Our podcast: Digital News Report 2026. Episode 5: The growing importance of online news video

In this episode we explore how online news video is playing an ever important role in our news ecosystem given the shift towards news consumption on social and video networks as well as the prevalence of smart TVs. We explain where in the world the appetite for online news video is increasing, among which demographic groups it is most popular and how different video lengths differ across platforms.

The podcast

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Speakers

Craig T. Robertson is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. His research focus includes news trust and credibility, fact-checking and verification, and how both partisan attitudes and epistemic beliefs factor into these domains. He is a co-author of the Digital News Report.

Host Mitali Mukherjee is the Director of the Reuters Institute and is a political economy journalist with more than two decades of experience in TV, print and digital journalism.

The transcript

Defining online news video | Regional patterns and platform growth | Age, attention and video length | How audiences encounter video news | Smart TVs and choices for publishers

Defining online news video ↑

Mitali: So since you are probably going to use the term pivot to video, Craig, maybe we can have kind of a challenge of who uses that term more. And the winner buys the other one a round of drinks, but let’s kind of dive right into video, which has really been such a big phenomenon of this report this year, and something we’ve been tracking over the years: news consumption through online news video.

Let’s work with kind of descriptors first on what that term includes, and then some of the key findings across the markets.

Craig: So I think one of the most important things to point out at the start of the podcast is that the report and the chapter I wrote are about online news videos. So this isn’t terrestrial broadcast television, which we do cover, but this is specifically news online: news provided by the internet. So that might be social media clips or live broadcasts on YouTube. Or it might be news segments posted to news organisations’ own websites.

We wanted to explore this more because it’s an increasing mode of access for video, as broadcast news has long been in decline on terrestrial television. And yes, one of the other most important things to address at the start of the podcast is the dreaded phrase ‘pivot to video’. Any newsroom people listening right now might shudder hearing that. For context, if anyone is not aware, years back, I guess around a decade ago at this point, there was this big pivot to video push.

Newsrooms were told by social media companies to invest in video, publish a lot of video and you’ll be rewarded on our social media platforms. Turns out a lot of that was built on faulty and misleading metrics from the platforms. So I guess the question people would ask with this year’s Digital News Report and our findings is whether video is actually as popular as it seems, or whether we are seeing another pivot to video again. 

And I think thankfully, what I think I found in what I wrote in my chapter, I’ve only used the phrase pivot to video once, and that was in relation to Instagram’s own business strategy. So it’s not technically me, I don’t think. And they have been heavily pivoting to video, but what I do find is that there’s an appetite for online video. The demand does seem to be there now, and it’s for a few reasons we can get into.

In terms of a general overview of things, I think the main headline findings, I would say, are that there is an appetite for news video, especially in the Global South. At the same time, there is an appetite for longer content, especially on platforms like YouTube. And it’s not all just about short form. There is the story of TikTok and the rise of TikTok and short form. But there is an appetite for longer-form content, even among younger people who have been part of that short-form demographic.

Regional patterns and platform growth ↑

Mitali: Okay, let’s unpack all those three headlines. And you pointed to a little bit of variation across markets and a hint about what’s happening in global majority countries. What does the variation look like across markets?

Craig: So this is, I think, really important and distinctive, and it’s an important general picture to draw: the markets with the highest rates of online video consumption are pretty much all in the Global South. There are very high rates of use in Asia-Pacific. In Thailand, for example, we have weekly usage of online news video above 80% of people in the sample. It’s similar in Latin America, where again, it’s over 80% in countries like Peru. And then on the other end of the spectrum are pretty much most European countries.

So there are very low rates of online news video consumption on a weekly basis in places like the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, where weekly use is only around 50% of the population. So compared to that 80%, a lot lower. And in the same context, these markets always tend to have lower social media use in general, especially for news.

Mitali: And you say 50%, but that’s still sort of half, which is a really sizeable number. How do you explain these kind of differences that we see across regions and markets? Are there any two or three very clear indicators of why?

Craig: So there are a few varying complicated things going on, all sort of intertwined with each other. One important thing might be the confluence of cheap data plans, high rates of mobile phone usage, and people coming to the internet mostly through their phones in a lot of Global South contexts. For instance, there are cases where Facebook was the internet; it was the gateway into the internet for a long while.

And of course that’s going to boost usage of social media, but also social media for news and online news video usage. These are also markets (for example, Thailand) that have very high social media platform usage compared to some of their European counterparts or even in Asia-Pacific. So Japan, for example, has lower social media use. Many of the Global South markets we have in our Digital News Report also have younger populations, which I think matters in a much broader, wider context.

Younger people are just going to have fundamentally different news media habits because of the environments they’ve grown up in. They’ve grown up in a world entirely conditioned by phones, by computers and the internet. So this happens everywhere, not just in the Global South, but it’s an important context to have, especially as it relates to younger people. And then, as I say, at the other end of the spectrum are countries which have managed to hang on to public broadcasting or just broadcasting in general.

