Our podcast: What people really want from platforms

In this episode of Future of Journalism we hear from co-authors of a new piece of research into what people in eight countries – Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the USA – think about a range of platforms, including social media, messaging apps, video platforms and search engines, especially regarding how they access news and information about politics. Read the report, 'What do people want? Views on platforms and the digital public sphere in eight countries'.

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Speakers:

Waqas Ejaz is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with at the Reuters Institute and the lead author of 'What do people want? Views on platforms and the digital public sphere in eight countries'

Rasmus Nielsen is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen. He is a Senior Research Associate, and former Director, at the Reuters Institute. He is a co-author of the repor  'What do people want? Views on platforms and the digital public sphere in eight countries'

Our host Mitali Mukherjee is the Acting Director of the Reuters Institute. She's a political economy journalist with more than two decades of experience in TV, print and digital journalism.

The transcript

Proportion of people using platforms | Trust in news on platforms | What people like/dislike about platforms | Perceptions of bias on platforms | Comparing platforms with other institutions | Regulation of platforms | Favourability of different types of platforms | Takeaways for the news industry

Proportion of people using platforms ↑

Mitali: Waqas, first question to you. Where we'll really try and set a bit of context around the report that you've worked on. The report explores how people in eight countries, as I said, use platforms for news and information about politics, and what sort of perceived value there is, or concerns there are around that. So let's start first with an outline of what proportion of people actually use different types of platforms for political news as we define them?

Waqas: Yeah, it was fascinating to work with different people across these countries in different contexts. And the very basic thing that we asked, given our focus on journalism and news was, how do they consume news and political information across different platforms? Regarding the proportion across eight countries, search engines are the most widely used platform for news, 45% of people have said that they use search engines for news and political information, which was followed by social media, 41% of people said the same. And video networks, which included platforms like YouTube, Daily Motion, etc, 30% of people said that they use such networks.

On the other side of the spectrum was messaging apps and generative AI, 15% of people said they consume political information or news from these platforms, from messaging apps and for generative AI, 7% of people said the same. When we look on the other side, sort of traditional mainstream media sources such as TV, we see a completely different picture because TV comes at the top, it’s still very relevant. What we have is online news websites to begin with. 59% of people actually said they consume political news and information on these online websites, whereas 57% of people said that they consume political information on TV.

Now it's important to sort of mention that the online news website is the aggregate. What we think are that multiple platforms being used, which are just the online presence of the mainstream media outlets, whereas TV comes up as a single source which basically means it could be that they are using multiple different brands and channels on TV. But when we talk about an individual platform type, we have these higher percentages of people who look through the political news information on online news websites and TV compared to the other digital platforms that I just mentioned.

How does the report tell us who is using platforms for news information about politics, and if there are any clear dividing lines? Well, on the use of news outlets and the use of digital platforms to get news and information, what we have seen is not a question of either/or, it's very intertwined. People use multiple platforms at the same time, only a small minority of around 10% of people or less, rely exclusively on platforms, which, by that we mean, they exclusively look for news and information on platforms, and they're not looking on, let's say, on both types of mediums. So that's a very small minority, but as I mentioned earlier, we have a very diverse mix of people's preference when it comes to consumption of news and political information.

Trust in news on platforms ↑

Mitali: That's really interesting, Waqas, and it is an iteration of the work we've done in the past. But this time, we've been much more granular about the kind of platforms that we're talking about. Rasmus, one of our key standing explorations, if you will, at the Reuters Institute, is around how much people trust the sources of news that they consume. In this study, how much trust do people say they have in platforms? And do you see any sort of really sharp variance according to either demographics or country or gender or political leaning?

Rasmus: Yeah, there was a lot of really, I think, important and rich data here on public opinion on the trust in different platforms. But before laying out some of those findings, I think it's important to remind ourselves why we care about trust.

So we care about trust in different sources of news and information, not because trust is the same as trustworthiness. People can trust institutions that are untrustworthy, or they can distrust ones that are trustworthy. But because trust is a social fact, we can investigate who people trust and how much they trust these different institutions, and that's important in itself, in the same way that it's important to understand whether the public is aware of the scientific consensus or disagree with it, separately from what the scientific consensus might be on an area.

