Our podcast: Digital News Report 2024. Episode 5: The rise of news influencers

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In this episode of our Digital News Report 2024 podcast series, we look at the rise of news influencers, the platforms where they are prevalent and why some audiences are flocking to them. We look at which figures people pay attention to most and what it means for traditional news media.

Speakers

Nic Newman is the lead author of the Digital News Report and is a Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute. He is also a consultant on digital media, working actively with news companies on product, audience, and business strategies for digital transition. He writes an annual report for the Institute on future media and technology trends. He authored the Digital News Report 2024 chapter on the rise news influencers.

Our host Federica Cherubini is Director of Leadership Development at the Reuters Institute. She is an expert in newsroom operations and organisational change, with more than ten years of experience spanning major publishers, research institutes and editorial networks around the world.

Transcript

An ecosystem for influencers | Who counts as a news influencer? | Top news influencers by country | A male-dominated field | News brands vs influencers | An 'existential' threat for news brands

An ecosystem for influencers

Federica: So your chapter looks at the growing trend in recent years, which is how individual journalists or more generally media figures, are having an impact on news and journalism outside the traditional news ecosystem of publishers website and broadcast channels. What is the wider context of the chapter? And what aspect did you look at?

Nic: For some time the Internet has allowed any individual to create content to distribute content pretty much for free. But in the last few years, we've seen a range of platforms and algorithms, encouraging individual creators, by either supporting them directly or providing powerful monetisation tools, powerful creator tools. And then if you combine that with the fact that more people are using these networks, and a lot of that content is able to go viral and get millions of views. What we see is that changing how very large numbers of people are getting the news, who they're getting the news from. So this is a really interesting picture. It's a very complicated picture of obviously, mainstream media organisations, journalists, too, are also using these networks. But you have amongst them, competing with them, alternative news sites, you have politicians, social media influencers, you have celebrities, in fact, who are not necessarily talking about news, but they will quite often address topical issues from time to time, like the war in Gaza or gender identity issues, for example. And we don't really know much about how all this works and the relative importance of these different groups in different countries. And that's really what we were trying to tackle in this chapter.

Federica: On which platforms do audiences seem to be most receptive to this type of news content?

Nic: Well, in the report, we just looked at six of the platforms that are most used for news. So that's Facebook, Twitter (or X), YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, of course, and then Snapchat. And what we found in the survey, and we found this last year as well, is that in that what we might call traditional social networks, Facebook and Twitter, people say that they pay most attention to journalists and news brands. But in other networks, some of the newer networks like TIkTok and Instagram, they say they pay more attention to personalities of different kinds, or maybe alternative news sites or even ordinary people. So these new networks seem to lend themselves more to this sort of influencer/creator vibe. And that is partly obviously what the platforms themselves have been doing. So sort of encouraging them through creator funds and tools. And it's partly that those networks are more focused on, sort of, video or, or visual content or even memes. And this is this is a huge part of how people are sort of sharing news and information these days. And I think publishers really struggled to know how to compete with this. You know, it's not the natural way in which they tell stories, for example, in memes, how do you do all of that, and maintain the seriousness that they think news requires? So I think news organisations have been really slow to adapt, and that has left much more of a gap. And I should just add, actually, Facebook and X in recent months in recent years have also been leaning into this supporting creators, rather than publishers. So you take X for example. It's enticed, or tried to entice high profile journalists, a series of high profile journalists, Tucker Carlson, probably the best known of them too, and often is then promoting those accounts over traditional publishers.

Who counts as a news influencer?

Federica: So if we think about the methodology of the digital news report, so is an audience survey and you have around 2,000 respondents per country as a survey panel, I'm thinking you will have a wide range of names that you get from your respondents. How do you define what figures to include in the analysis? And which don't fit the profile?

Nic: Right. So we basically asked our respondents to, in an open field, to tell us who they were following on different networks. And to be honest, we were interested in all the names they came up with in a news context, including, you know, there were lots of celebrities like Taylor Swift, for example, footballers, comedians, businessman, because I think that that shows that young people in particular have a much wider definition of news than, than perhaps we’ve traditionally done. And, and also where you know where news comes from. But the purpose of this analysis was to focus on accounts that primarily dealt with more traditional narrow news, you might call it, so news and politics. So we omitted the sort of celebrities and people who weren't primarily focused on that. And then out of those names, we identified, firstly, a list of individuals. So that is the most popular journalist, the most popular news creators. And then a second list, which was about brands, and that that was either mainstream brands or alternative brands. And I think what that's enabled us to do is to see the balance in different countries, between mainstream journalists and alternative creators on the one hand, but also the overall balance in different countries, between brands and individuals.

