43% across 31 countries included in both survey rounds. Urban residents, better-educated citizens, men, and youth are most likely to use digital media in Africa. While use has increased among other groups as well, demographic gaps in digital media use have remained roughly the same since 2014/2015, and even increased with regard to urban/rural residence and education. Africans express broad support for the media's ro in fostering government accountability, and majorities support media freedoms in every country except Mozambique, Tunisia, Cameroon, Morocco, and Tanzania. But most Africans support their government's right to place limits on the dissemination of hate speech, false information, and messages that are insulting to their president. A majority (57%) of Africans see social media as having mostly positive effects on society, while just one-fourth (24%) see its impact as mostly negative. However, while Africans value social media's ability to inform and empower citizens, they also see distinct threats in its ability to spread false information and hate speech." (Key findings)
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"In 2020, the French Parliament passed an amendment that put the country at the forefront of attempts by democratic states to restrict young people's access to legal online pornography. This study examines the necessity for and potential efficacy of the amendment, Article 23, through a comparative a
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nalysis of emerging legislative and regulatory approaches in France, the UK, Canada, Utah, and Germany, and through a survey of French 15-,16-, and 17-year-olds. Among other things, our survey shows that 41% of 15-, 16-, and17-year-olds in France visit dedicated pornographic sites, on average monthly and often much more frequently. However, the range of media platforms via which French adolescents are exposed to pornography, their knowledge about technologies that could circumvent age verification, and the power, scope, and implementation of Article 23 may limit the legislation's efficacy. Our findings suggest the mechanisms that may limit its efficacy include media displacement, socio-technical circumvention, and the Article's relatively broad and imprecise nature. This study has implications for legislators and regulators in democratic countries beyond France as they too grapple with the challenges of regulating online pornography. Furthermore, it extends the often contradictory and/or limited evidence that exists about adolescents' consumption of pornography." (Abstract)
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"The Russian state-funded international broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today) has attracted much attention as a purveyor of Russian propaganda. To date, most studies of RT have focused on its broadcast, website, and social media content, with little research on its audiences. Through a data-driven
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application of network science and other computational methods, we address this gap to provide insight into the demographics and interests of RT’s Twitter followers, as well as how they engage with RT. Building upon recent studies of Russian state-sponsored media, we report three main results. First, we find that most of RT’s Twitter followers only very rarely engage with its content and tend to be exposed to RT’s content alongside other mainstream news channels. This indicates that RT is not a central part of their online news media environment. Second, using probabilistic computational methods, we show that followers of RT are slightly more likely to be older and male than average Twitter users, and they are far more likely to be bots. Third, we identify thirty-five distinct audience segments, which vary in terms of their nationality, languages, and interests. This audience segmentation reveals the considerable heterogeneity of RT’s Twitter followers. Accordingly, we conclude that generalizations about RT’s audience based on analyses of RT’s media content, or on vocal minorities among its wider audiences, are unhelpful and limit our understanding of RT and its appeal to international audiences." (Abstract)
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"This report shares findings on the access and use of mobile technology among South Sudanese refugees and the communities that host them in three areas of White Nile, Sudan. White Nile is a state in southern Sudan sharing a border and refugee crossing points with South Sudan. It is home to nearly 70
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0,000 people in need of humanitarian assistance. More than 280,000 refugees from South Sudan are currently hosted in White Nile and represent more than a third of all refugees living in Sudan, as well as roughly 100,000 returnees who arrived from South Sudan when it seceded in 2011. Most refugees live in one of nine official refugee camps. Additionally, there are nearly 400,000 people experiencing acute food insecurity [...] Our research indicates that access to mobile phones is high in both communities, with 91 per cent of respondents reporting that their household owns at least one handset. Personal ownership is also high, with 81 per cent of refugees and 62 per cent of host community members reporting that they own their own mobile phone. This figure obscures some important discrepancies, however. For example, refugees are more likely to own an internet-enabled handset than host community members, and women, persons with disabilities and older people are less likely to have access to mobile phones." (Executive summary, page 2)
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"En el Perú existen alrededor de nueve millones de adolescentes entre 12 y 17 años. De este grupo, se estima que el 92.9 % hace uso de internet para socializar, informarse, desarrollar pasatiempos y asistir a clases durante la pandemia. Según las estadísticas oficiales, la población de adolesce
