On Media Blog Archives Select Date… December, 2015 November, 2015 October, 2015 September, 2015 August, 2015 July, 2015 June, 2015 May, 2015 April, 2015 March, 2015 February, 2015 January, 2015

Study: Facebook main source of political news for millennials, Gen X-ers

A majority of millennials get a chunk of their news about politics and government from Facebook, a new report from Pew found.

About 61 percent of millennials say they got their political news in the last week from the social media site, compared with 37 percent who said they got it from local television. Interestingly, those proportions were nearly exactly mirrored by baby boomers; 60 percent said they got their political news from local television, versus 39 percent who said they got it from Facebook.

For millennials, the next most common source of political news is CNN, (44 percent) followed by local television (37 percent), Google News (33 percent), ABC News (32 percent), Fox News (30 percent) NBC news (27 percent), Yahoo News (27 percent), MSNBC (22 percent) and CBS News (19 percent).

For Gen Xers (those born between 1965 and 1980), Facebook was the most common place for political news followed by local television (46 percent), CNN (45 percent), Fox News (36 percent), NBC News (35 percent), ABC News (32 percent), MSNBC and CBS News (27 percent), Yahoo News (35 percent) and NPR (21 percent).

For baby boomers, local television, NBC News and Fox News make the top three sources for political news (60 percent for local and 47 percent for each NBC and Fox). ABC, CNN, CBS News, Facebook, MSNBC, PBS and NPR round out the list.

The data on most popular sources for political news are in line with many of the ratings for these sources. ABC’s nightly news show has been gaining with younger viewers and the ad demographic, while Fox News has the highest average-aged viewer. CNN fared well across all three groups, all within the mid-40-percent range.

Overall, Pew found that millennials were less aware of media outlets than the other generations except for two places: BuzzFeed and Google News out of a list of 18. Despite being familiar with BuzzFeed, millennials expressed more distrust than trust in the site, placing it alongside Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart.

Of the 36 sources tested, The Glenn Beck Program, the Rush Limbaugh Show, the Sean Hannity Show and BuzzFeed were more distrusted than trusted across all three generations. The seven sources that are equally trusted and distrusted by the three generations are Yahoo News, Mother Jones, Slate, ThinkProgress, Bloomberg, Drudge Report and Daily Kos. And the sources trusted across all three generations include BBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Google News, MSNBC, NBC, New York Times, NPR, PBS, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

Perhaps predictably, "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report" (which has recently gone off the air), and Al Jazeera America were more trusted by millennials but distrusted by Gen Xers and baby boomers. The only source that elicits more distrust than trust among millennials but not among Gen Xers or baby boomers is Breitbart while the older generations trust Fox News, The Guardian and The Blaze more than millennials.

Millennials also see more political news on Facebook than other generations, despite claiming to be less interested in it. About 24 percent of millennials who use Facebook say at least half of the posts they see on the site relate to government and politics, higher than both Gen Xers at 18 percent and baby boomers at16 percent. But only 26 percent of millennials say they’re interested in politics and government (when given a list of nine choices) versus 34 percent of Gen Xers and 45 percent of baby boomers.

The study also looked at whether those users saw contrasting views on Facebook and found that the older the user, the more likely they were to see content on the site that aligned with their personal views. Among baby boomers, 31 percent said they saw content that mostly aligned with their views, versus 21 percent for Gen Xers and 18 percent for millennials. The study found that overall, most Facebook users who pay attention to political content do see views on the site that aren’t in line with their own.

As for Twitter, it barely poses any competition for Facebook when it comes to political news. Just 14 percent of online millennials got political news on Twitter in the past week, slightly higher than both Gen Xers (9 percent) and baby boomers (5 percent).

The Web-based survey was conducted March 19 to April 29, 2014, among the 88 percent of the American Trends Panel, a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults who have online access.

See the full survey here.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.