Federica: You talked a bit before about the formats and memes. But what separates these news influencers in terms of substance and style from more mainstream journalists?

Nic: I mean, I think that's really a hard question to answer because because a lot of these distinctions are blurring. You know, I mentioned a moment ago, Tucker Carlson, who, of course, you know, decades working for US cable channels, CNN, Fox News. And he's basically doing the same thing. But the distribution is, is via these networks. So is he a journalist? Is he a news creator, influencer? You know, it's hard to tell. I mean, Piers Morgan has another one. He worked CNN, ITV News in the UK, former newspaper editor. And he's now taken his show off television, it's called Piers Morgan Uncensored, and become another of the online-only creators. And, you know, I think for many of them, it's about trying to get more control. Piers Morgan talks about not having the straitjacket of television schedules. So you know, having to be on air at a particular time of night for a particular length of time, you can be much more flexible in the programming. I think another distinction is that some of these long form creators are, well most of them are opinion based, and they often are expressing opinions that are more extreme than you might find in conventional television. So so we found, you know, far right figures like Alex Jones, for example, somebody who's frequently dealt with conspiracies, we also find controversial figures such as Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, these figures traditionally have found it hard to find a home to get air time on traditional broadcast networks. And I think what they have been able to do is to build their own audiences on networks like YouTube. And the algorithms seem to favour those who have strong opinions, whether it's from the left or the right. So I think that's another difference.

And then I think beyond that, I think there's a whole other category when we think about what's different about this, which is individuals who are not necessarily trained as journalists. So that might be youth-based creators. But it's also others who just got expertise and are connecting with other people who are interested in that expertise. So that might be academics. We've had a whole load of academics, for example, in the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, who are, you know, really providing, I think, a lot of extra value: lawyers, economists, businessmen and women, people who are interested in sports transfers and are real experts in that. So a huge range of different options. I think that's broadened the range of possibilities, of course.

Top news influencers by country

Federica: So if we look at some of the countries you surveyed, if we start with the US, you mentioned a couple of names, but who is at the top of the list in the US?

Nic: Tucker Carlson is the top. And actually you also see that in the figures, I mean, he had 200 million views on X for his interview with Vladimir Putin and also just the fact that an individual, not operating as part of a network can get an interview of that stature, I think speaks volumes. Joe Rogan, of course, who was on YouTube, then went to Spotify and now has a very successful YouTube show actually shows up in a number of different countries, including the US. Lots of conservative and right-wing voices: Ben Shapiro, Tim Poole, Alex Jones, I've mentioned already, but also on the sort of more progressive side, YouTubers like David Pakman, Brian Tyler Cohen. And I think what's striking is that all of the most-mentioned names in the US are known for political commentary and chat, and it is very much in an American talk radio tradition. So this, in some ways, is just a continuation of something we've seen in the US for many, many, many years. And it's mainly men talking into very large microphones, to other men with very large microphones.

Federica: Yeah, and as you mentioned, many of these names can hardly be called alternative, as they often come with decades of experience from legacy media, as you were saying, Do you see a similar range in the UK?

Nic: I think, in the UK, it's, you know, there are some similarities, also quite a lot of differences. So we have much stronger representation of big brands. So for BBC, The Guardian, very widely mentioned, but also in the list of individuals. It's full of people who are working for mainstream media, whereas the US one is largely independents. And, for example, the most cited journalist in the UK is James O'Brien, who has a radio talk show from the progressive wing, again, very outspoken views. But I think what's been really smart about what they've done is they've repackaged elements they filmed and they're repackaged elements of his show on YouTube and Tiktok, in particular, which is really driving a whole new audience. And it's, it's really engaging content, again, the most extreme, if you like the most attention-grabbing clips. So this is one way in which I think the algorithm is changing things. But you also have traditional political correspondents, I think all the political correspondents: Robert Peston from ITV, Chris Mason from the BBC, Beth Rigby from Sky were mentioned, and a lot of opinions, other opinions as well. So Owen Jones, who's a columnist from the left, you have TV hosts from the right, many of whom are also politicians. So yeah, an interesting mix.

