Makena Kelly
There’s new data released this week confirming much of what I’ve written in this newsletter for the past year: More and more Americans are getting their news from influencers on the internet.
The Pew Research Center, in partnership with the Knight Foundation, released a report this week that found that around one in five US adults regularly receive news from news influencers, or what the study defines as a person who consistently posts news-related content with more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, or YouTube.
That’s more than 50 million people getting their news this way. When Pew asked adults from the ages of 18 to 29 years old, that number increased to 37 percent. Come 2028 (sorry!), these audiences will likely grow even bigger, with creators taking an even more dominant role in news distribution and consumption.
It seems like the Republicans have already figured this out. The Trump campaign’s willingness to engage and speak at length with friendly creators was advantageous for the campaign, as they leaned heavily on the vast right-wing media ecosystem online, from podcasts to content creators. Right-leaning creators have been steadily building an entire online ecosystem that feeds into their political ideology. A majority of the most popular podcasts in the US are conservative-leaning—including The Joe Rogan Experience, The Charlie Kirk Show, and The Candace Owens Show.
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