A bit of a Freudian slip there, because I think part of the point is some of this has to do with the strength of public service broadcasters in countries like the UK and Germany, which other markets might not have or don’t, or their public broadcaster doesn’t have the kind of reach that the BBC does, for example, in the UK.

But overall, even though they’ve managed to hold on to those audiences a bit longer, I think this is a story about older people continuing to hold on to that broadcast TV watching habit, and not about younger people coming into this type of behaviour. Younger people have very different types of behaviours.

Mitali: And to be clear for those listening, Craig, when we talk about these platforms, we’re essentially talking about social media platforms, all of which now have the ability to host video, and then we’re talking about video platforms as well, like YouTube, TikTok and, as you mentioned, Instagram, that did do that pivot to video. Give us a sense of how and where this is most prevalent in terms of where audiences are turning to, where consumption is moving at a really fast clip.

Craig: So the fastness is part of the story. I can talk about that. So when we look at the markets we cover and across the board, when you ask, where are you consuming your online news video? Which platforms? The main platform on which people say they still consume news online is Facebook. And I suspect this is largely a hangover of the fact that Facebook was, and still is (question mark), the largest platform in the world.

So you have around 40% of people saying they get news videos on there on a weekly basis, but very close behind Facebook and increasing at a slightly higher rate is YouTube. And that’s a platform we will talk about a lot more later. In terms of the biggest rising platforms, where you see much larger year-on-year growth in consuming online news video, it’s definitely TikTok and Instagram. Their growth in news video usage has been huge recently, especially for TikTok.

But Instagram has been trying to catch up with that and, in fact, pretty much all social media networks that provide video of some kind are increasing in usage in most instances. On the other hand, when you look at news organisations’ own websites or apps, their usage for news video has been decreasing year on year. So this is another branch of a story that we’ve probably talked about on this podcast before. The platformisation of news.

So increasing attention every year is going to social media platforms, audiences putting their attention on YouTube, on TikTok, on Facebook and even increasing attention to even news websites or apps as well as, of course, TV and newspapers, which we’ve been seeing for a long time.

Age, attention and video length ↑

Mitali: You were speaking earlier about the sort of demographic differences within regions and how that was impacting video consumption. Do we see demographic differences between these platforms as well? More viewers of one age group on one platform versus the other.

Craig: Use is definitely dependent on age. And I think that’s the main sort of variable that we look at, especially in the Digital News Report when it comes to this. So across markets and across platforms, it’s definitely about age. And I don’t think it’s about this idea that young people are addicted to TikTok and have no attention span. I’ll get to this. The popularity for them at a base level is a product of the environment they’ve grown up in.

As I said, if you’re born in 2000, all you’ve ever known as a child or as an adult is the iPhone, YouTube, Twitter and the internet. I’m slightly old enough to remember just the time before the internet or dial-up internet, like at a consumer level. But this access to technology has just fundamentally changed behaviour in a way that we’re seeing year on year as we do more reports. So, older people grew up watching broadcast TV news by appointment.

The six or seven p.m. bulletin: you tune in and see what the news is. They were introduced to cable news in the 1990s. That’s the world they grew up in. And the thing is that people tend to hang on to their behaviours, the things they are used to. So one of the most common questions we get, and again, it’s probably come up on this podcast before is: will younger people grow up and grow into consuming broadcast TV news or newspapers?

And from most of the evidence I’ve seen, the answer is no. You’re not going to change young people’s behaviour fundamentally; everything is streaming now. Everything is on demand. And that’s the preference young people have. That’s the world they know. But a long way around to getting back to the question: online news videos on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok are far more popular among younger people.

Mitali: One of the challenges for news industry folks, Craig, is how to decide where to be and also what form and duration of content to post. So TikTok, for example, as you were describing, has, in many ways, sort of changed the syntax of video consumption with that vertical video, quite a short format. Are there different lengths that people are consuming across channels?

Craig: So this is one of the most fascinating things I got to write about in this report. And I’m glad we included the survey question. So, as we say, the narrative has been about the rise of short form, the rise of TikTok, the dominance of TikTok. It’s a social media story of the last decade for sure in my mind. And because of that, you see other platforms like YouTube and Instagram investing in short form, reels and shorts. And this is an interesting space because you ask yourself, is it all about this?

So in this year’s survey, we just asked a simple question: when you’re online on one of these platforms, watching news videos, like in general, how long are those news videos? They could be short, under two minutes or long, like 20 minutes or more. And how the data breaks down, especially by platform, is really interesting. It’s not all just about short form. So, of course, on TikTok and Instagram (Instagram trying very hard to emulate TikTok), short-form video is still the most popular type among users of those platforms.

The same can also be said, kind of, about YouTube for the most part. But it’s interesting actually, when you look at the proportion of YouTube users who say they are regularly watching news videos that are over 20 minutes long, a quarter of YouTube news video watchers are watching long-form video. And I personally find that really interesting and really important for news organisations.

Mitali: And specifically on younger people, a segment that the news industry has long been trying to reach over the last few years. Craig, what do we know about their video consumption habits on the short versus long argument?