Federica: If we look at France, instead, I know there is an interesting news personality who people will name most often. Can tell us about him and his appeal.

Nic: Yes, well, this is youth-based influencers. We also see this in the UK, by the way, a range of young news curators who are creating different kinds of content through different networks. And in France, it's somebody called Hugo Travers, who's in his late 20s, and is better known online as Hugo Decrypte, a character who explains the news, by young people for young people,essentially, and in our data he had more mentions than Le Monde, BFMTV, for example, put together, and he really is a go to source for under 30s in France and our data, you know, the average age of people who were paying attention to him was 27 and he has more than 20 people working for him. He has a range of outputs. He works across TikTok and YouTube where he has, I think 5.7 million followers on Tiktok 2.6 million on YouTube. And as I say this is a trend we've found in other countries as well so we find young creators in the UK, Dylan page has 10 million followers on TikTok, in the US there's a creator called Vitus Spehar, who does TikTok round-up, 3.1 million followers, its called Under the Desk News, and the idea is that they actually present the news from under a desk in this informal way, you know, on a level with the audience, very different from you know, the way in which traditional news is presented from over a desk.

Federica: Lastly if we look at Argentina and Brazil, for example, we know that they have a very high level of social and online video of news usage, but also a very polarising landscape and see politicians often ignoring or avoiding mainstream media. This is a very fertile ground for news influencers. Which figures are most mentioned in the survey when it comes to these countries for example.

Nic: It's kind of hard to generalise because I think that the range of names that we see in Argentina and Brazil is huge in the subjects they cover. But again, we do find this trend of regular mentions of righ-wing commentators, left wing commentators libertarian influencesr. It's also interesting I think, in Argentina, in particular, how politicians have really embraced a lot of this. So Javier Milei used his TikTok account during the recent presidential election to build a relationship with young voters very successfully. His account was actually run by a 22-year-old student, who in his own right is a social media influencer. And who genuinely believes that these accounts and others connected with them really resonate with young people who've been sort of let down by the politics of the left. So we think of young people of being on the left. But actually in France as well. In the recent European elections, we've seen politicians really using many of the same skills to connect. But I think the other difference with Argentina in Brazil is the network. So Instagram is much more important generally. So you see politicians and news figures much more on Instagram, we also find entertainment influencers, so with enormous followings as an influencer, called Hugo Gloss, has 21 million followers in Brazil on Instagram, and we find fashion bloggers, footballers with huge followings as well. So a really interesting picture.

A male-dominated field

Federica: I want to go back to something you mentioned before, because a very glaring commonality among the most cited us influencers across all these countries, as you mentioned, is the fact that the vast majority are men. What do you read into this?

Nic: It is incredibly striking, isn't it? I mean, beyond the top 10, there is more diversity, but the top 10 n most countries is 100% men or, you know, 95% men. Also it's not just that they're men, it's that they're older. We talk a lot in the report about sort of disillusionment with politics in general. And I think the way politics is covered often is putting off other people and other genders. It's not just the hosts, it's the guests as well on many of these. And this may also explain why, you know, the audience for political content is much more male as well, which we also see in this data. I do think it is different with younger creators. So again, we have the split between sort of older politically partisan content, and then young creators who are doing things much more in terms of the style, the tone, and they also look very different to traditional journalists. So that's, that's a real change in terms of diversity. Most newsrooms areobviously made up of people over 40. And a lot of what's going on in TikTok is people in their 20s. So that's a different kind of diversity. And then if you look beyond politics, if you look at the lifestyle subjects, many of those are actually female-led rather than male. So you know, fashion, food, film, a lot of what we might think of as a wider definition of news that really relates to young people is much more diverse in terms of gender, but also ethnicity as well.

News brands vs influencers

Federica: So you mentioned it's not just individuals using platforms to share and discuss news. News organisations, both mainstream and alternative, use them a lot. How does the reach of individual news influencers compare with news brands on these platforms?