It's also important because we and other researchers have shown that trust is an important mediating variable in terms of how much people rely on information they see from different sources. This makes a lot of sense, intuitively. You're more likely to form your views or act on the base of information that you see from sources or via channels that you trust than from those who don't.

And in that sense, in addition to being important to understand who people rely on for information, as Waqas has outlined, it's important to understand their perception of these different platforms or sources. And here the report, I think, really adds important texture to our understanding of it. It's a forceful reminder that even though people use digital platforms quite intensely, also as sources of news and information, generally most people are quite sceptical of the content that they see there.

Just over a third of our respondents across the countries that we cover say they trust the news and information they see on video networks. Slightly fewer say they trust what they see on messaging apps, and even fewer on social media and by generative AI. Search engines really are the only type of platforms as an outlier here. They are named as trusted by a slight majority of our respondents (55%), so quite a gap between search engines and other kinds of platforms.

But more broadly, I think this is in line with what we found in the past, that people rely quite a lot on these different platforms, but with the partial exception of search engines, they're quite sceptical of information that they see. Now, in one sense, this might be a bit surprising. Why do people rely on platforms for information when they don't trust the stuff they see or the platforms that serve as the material? But in a sense, we shouldn't really be surprised by this. This has long been the case that even in pre-digital media environments. Some of the most widely used media, tabloid newspapers, were rarely trusted even by their own readers, and I think that's the case today for many platforms.

People can use something for entertainment purposes, for connectivity, for whiling away time, or just getting a sense, an ambient sense of what's going on in the world, without actually regarding it as a reliable or trustworthy way to access information. But some platforms do stand out, search engines, just as some individual news media outlets stand out, even against a backdrop of often eroded trust in news.

What people like/dislike about platforms ↑

Mitali: Waqas, let's scratch that point about the benefits of these platforms, or the perceived benefits of these platforms. And I think one of the big takeaways from the report is how you and other authors have circled around the idea of platform ambivalence. What do people say are the perceived benefits or even the drawbacks of using various types of platforms, and does that relate specifically to news consumption on the same platforms? 

Waqas: I was very curious about understanding how people actually see the benefits of different platforms. And there has been a lot of discussion around the perceived negative evidence or correlational studies that talk about that platforms are basically very harmful, and it has a detrimental effect on both them personally and society as well. So we really wanted to dig deeper into these.

We kind of disaggregated different platforms and different issues. And when we specifically asked about the positive aspects what we found was that, on average, across all countries, we see the clear majority saying that platforms have made it easier to connect with family and friends. 66% of people said that. They also mentioned that it has made it very easy for them to find information that they need and also to widen their social network, for example.

But having said that, they were very much aware of the problems, and that's what we are referring as 'platform ambivalence,' by which we mean people use these platforms for news and information about politics and other issues, while also remaining sceptical of the information that they see there, and concerned about issues regarding misinformation and fake content. And there is a widespread recognition of such concerns.

We have more than half thinking that platforms have made it easier for people to say things they would not say in person, for example. And then 69% of people believe that they are very much concerned about the spread of misinformation online and harassment and how people can easily threaten other people. 66% of people said this, and 64% of people actually said that how platforms have made it sort of easier to spread extreme viewpoints.

So, you know, in a way, it kind of reflects that people are not that gullible, because they can understand that there are benefits of using those digital platforms, regardless of which platform you're talking, one is better than the other, for example, as Rasmus has mentioned. But they are also very much aware of the key issues. In a way, I'm happy that people are ambivalent. We don't see a clear division, that they see just the positives, not the negatives. So that was also a very important takeaway for us.

Perceptions of bias on platforms ↑

Mitali: Rasmus, this is a timely conversation, particularly given the election year that we are going to put behind us in 2024.  Let's talk a little bit about this perception of bias across platforms. It feels quite clear that platforms are undoubtedly a well used source of political news, but do users feel that the platforms are neutral spaces for political news, or is there a very clear and perceived political bias when it comes to one platform versus the other?

