Google, YouTube and Oxford University agree to extension of support for the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report to August 2027

Google, YouTube and Oxford University have agreed on an extension to the current grant for the Reuters Institute Digital News Report and the related Digital News Project for a further year covering 2027. The extension builds on the existing agreement with Google to support the project that was originally announced in 2015 with previous extensions in 2018, 2020, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

The new extension to August 2027 will allow the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to continue the Digital News Report with lead author Jim Egan, covering dozens of markets across six continents. 

The financial value of the agreement with Oxford University (including YouTube’s contribution) for the extension to August 2027 is $2.16 million.

The Digital News Report is an independent academic study which has been supported by a wide range of partners since its creation in 2012. It is the world’s largest international comparative survey of the major trends in digital news consumption such as insights on news influencers, platform changes, AI in journalism, reader revenue, trust in news influencers  and is widely used by industry analysts, policymakers, and researchers across the world. 

Google has been the main sponsor of the Digital News Report for years. In 2023, YouTube joined the diverse range of supporters which make the report possible. Sponsors of the recently published 2026 report included: BBC News, Code for Africa, Ofcom, the Irish Coimisiún na Meán, the Dutch Media Authority (CvdM), the Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland, the Fritt Ord Foundation, the Korea Press Foundation, Edelman UK, NHK (Japan), and the Reuters News Agency, as well as our academic sponsors at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research/Hans Bredow Institute, the University of Navarra, the University of Canberra, the Centre d’études sur les médias, and Roskilde University. Fundación Gabo continues to support the translation of the report into Spanish.

Many of our partners produce their own national reports based on the research conducted for the international report, and the data collected for the Digital News Report is made available to others to enable a wide range of further in-depth analysis by both industry professionals and academic researchers across the world.

Note: The Thomson Reuters Foundation is the core funder of the Reuters Institute, based in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. The Institute was launched in November 2006 and developed from the Reuters Fellowship Programme, established at Oxford more than 40 years ago. The Institute, an international research centre in the comparative study of journalism, is committed to exploring the future of journalism worldwide through debate, engagement, and research.

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