Nic: It sort of depends by country, so in the US and Brazil, we actually found that if you add up all of the citations in the alternative news accounts, and compare them with mainstream media, alternative news accounts win - there's more of them. Whereas in the UK, and some other European countries, it's much more about mainstream media and mainstream brands and mainstream journalists. So I think that just reflects the sort of fragmentation that we see in the US market compared with the sort of strength of national brands in the UK. But I think it also partly represents the extent to which the news brands and journalists have really adopted some of these new techniques of telling stories within networks like TikTok. So many of them, I mentioned James O'Brien, for example already, in terms of the way they've really smartly used all of the different networks have taken the sort of core data, the core interviews and then repackaged those very effectively. So that's part of it too. And from France, of course, is a little bit more mixed. You have as I mentioned, already, Hugo Decrypte building a very big audience. And I think that is a reflection and other youth creators in France as well, I think that's a reflection that traditional brands really haven't delivered for that group. So there's a much bigger gap.

Federica: Looking at that, do you think that independent news influencers can live side by side with mainstream brands on this platform? Or does the former represent a threat to the latter?

Nic: It's not a simple picture, because as I mentioned, it's very hard to distinguish between the two these days. I think some of what we're seeing is just journalists able to operate on their own, so that's kind of additional. And then I think some of it is disruptive. So it's either new competition, or it's something that doesn't look like journalism. And I think that is partly adding to the confusion about what news is, what journalism means, as well as further blurring the line between news and opinion, which is definitely something that, you know, these networks have encouraged. So, a really important point to mention is a lot of what we see in this networks is repackaged, it's not original journalism, you know, I mean, some of it is, but most of it is, is essentially opinion, and repackaging what people see in traditional media. So in that sense, it's this sort of extra layer. It certainly doesn't replace the sort of core news gathering or fact gathering that the mainstream media is still fundamentally engaged with.

Federica: Even way before the rise of news influencers, or news organisations have had to decide whether to allow their journalists, for example, to express their opinion on social media, you know, we've seen some individuals gathering a big following on social media and on traditional social media even before why this new means new wave of creators. Do you think that established news brand have anything to fear from the own employed journalists gaining independent followings on these platforms?

Nic: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. We haven't really seen of a lot of media companies losing their best journalists to sort of… I mean, most of the ones who who've left have been forced to leave or have been sacked by their employers, actually. But there's obviously a balance here. There's a real issue for traditional brands in trying to get people to come to their brands directly. And they also see these trends where the individuals are becoming much more important, almost nodes in these networks, are the people that audiences relate to. So it is important that they kind of lean into it in a way, but at the same time, they don't want that to trivialise the journalism or the impartiality or to make the personality bigger than the story. So I think this is genuinely a challenge. But we do see many examples where media brands are, you know, striking a balance and learning to use these networks to use the personality-driven approach in a way that is also consistent with their mission and values.

An 'existential' threat for news brands

Federica: I guess we saw some of this even with journalists launching their own newsletters a few years ago, and probably it was a similar trend of a balance. And so to end, are there any lessons that you think established news brands can take from the growing popularity of these alternative or independent news influencers and brands making an impact on these platforms?

Nic: I think it depends what kind of journalist or what kind of organisation you are, I think if you are a TV or broadcast outlet, this is pretty existential actually. Because what it marks is a change of distribution. So there's a huge amount to learn, so you know, from sort of traditional television or cable to using these networks, essentially as the main way in which many people are going to access your programming and for the first time, you're really exposed to all of this competition that up until now, television and TV anchors haven't had to do. So that's existential and what you can learn from that is what works, what kind of content works, how do you package, how do you sell appropriately within these networks? So it's gonna be really transformational for television, I think if you're a different kind of brand, if you're a newspaper brand or a digital-only brand, then I think what you learn from this is the formats. Again, it's really how do you package content in a way that engages people and brings people back or how do you take them on a journey where you're using this as marketing, to bring people back to your own websites or apps and then within those apps, how can you make content more engaging and more relevant because the point about why these influencers and creators are connecting is because everything they do feels relevant and personal to an audience. And often news, and news brands, feel quite cold in comparison. So I think the thing you can learn is about style and what makes these things tick. And then you take the bit that you think is relevant to your particular brand.

Federica: Of course, thank you so much, Nic, for joining us today and helping understand this issue better.

Nic: Thank you.

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