Rasmus: Yeah, I couldn't possibly comment on whether I would love to have data at the brand level of individual social platforms that have changed ownership recently, but we limited ourselves to asking at the levels of the broad category of social, video, generative AI, search engines and messaging applications, and the question that we ask the respondents is whether, on balance, they feel that each of these different kinds of platforms are systematically biased towards a certain political view or not.

The first thing to recognise is that, in contrast to a lot of other questions that we ask on surveys, we have really high numbers of people answering ‘don't know.’ People often volunteer an opinion on things, but in this case we have significant numbers of people in most countries, between a fifth and a third of our respondents, who just say they don't really have a view on this. And I think this is quite intuitive in a sense that it's very difficult for citizens, even for researchers to get a real overview and a real grounded view of what content platforms actually surface. This, of course, raised some questions around transparency and why it's important that we can really assess the institutions of our society.

But we also have a number of respondents who do have a view on this matter, and I think there are two things to highlight here. The first one is that social media are particularly likely to be seen as systematically biased. Across the countries that we cover nearly half of our respondents (47%) believe that social media are systematically biased.

Note here that this does not in itself tell us in what directions, right? I mean, there are multiple grievances expressed against social media platforms. Some people see them as inherently liberal, some people see them as inherently conservative. But at least we have data here that a large number of people believe that social media platforms are politically biased, nearly half of our response. The figures for the other platforms are lower, about a third, and they match up very evenly with the number of people who say they don't feel that these platforms are systematically biased. So for most of the other platforms, in fact, there is a slight plurality of responses, they don't really think search engines or generative AI or messaging applications are politically biased.

Now it's important to stress that this is an area where, in contrast to some of the other things that we look at in the report and have surveyed data on, there is a lot of country variation. For example, in Brazil and the United States, there is a preponderance of respondents who believe that social media platforms are politically biased, whereas in countries such as Japan and Germany, that really isn't the case. They're seen much the same way as other platforms, and we don't have the same level of public concern about the possibility of political bias.

And I think this is important, because even though I think most of us, whether as researchers or citizens, might sort of struggle really, to form a solid view on this ourselves, there are, of course, countries where the possibility of political bias from one or more platform companies are really central themes in political discourse.

And where you have very prominent political actors accusing platform companies, sometimes collectively, sometimes individually, of political bias – and I would say that our data suggests that over time, such elite accusations, sometimes illustrated, sometimes more unsubstantiated, will over time form people's views if they keep hearing from politicians that they have sympathy for, or may even vote for that this or that or the other company is biased – then, over time, perhaps the old views will be influenced by that. And again, we shouldn't be surprised by this.

The news media will be intimately familiar with this dynamic. Many news media would argue that they are independent, even impartial. But we've seen in recent decades a growing number of politicians who will relentlessly accuse the media of bias against them, and over time at least the supporters of those politicians will become receptive to that line of argumentation, and some of them will begin to see the entity in question, whether platforms or publishers as biased.

Comparing platforms with other institutions ↑

Mitali: Waqas, the study stacks platforms against each other, but it also looks at other actors, journalists, news media, politicians, as Rasmus was referring to, and it is clear that these platforms play a large role in our lives, but so do other institutions and figures, particularly when we talk about accessing news and information. What did you find in your report when you looked at how these platforms measure up against, you know, other such actors, and were there specific angles you were looking at?

Waqas: Well, one thing that again drove us in this direction was not really pitch platforms against other individuals or institutions, but kind of see where do these fit in in the larger scheme of things. And we wanted to see if people actually think about these digital platforms, when they’re put against other institutional individuals. Do they bring us together as a society, or do they sort of segregate us?

And in that view, we kind of ask people on balance, if you think that each of these institutions and platforms bring us together or divide us. So what we did was we subtracted the positive from the negative, and we got a net score, and the findings were, let's just say, a little unexpected, at least for me, because we found that messaging apps and search engines are platforms that people think, on balance, bring us together. In contrast, respondents think that social media divides us which kind of makes sense to some extent, but there are variations across different countries.