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ntes muestra una brecha digital de género menor a la de otros grupos etarios, pero estas estadísticas solo se limitan a medir la brecha de acceso material. Para entender de manera integral las barreras que enfrentan los y las adolescentes, se debe ahondar en las formas de impacto que internet tiene en sus vidas diarias, así como los estereotipos de género que pueden ser fomentados dentro de su entorno social próximo. Es por ello que entrevistamos a expertos y actores clave sobre la situación actual de la brecha digital de género en el Perú y elaboramos un estudio de campo novedoso –basado en la metodología diseñada por UNICEF y Global Kids Online– que nos permitió descubrir la diversidad de factores que promueven e inhiben la apropiación de internet por parte de adolescentes." (Página 6)
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"Drawing on an original dataset of survey responses collected in the summer of 2022 across four countries - Brazil, India, the UK, and the US - they examine the relationship between trust in news and how people think about news on digital platforms, especially Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, and YouTube
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, some of the most widely used platforms around the world. What they find is somewhat nuanced; how people think about information on platforms varies considerably. It depends on the platform, it depends on the country, it depends on the audiences within those countries, and it depends on the kinds of news those audiences are encountering in these varying spaces." (Executive Summary and Key Findings, page 3)
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"Social media misinformation is widely recognized as a significant and growing global problem. Yet, little is known about how misinformation spreads across broader media ecosystems, particularly in areas with varying internet access and connectivity. Drawing on research in northern Ghana, we seek to
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address this gap. We argue that ‘pavement media’—the everyday communication of current affairs through discussions in marketplaces, places of worship, bars, and the like and through a range of non-conversational and visual practices such as songs, sermons, and graffiti—is a key link in a broader media ecosystem. Vibrant pavement and traditional media allow for information from social media to quickly cross into offline spaces, creating a distinction not of the connected and disconnected but of first-hand and indirect social media users. This paper sets out how social, traditional, and pavement media form a complex and deeply gendered and socio-economically stratified media ecosystem and investigates its implications for how citizens differentially encounter, process, and respond to misinformation. Based on the findings, we argue that efforts intended to combat the spread of misinformation need to move beyond the Western-centred conception of what constitutes media and take different local modalities of media access and fact-checking into account." (Abstract)
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"An international survey reveals that Internet users' trust on the Internet has dropped significantly since 2019. That is among the key findings of a 20-country Ipsos survey released by The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. Only six in ten (63%) Internet users on average across the 20 countries sai
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d they trust the Internet. That is down 11 points since a similar survey was conducted in 2019. The singular exception is Japan, which showed a 7 percentage-point increase in trust. But Japan is the rare exception, as the findings reveal that Internet trust shrunk by double-digits in India (-10 points), Kenya (-11), Sweden (-10), Brazil (-18), Canada (-14), the United States (-12), and Poland (-26)." (Publisher description)
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"Este es un reporte sobre el comportamiento de los hogares con posibilidad real de consumir contenidos en línea." (commbox)
"El CNTV necesita comprender en profundidad el vínculo emocional y significados atribuidos a la TV abierta desde la prespectiva de la confianza, identificando los atributos más relevantes que componen esta predisposición, para luego medirlos cuantitativamente. Para ésto Brinca ejecutó un estudi
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o exploratorio de diseño mixto (cualitativo y cuantitativo) basado en la ejecución de focus groups y una encuesta con audiencias pertenecientes a todo el territorio nacional. Este informe sistematiza los resultados de la fase cualitativa y cuantitativa del estudio y concluye que a nivel general existe un panorama de desconfianza hacia la TV abierta, el cual coexiste con una relevante predisposición a consumir sus contenidos. El informe finaliza con un modelo multivariable de este fenómeno, del cual se desprenden conjunto de recomendaciones accionables por parte de los canales de televisión abierta." (Resumen ejecutivo)
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"Este informe presenta el panorama de la oferta de contenidos audiovisuales dirigida a y utilizada por niñas e niños mexicanos en televisión abierta y restringida." (commbox)
"Using survey data from 154,195 respondents in 142 countries, we investigate internet user perceptions of the risks associated with being exposed to misinformation. We find that: 1) The majority of regular internet users globally (58.5%) worry about misinformation, and young and low-income groups ar
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e most likely to be concerned. 2) Risk perception among internet users varies starkly across regions whereby concern is highest in Latin America and the Caribbean (74.2%), and lowest in South Asia (31.2%). 3) Differences are unrelated to the prevalence of misinformation, yet concern is highest in countries with liberal democratic governments. We discuss implications for successful policy and platform interventions." (Abstract)
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"The aim of this research was to study media consumption habits among different age groups and geographical areas, as well as the public's vulnerability to various disinformation and manipulative narratives disseminated in Georgia. The first part of the research concerns media literacy competencies,
