How has social media impacted youth views and involvement with professional journalism?

By Rosa Morales Simmons

*Some interview responses were edited for clarity.

Social media being the most utilized source of youth news consumption; professional news organizations continue to be a far removed source of news for them.  “Journalism is dead,” said seventeen year old Yonas, who was interviewed for Regina Marchi and Lynn Schofield-Clark’s book “Young People and the Future of News.” At what scale is subjective, but there is no doubt an entity with a cultural impact on news consumption; the drawback for legacy news organizations traditions. Social media is distinct from legacy news, in that Marchi and Clark delineate this news by how it is delivered through television, radio, and print that existed before the era of social media. (p.55) While the definition of news itself can be nuanced among news consumers. In the article “How youth define, consume, and evaluate news: Reviewing two decades of research,” the youth defines it; “news is news if it is relevant.” (2024)

“Social media is now the main source of news with one quarter of those in the United States saying they share news with others via social media at least once a week” (Clark & Marchi, p. 56) Social media has become the mainstream mode of news consumption and other purposes of connectivity. In an interview with Assistant Professor Jonathan Hendrickx, Ph.D, who is on a tenure track to professor in Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, viewed this transference to digitalization through his mix-method research: “we started seeing a generational shift in the way that news was being used. So every year there's studies revealing that you can really see new generations emerging as adults, as independent media consumers, that it is shifting to digitalization way more strongly every year.”  

Social media also has the perk of access and convenience. Hendrickx refers to this contrast to legacy news organizations by the phrase “appointment journalism” for traditional media. Appointment news being that it is delivered on fixed schedules, while social media has an on-demand approach. “In the past, people would have fixed times to consume news, such as reading the newspaper in the morning or watching the evening news on TV. However, this ritual-based news consumption is no longer the norm for many young people today,” said Hendrickx. 

In Marchi and Clark’s chapter “Hope and Disillusionment with Legacy News," Jose’ age seventeen was quoted: “I dont really go out of my way to look for news stories, I just see whatever pops up. I have an app on my phone, it’s like an instinct. I have an app on my phone that has the top stories from different websites.” (p. 55) Marchi and Schofield Clark found this consistent with youth’s attitude overall towards news with traditional scheduling models. Finding that, “overwhelmingly, young people we interviewed expressed to us that if a story were important, it would find them.” Their research revealed that most people under the age of 40 found older forms of media like newspapers “impractical, inconvenient, environmentally unfriendly and boring.” 

There is emerging evidence that newsworthy stories are more entrusted to a social media user’s social network than directly through a news source. In the article “Antecedents of Political Consumerism: Modeling Online, Social Media and WhatsApp News Use Effects Through Political Expression and Political Discussion” states “according to lifestyle politics theory, social media platforms introduce new ways for people to engage in civic life.” (Cheng et al, 2022) The article describes lifestyle political theory as the idea that people work their principles and beliefs around their close social networks, and incorporate novel ways to engage in political consumerism that deviates from traditions of engagement in conventional politics. 

Youth continue to prefer the method of “connective journalism” with social media functioning at the pedestal. