Canada
US commentators dominate the Canadian lists alongside a small number of home-grown personalities such as Jordan Peterson, mostly from the political right. The top 15 list is made up exclusively of men. The main networks used for accessing creators are similar to the United States, namely YouTube and X. Facebook and Instagram (owned by Meta) have restricted access to news content on their platforms in response to the Online News Act and this is likely to have affected the popularity of some creator content on these networks in addition to news brands.
The most mentioned Canadian online personality in our data is psychologist and author Jordan Peterson. Originally a University of Toronto professor, Peterson rose to international prominence through viral lectures and his book 12 Rules for Life. He is known for his critiques of political correctness and for providing a conservative intellectual perspective on social and cultural debates. With around 9m followers on YouTube and 6m on X, Peterson’s influence is also felt, across multiple countries, with a number of mentions in Australia, the UK, South Africa, and Norway.
News anchors from the main networks CBC, CTV, Global News, and Radio Canada are widely cited in our survey along with the branded accounts for these networks. Rebel News, a network that has been associated with the alt-right, also gains significant attention in social media (1.1m followers on YouTube) as does one of its co-founders Brian Lilley, who now works for the Toronto Sun. Rebel News was accused of spreading misinformation around the Covid-19 pandemic among other issues. Another colourful character who has been given a voice by social media is The Pleb, a former truck driver who takes a populist, anti-establishment viewpoint. The Pleb engages directly with attendees at conservative rallies, live-streaming political events for an audience that now numbers around 250,000 YouTube subscribers.
Meanwhile left-leaning Canadians, according to our survey, tend to pay attention to public service broadcasters CBC and Radio Canada, as well as US talk show hosts such as John Oliver and Stephen Colbert. Home-grown satirist Cody Johnston has also built a following of over 1m for his YouTube show Some More News, with segments that critique lazy media narratives. J.J. McCulloch is one of Canada’s most successful YouTubers with over 1m subscribers. Based in Vancouver his videos cover everything from the history of Canadian politics to international and cultural issues. He has also worked as a cartoonist and commentator for local and international publications. YouTuber Hugo Travers/Hugo Décrypte also picks up a significant audience with young French-speaking Canadians for his explanatory videos.
Proportion that regularly pay attention to creators/influencers in social and video networks
20%
16/24
Proportion that regularly pay attention to news brands/journalists in social and video networks
26%
13/24
Gender balance
15
of the top 15 individuals are men
These lists represent the individuals most mentioned by respondents to our 2025 and 2024 Digital News Report surveys in the context of news and social media and video networks. Respondents who used Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok for news were asked where they paid most attention – including options for traditional news media/journalists, digital-first news outlets not associated with traditional media, creators/personalities who mostly focus on the news, creators/personalities who occasionally focus on the news. For each type, we asked respondents to name up to three examples of who they paid attention to. We then counted the individuals mostly using a tool called OpenRefine to help us use a semi-automated approach to clean the data (e.g. resolve misspellings or alternative names, remove duplicates etc.). In parallel, we also used ChatGPT5 to process and recode the original data, and to identify the most mentioned individuals to give us a way of comparing results. Further details on the tools we used and on small differences in methodology between 2024 and 2025 are provided in our methodology section (link).
Why did you use open fields rather than closed lists to collect the data?
We used open text response boxes, first, because in many countries the most popular news creators and influencers have not yet been identified by previous research. Second, because it would likely not be possible to fully capture the broad and fragmented nature of this ecosystem using a fixed listed of response options. And third, because we wanted to adopt an audience-centric approach whereby respondents could enter names that they considered news sources to them, even if they did not meet accepted standards or definitions within academia or the journalistic profession. This means that many of the names we list here would perhaps have been excluded under a more top-down approach.
How definitive is the order of the named individuals in each country?
In some cases, especially near the bottom the list, differences in the number of mentions for individuals are very small. Given our survey methodology, and the associated margin of error, the precise rank order should be read as indicative rather than definitive. Many other individuals were mentioned by respondents in the context of news, even if they do not make the top 15 using our approach. The lists should therefore be seen as indicative of some of the top news individuals in each country.
Why are some popular individuals with high follower counts lower down the list than individuals with high follower counts?
There are a number of possible reasons for this. First, some popular creators such as musicians and comedians are known more for entertainment than for news and their follower counts are often higher as a result. This means that even if they do occasionally talk about news related issues, not all of their followers will be aware of it. Second, some individuals working for traditional media may have relatively low personal followings but are widely distributed via social accounts of news brands. Third, there is a margin of error in surveys such as this (see previous answer) that needs to be borne in mind.
Did you exclude any individuals or other entries as part of the process?
Our lists are inclusive in terms of being faithful to the individual names mentioned by respondents. We removed just a handful of actors, sports stars, and celebrities if we were sure they did not post on any news-related issues. In most cases this did not affect the top 15 names that are published in this report for each country.
Many creators operate as part of collectives or use pseudonyms. How did you deal with these categorisation issues?
In terms of creator collectives or social-first brands, such as the Daily Wire (US) or TLDR News (UK) we followed the lead of our respondents. Where audiences have identified them as individuals, we have tended to categorise these as creators rather than news brands, but where they have mentioned a brand, we included them in our list of news brands. Where it was clear, however, that the brand is the work of one individual (e.g. Es.decirdiario/Sheila Hernández in Spain) we categorised them as an individual and made the connection clear in the description. Many creators use pseudonyms and, in these cases, we combined mentions of these with the real names. Again, we tried to make the connection clear in the description.
How did you deal with politicians and the overlap between politicians and political commentary?
Politicians and businesspeople are also frequently mentioned by survey respondents in the context of news sources on social media, and often have significant followings (e.g. on X, Donald Trump has 109m, Narendra Modi 109m, and Elon Musk 225m). Many politicians are also content creators and commentators who shape public debates. Some content creators have become politicians, and vice versa. We chose to include politicians if they were named by respondents in the context of news, but we have also shaded serving (or recently serving) politicians in grey to make clear the different relationship they often have with news consumers.