News video is as popular as ever.
Publishers who remember the “pivot to video” from a decade ago might wince at the thought, remembering how misleading metrics led many publishers to invest in video content. But evidence from our newly published Digital News Report suggests the demand for news video is growing. A decade on, with growth driven by platforms like TikTok, audiences have an appetite for news video — and it’s not all short-form.
To understand this story, it’s helpful to look outside of Europe and North America, where demand for online news video on social media platforms is lowest. Instead, if we turn to Asia and Latin America, we find significantly higher rates of weekly consumption. In Asia, almost half (47%) of people surveyed say they watch news videos on YouTube weekly, compared to just a quarter (24%) of people in Europe. In Latin America, the same proportion (47%) say they are regularly watching news videos on Facebook, compared to just 28% in North America.
What explains these differences? There are many contributing factors, such as high mobile phone and social media use across Global South markets. But perhaps one of the biggest factors is age. Countries with younger populations may offer clues about emerging patterns of news consumption.
In this year’s Digital News Report, we found for the first time that social media is now the primary way people access news globally, with access via social media now outpacing television and news websites themselves. The following chart shows this trend, with the decline in TV and news website usage now meaning that social media and video networks are ahead as the primary access point for news.
In many ways, this trend has been and continues to be driven by the behavior of young people. They are the 18- to 24-year-olds in our survey who have grown up in a world entirely shaped by laptops, smartphones, the internet, and social media. In our report this year, we find that more than half (56%) of young people aged 18–24 globally say they have never read a physical newspaper weekly. A fifth (21%) have never regularly watched broadcast TV news. If they are going to watch news videos, it is probably going to be via the internet — and most likely on a social media platform.
This trend may not be surprising to many, but the ever-increasing “platformization” of news consumption (i.e. consumption happening via a third-party platform like Facebook or YouTube, rather than on news websites) is of concern to an industry in need to stable revenue sources. But the popularity of news videos on third-party social media platforms doesn’t have to be a “doom and gloom” story for the news industry. Rather, it can be an opportunity to reflect and spot opportunities.
Take the comparison between YouTube, on one hand, to TikTok and Instagram on the other. In our data, we find that there is an appetite for longer-form video on YouTube, and that the appeal is actually higher among younger demographics.
The following chart shows the proportion of people who use each platform for news videos who say they watch videos of each length. Almost a quarter (23%) of people who watch news videos on YouTube say they are watching videos that are over 20 minutes long. This compares to just 12% of Instagram and TikTok news video watchers, where short-form video tends to be more popular.
The next chart shows the split in reported watching on YouTube by age. Contrary to what many people might think, it is younger YouTube watchers who are more likely to report viewing long news videos than those in the oldest age group. For the demographic aged 55+, there is still a preference for broadcast TV news — a medium that they grew up with.
People will gravitate to mediums and formats they are familiar with and are used to using. Among many of those born after the year 2000, the habit of watching broadcast TV news has never materialized because that is not a format they grew up with, and therefor seems unlikely to materialize in the future.
A great example of how habits can fundamentally shift is by looking at how people interact with their televisions. A main way many young people interact with their TV now is via internet-connected apps. Smart TVs and on-demand media have further eroded linear broadcast TV audiences that have long been in decline. In our survey, we found that across all age groups, 27% of people say they now watch news videos on their smart TVs via apps like YouTube, with this behavior being much more common among younger people. (What this also says, again, is that audience attention is being captured by third party platforms.)
What does this mean for news publishers? It’s hard to say, as there are no easy answers. But there are important takeaways like the fact that appetite for news video is there and that it isn’t all about shortform — young people will watch longer content, perhaps on their smart TV, on platforms like YouTube. Traditional formats and mediums are in decline, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are opportunities to reach audiences and cut through. As a first step, knowing what the world of online video looks like helps. That’s what we tried to do this year in our Digital News Report research.
Craig Robertson is a research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