Craig: So this is another fascinating thing. The appetite for longer content is actually greater among younger people. They are the ones who actually say they’re more likely to watch a long-form video on platforms like YouTube. And part of that, I think, is that it’s just become what they’re used to online and on the internet, especially when we get to smart TVs.

But that link and the fact that YouTube has become such a mature platform account for some of what we’re seeing in terms of people’s willingness to watch quite long content on platforms like YouTube.

How audiences encounter video news ↑

Mitali: The fundamental challenge is this, which is that these platforms we’re talking about don’t exist just for news. So you have kind of news organisations jostling for space amongst many other forms of content. And indeed, we don’t know what kind of uptake the news content that is published by these mainstream news brands has on some of these platforms. But how does video news consumption compete with everything else that’s available in that universe?

Craig: So this is a difficult question to grapple with. And it’s an important topic to get into because in most instances, I’d say people are on social media and video networks for reasons that are other than to do with the news. They’re there to see friends’ updates, memes, entertainment content, whatever you’re looking for, you can find on the platforms. So that means a lot of people are actually just seeing news on these platforms incidentally, accidentally or unintentionally, if you want to call it that.

But this does differ by the platform and it’s important. There’s, of course, that subset of news lovers, the kinds of people who are going to these platforms for news because they’re news junkies. Maybe it’s not all the time, but a decent amount of the time. They’re going to the platforms to get their news.

But then if you think about it in a wider sense, if you think of the platforms themselves and how people are approaching different platforms, I find it interesting that people who use YouTube for news see it more as a destination than those that don’t see it that way. So, in other words, basically more than half of people using YouTube for news see it specifically as a place to seek out news; they’re going there. Half of them are going there to get news from the platform.

And maybe that’s because people see YouTube as this kind of hub for video content. It’s a place to find specific things. It’s like a streamer nowadays. It’s like finding stuff on Netflix, whereas a platform like TikTok is designed in a way that’s a bit more random. So when it comes to a platform like TikTok or Instagram, people are definitely mostly there for other reasons, not specifically for news. And they might see news when they’re there. But that’s obviously not a guarantee or maybe not even an intention on their part.

Smart TVs and choices for publishers ↑

Mitali: One of the really interesting things you unpacked in your chapter, Craig, was also about the presence of internet-connected TVs, or smart TVs, as we call them, in people’s homes and how that’s impacting consumption of online news videos. Any variation amongst generations there?

Craig: So this story of smart TVs is something I’ve been thinking about. Basically, it’s the fundamentally different way that people seem to interact with their TV as a device now, which might seem obvious when you think about it, but when you start thinking about it even more, it becomes more interesting. The TV as a device has not gone away. People still set up their living rooms and point their couch at the TV. We’ve been doing that for decades and people still do it.

But how they kind of interact with the TV is fundamentally different now. So whereas once you maybe turned on the TV and watched broadcast television, now it’s Netflix and streaming, and it’s increasingly looking like that for news now, which I think is the important thing to note. People are opening up the YouTube app on their TV, on their smart TV, and watching news videos that way. And it’s especially a habit amongst younger people.

And that comes back to the trends I talked about, people holding on to older behaviours or developing new ones. So older people in our data are still more likely to watch broadcast TV, while younger people are preferring streaming and on-demand news content. So fully 70% of young people say that when they’re watching a news video on their smart TV, it’s via an app like YouTube or another app that’s internet-connected. They’re not watching broadcast television.

Mitali: Finally, Craig, any takeaways for news publishers who have been thinking about that pivot to video, creating video, making it a core part of their news product: what did they take away from this report?

Craig: This is a difficult one because of the fear people have around the pivot to video and the caution people have. But I will say, in our data, at least, the appetite for online video is there and it’s on the rise, especially for younger people and on mobile phones and smart TVs. And I think a fundamental thing for publishers is to decide. I don’t make the decisions, but I just provide some guidance, potentially some datasets to look at.

And I think it’s just important to decide which platforms you want to be on. And then know why you’re there: do you want to be just on YouTube or on YouTube and Instagram or do you want to be making just vertical video or horizontal video as well? A lot of choices to make and lots of expensive choices to make, of course. And then how long should the video be on that platform? So our data has some sort of guiding points that might shape how people think about this.

Because I think intention is very important: rather than being on a platform for the sake of it and just pumping out video, why am I there? And why am I doing this video? And how long does it need to be? Because there are so many platforms now, you can’t stretch yourself thin. And then also, interestingly, when you think of smart TV, how do you think of it as a business? If you’re like a traditional broadcaster, as it relates to the TV, do you develop an app for your video?

Do you just put everything on YouTube? That’s a really difficult space because you’re then competing with the likes of Netflix and Disney Plus, and there’s huge competition for eyeballs on that platform. So it’s another entirely huge conversation. But I’d say the overall takeaway from the data I have and the chapter I wrote is there is an appetite for video. There is an audience. It’s not all about short form and there are opportunities to make longer video content work.

It’s just finding the right audience for that and finding the right place to get them to watch that content.

Mitali: Great. Thank you very much for joining the podcast today.

Craig: Thanks for having me.