Country and market data

Europe

United Kingdom

The UK media scene is characterised by a well-funded and regulated broadcasting sector and a lively and opinionated national press. But audiences are fragmenting with the rise of streaming services and some new TV channels.

Austria

Trust in news and in Austrian news brands are both down significantly this year, partly due to the influential role of tabloid newspapers in a scandal that forced the resignation of the chancellor.

Belgium

Belgium has two distinct media markets: French-speaking Wallonia and Flemish-speaking Flanders. Publishers’ pivot to digital subscriptions seems to be paying off, but they continue to look for scale and diversification of revenues through mergers and acquisitions.

Americas

United States

In the US, remote work has become standard, health reporting is increasingly recognised as a vital public service, and many outlets have launched new products – from newsletters to podcasts to video to virtual events – to keep audiences informed.

Brazil

Media ownership remains highly concentrated in Brazil, South America’s biggest market. Big conglomerates dominate in broadcast and print, but face greater competition online and via social media. The president continues to attack the press routinely amid evidence of rising news fatigue.

Canada

Protests in which truckers besieged the national capital in an anti-vaccination blockade highlighted growing divisions in Canadian society and declining trust in the news media.

Asia-Pacific

Australia

Australia saw signs of recovery in 2021: the advertising market grew, numbers paying for news online increased, and support systems for regional journalism are being developed. A new regulatory framework has eased the power imbalance between news publishers and tech giants.

Hong Kong

Press freedom faces unprecedented strain in Hong Kong as news outlets critical of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments have been shut down and senior executives arrested. Meanwhile, further waves of COVID-19 infection have continued to adversely affect the finances of media companies.

India

Indian media are diverse, with numerous outlets operating in English and multiple regional languages. The sector has been hard hit by the pandemic but is showing signs of recovery.

Africa

South Africa

Trust in news in South Africa has increased but the media environment is becoming an increasingly toxic terrain of mis/disinformation, of media titles being co-opted into propaganda, and of coordinated attacks on the credibility of individual journalists.

Nigeria

Nigeria's media scene is characterised by state and private broadcasters, popular international brands and more than 100 national and local print titles. The enormous popularity of social media has brought greater diversity but also an explosion of misinformation.

Kenya

The introduction of the digital tax in 2021 and enhanced measures to curb the spread of online hate speech as Kenya heads to an August election have impacted the media.

Methodological note

In this section we publish a market-based view of the findings, which includes an overview of the most important data points in terms of news.

These include an overview of consumption in each market, including details of the most popular news brands – traditional and online. The pages also contain statistics about the use of devices such as smartphones and tablets and the role of different social networks for news. Information is drawn from the 2022 Digital News Report survey using the methodology outlined, with the exception of population and internet levels which are drawn from the latest edition of Internet World Statistics.¹

Data from India, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa are representative of younger English speakers and not the national population, because it is not possible to reach other groups in a representative way using online polling. The survey was fielded in English in these markets (respondents had the option of selecting Hindi in India and Swahili in Kenya, but the majority selected English), and restricted to ages 18 to 50 in Kenya and Nigeria.

In some other markets, where internet penetration is lower, our data often represent younger and more affluent groups – even if it meets other nationally representative quotas. For all these reasons, one should be cautious in comparing some data points across markets where we know these limitations apply (see methodology). In a few markets we do not show certain data points (such as paying for news) because we feel these could lead to misunderstandings or misleading comparisons. We have also signalled specific details about samples in a short note on the relevant page and also include the internet penetration rate on each.

We have ordered the countries and markets by geography (Europe, Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Africa) and within each region countries are then ordered alphabetically – with the exception of UK at the start of the Europe section and the United States at the start of the Americas.

Country and market data 2022