Minorities are more likely to use social media to get news compared with white people

By Fusion Staff  |  May 27, 2016 | 8:23pm
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On Thursday, Pew released the results of a survey on social media news consumption. Its top-line finding? Sixty-two percent of respondents said they get news from social media. That’s up from 49% in 2012, though a slightly different question was asked then (they asked whether respondents were “seeing” news on social media rather than “getting” news).

The other main finding: Of the 9 sites asked about, non-whites get news from three of them at a higher rate than whites: Instagram (8% of non-whites vs. 3% of whites), YouTube (14% of non-whites vs. 8% of whites), and Snapchat (3% of non-whites vs. 1% of whites).

The study did not break out non-whites by ethnicity, but the relative prevalence of YouTube and Instagram may reflect usage by Hispanics for whom English is not their primary language, and thus text is not their preferred form of consumption.

Finally, the study showed how white Reddit is: a greater portion of Reddit news users than Twitter, Instagram or YouTube news users are white (74% compared with 61%, 40%, and 55% respectively), and male.

Reddit has in the past come under fire for allowing racist subgroups to proliferate on the site.

Rob covers business, economics and the environment for Fusion. He previously worked at Business Insider. He grew up in Chicago.

 
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