But when we compared these platforms with other actors in society, many people, many more people actually thought that journalists and news media and especially politicians divide us then they say about any other platform we ask about. So with journalists, for example, the score that journalists received was minus 29, the news media was minus 27 and the politicians ranked on the top with a score of minus 55 and we see this across all countries, except for Germany, where social media is seen as more divisive than news media. But even here, people still see the news media as something that divides society.

There's quite a charge or, let's say, strong views people hold towards news media in particular, but not just the news media, but here, we can kind of make a distinction that how different platforms are seen, when we disaggregate them. We see which one is regarded in certain way among people that we cover in different countries.

Regulation of platforms ↑

Mitali: Rasmus, let's talk a little bit about the regulation aspect of this as well. A part of the report looks at the type of regulation users feel is necessary to address certain issues occurring on those platforms. And again, it feels like an extremely important conversation, just given all the news flow around AI at this point in time, what areas do platform users think are the most important to address, and where do they see that balance really between platform regulation, which is regulation of self or governmental regulation?

Rasmus: Well, I think this is a section where a lot of the different themes of the report really begin to come together, right? So we documented what we describe, as Waqas said, as platform ambivalence, where most of the public have pretty significant concerns, widely held by much of the public, about issues around misinformation, around harassment, about the spread of extremist viewpoints, and a number of other issues, even as people also really value platforms for making it easier to connect to people, find information, find like-minded people, and broadly, with the exception of social media generally, we see large numbers of respondents generally seeing platforms as a net benefit, both for them individually and for society at large. But we really have this ambivalent relationship where there is a recognition of the positives but also very significant concerns about very serious issues.

Now, when we ask people about whether they feel that policymakers are paying enough attention to some of these issues (misinformation, the misuse of generative AI, or wider issues such as tech companies handling of personal data or their market power), we have large numbers of people, about a third in most countries, who say they feel that policymakers are paying too little attention to these issues. So there is a significant part of the public who believe that authorities and elected officials really ought to be more on the ball on these issues and aren't there to safeguard the public interest.

Now, I think the thing that sort of complicates how this plays out in public opinion is that the people who have the least confidence in politics in their country are also more likely to be concerned about a lot of these issues. So we find that significantly higher numbers of those who say they distrust politics in their country feel that issues such as misinformation or the misuse of generative AI are being overlooked by policymakers, whereas those who have a greater degree of confidence in politics are less likely to say these issues are getting too little attention.

Why does it matter? It matters because you have more concern about a relative lack of policy attention from parts of the public who don't really trust policymakers. So this, I think, is important to keep in mind in interpreting some of the findings we have in the report where we ask people very directly who, on balance, they think should overall lead on setting content policies and and guidances for platforms, the companies themselves or national governments. We try to draw people out and encourage them to take a clear position in this. And here, we generally find that despite the fact that people have many misgivings about these companies and their role in our society, in most cases, with the exception of generative AI, they tend to prefer that the companies themselves set the rules.

And my own interpretation of this is that this is in part because they may not trust the companies very much, but they don't trust policymakers very much either. And, in that sense, they may not be that keen on seeing the government and the state barge in an area that is quite problematic as it is, but from the point of view of some citizens, might become even worse if political actors that they don't have much confidence and get directly involved.

Ours is a top line, and this is very much aligned with what the Knight Foundation showed a couple of years ago in a sort of precursor of this report, focused on the United States alone. It's clear that much of the public want more aggressive scrutiny of the role of for-profit platform companies in public life. But it's also important to recognise that at least at this stage, a demand for more policy attention and more scrutiny is not always the same as a demand for a greater role for active, direct government intervention, because people don't necessarily trust their governments or their elected officials.