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namely media consumption habits, the ability to identify and verify false information, while the second part deals with perceptions of disinformation in relation to 3 thematic areas (Russian intervention in Ukraine, current events/ identity-related issues in Georgia and health). The research was conducted in 7 Georgian cities throughout the month of September, namely Akhalkalaki, Batumi, Gardabani, Zugdidi, Tbilisi, Telavi, and Kutaisi, conducting face-to-face interviews with 140 respondents." (Introduction, page 3)
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"In this report, we use online survey data collected in August and September 2022 to document and understand how people in eight countries - Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA - access news and information about climate change. A large majority of our respondents ac
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ross these countries recognise that almost all climate scientists believe that climate change is caused by humans and are worried about the impact, but above and beyond basic understanding of the scientific consensus and recognition of the climate crisis, it is important to understand people's attitudes towards climate change news, including who they trust as sources of information, how climate news makes them feel, and how well they think news media are performing covering it. Finally, we take some preliminary steps in understanding how each of these are correlated with climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours." (Executive summary)
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"Este artículo tiene como objetivo caracterizar las lógicas que moldean la construcción de perfiles e identidades digitales utilizadas por los y las adolescentes como parte de sus interacciones en redes sociales en Chile. Al usar una aproximación cuantitativa que incluyó la adaptación y valida
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ción de instrumentos estandarizados, se indagó por las prácticas y estrategias utilizadas en la construcción de dichos perfiles en una muestra de estudiantes secundarios chilenos/as (N=892). Los resultados señalan que los y las adolescentes reportan un grado significativo de autenticidad en la presentación del “yo” en las redes, con importantes diferencias según sexo, que muestran cómo los códigos y normas offline son reapropiadas en el espacio digital." (Resumen)
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"The movement that mobilized to oppose Alyaksandr Lukashenka in August 2020 was notable for its ability to bridge divisions of social class, geography, age, and identity. Almost uniquely among post-Soviet revolutionary movements, the Belarusians who rose up were not divided from those who did not al
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ong clearly discernible sociodemographic, ethnic, linguistic, or regional lines. They were, however, separated by one very stark barrier: the one separating the country’s two distinct media systems, one controlled by the state, and one independent. Drawing on an original survey conducted in September 2020, just as the protest movement was reaching its peak, this article finds that respondents’ choice of news media was the strongest and most consistent predictor of their political opinions. Media, then, appear to have served not merely as aggregators of and conduits for social processes generated elsewhere, but as the producers of social and political force in their own right." (Abstract)
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"On the basis of an online survey conducted among young Chinese adults, this study examines how the association between media usage and political trust can be explained by three factors: the mediating roles of the perceived credibility of traditional and social media; the moderating roles of trust i
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n sources – media and non-media sources alike; and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) membership. Analyses support the idea that (1) the perceived credibility of political information obtained from traditional and social media is a significant mediator, and that (2) traditional media credibility has a stronger effect than social media credibility." (Abstract)
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"This study aims to measure the effects of exposure to a YouTube platform, the Moshaya Family Channel, on the socialization of children. We monitored the content provided by the channel and how children are affected by it in terms of moral and behavioral aspects, specifically the impacts of their re
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peated exposure to the programs on their life satisfaction. This needed to be studied due to the increase in views and subscriptions to the channel, and children’s level of attachment to the presented content. This research uses the survey method. An online questionnaire was used to obtain information from a study sample of 338 Saudi mothers whose children are watching “The Moshaya Family Channel.” Children’s ages ranged from 5 to 13 years old. The most important result is that a big proportion of children have the awareness of terms like subscribe, share, like and views. The reason for that is due to their being influenced by the idea of popularity and their desire to make their own YouTube channel. The research also found that a big proportion of children preferred prank content in the channel and described it as interesting, which pushed them to imitate these pranks in their lives. The research found that most mothers don’t like their children to watch the channel because it incites the child to prank others and prompts buying behavior in children. This confirms the role played by new media platforms, especially YouTube, which result in children acquiring values not only for entertainment, but also a tool for learning, communication and entertainment." (Abstract)
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