Nearly 40% of young Americans get their news from influencers. Many of them lean to the right, study finds

Young American adults are increasingly getting their news from social media influencers, a majority of whom are men and lean to the right, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.

Young American adults are increasingly getting their news from social media influencers, a majority of whom are men and lean to the right, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. While one-fifth of US adults reported “regularly” receiving their news from online “news influencers,” that number climbed to nearly 40% of young adults aged 18 to 29, the study published Monday found. Among those who get their news from influencers, 65% said it helped shape their understanding of current events and civic issues. The Pew study, which analyzed 500 popular news influencers with more than 100,000 followers and surveyed 10,658 Americans about their news consumption, was conducted across three weeks in July and August during the run-up to the presidential election. During the campaign, social media influencers and podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper played a key role in voter outreach efforts by Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the latter of which courted so-called manosphere influencers to appeal directly to male voters. “News influencers have emerged as one of the key alternatives to traditional outlets as a news and information source for a lot of people, especially younger folks. And these influencers have really reached new levels of attention and prominence this year amid the presidential election,” Galen Stocking, a senior computational social scientist at the Pew Research Center, said in a statement. “We thought it was really important to look at who is behind some of the most popular accounts — the ones that aren’t news organizations, but actual people.” The study found that contrary to claims of right-wing censorship, news influencers were more likely to lean conservative, with 27% explicitly identifying as Republican or pro-Trump, compared to the 21% who identified as liberal. On Facebook, there were three times as many explicitly conservative news influencers (39% to 13%), and on Instagram conservatives outnumbered liberals, 30-25%. “Many Republicans have long believed that social media sites censor conservative viewpoints. But overall, more news influencers explicitly present a politically right-leaning orientation than a left-leaning one in their account bios, posts, websites or media coverage,” Pew said.