Favourability of different types of platforms ↑

Mitali: Waqas, there's clearly a gradient as well that emerges in terms of how people view the overall impact of some of these platforms. From the study that you've conducted, which type of platforms emerged as the most favourable and which were the most detrimental. And I suppose I'd add a layer to that, which is, did you see a difference between how people perceive this on a personal level versus a societal level?

Waqas: We have been talking about platform ambivalence, which means that we don't see a clear picture. So with that in mind, I would say that we have a clear picture on this specific issue. A large number of respondents that we have interviewed judge that platforms have a net positive impact, both for them personally and for society as a whole. This is when we disaggregate this on different platforms. This is particularly true for search engines and, to a lesser extent, to video networks. And when we further look across different countries, we see that people in Germany, the UK, US and South Korea, think that social media has a net negative effect on the society, while often thinking it has a net positive effect on them personally.

Germany is an exception, because people see that social media has not just a detrimental impact on the society, but on them personally as well. And they also have a similar negative evaluation towards generative AI on society. But if we look at the sort of a broader picture, we see that people do recognise that platforms have made things easier for them in a lot of different ways, and they see that there's a net benefit for them at least as well as if we look across different countries for social media, if we take that bit out of the other platforms, people are generally positive toward other platforms, with a bit of mixed opinion towards social media in particular.

Regarding the individual aspect, for example, here we looked at the same question, and we sort of wanted to look into how different demographics kind of reveal different distinct patterns. And age, for example, emerges as a very important factor here, because what we see is that younger groups generally express more favourable opinions toward all platforms, search engines being on the top. However, as the age increases, positive perceptions of platforms generally declined, and it goes for all platforms except search engines, where search engines, however, maintain a positive rating across all age groups.

We do not see a lot of differences when it comes to differences between men and women, except for video networks. For all the other platforms, both genders have similar opinions, which is basically a net positive benefit. And regarding the divides we see on the political spectrum, search engines seem to be highly regarded as having a net positive benefit across the political spectrum, whereas for other platforms, there's not a clear political divide, so to speak, when it comes to people's evaluation towards this platform being favourable to the society.

Takeaways for the news industry ↑

Mitali: Rasmus it’s clearly a project that's looking at a very influential and rapidly evolving area of our lives. I mean, search engines we've been using for a long time now, but there's more coming into the mix, including AI and generative AI, and it's also clear that there are sharp concerns around issues like misinformation and data privacy. What would you say is the main takeaway for policymakers and for the news industry from this report's findings?

Rasmus: I would highlight maybe three. The first one is to recognise that, while pundits and politicians sometimes might like to talk very much about ‘us and them,’ brave elected officials holding big tech to account or upstanding independent news media challenging Silicon Valley, from the point of view of much of the public, these things are really intertwined. And people mix and match these things. They rely on platforms in part as a way to access news and political information. And from the point of view of much of the public, these things are more intertwined than they really are separate.

I think the second point is that it's very clear that there is, and God knows this could be the sort of the motto of this year of elections, a lot of discontent with the statu quo. That's very clear, and there's a sort of strong sense of someone must do something. But the challenge, I think, is that when we look across different kinds of institutions, a lot of the public is generally distrustful of most of the institutions that could act in this space.

They are certainly distrustful or sceptical towards the platform companies, but they're also often quite distrusting of news media and often also of elected officials. So there is an appetite for change, but there is also a wariness of many of the actors that like to sort of present themselves as the agents of that change.

And finally, I would point to something we've shown in the past with research we've done on the notion of fake news and misinformation and that in this report comes through very clearly in the bits about polarisation. Sometimes there is a little bit of a risk here, sort of ‘live by the sword, die by the sword,’ that journalists and politicians might think and present the world as one in which it's other actors that drive us apart. But from the point of view of the public, while they definitely see platforms as part of the problems that our societies face around misinformation and polarisation, they very much see politicians and the news media as part of these problems as well.

In that sense, when one shines the rhetorical light on these issues, some people may think: “Here I'm really describing problems that are caused by other actors.” But the public will often interpret all this talk of polarisation and misinformation through the lens of their perception that these problems have to do with platforms, yes, but also very much to do with news media and politicians.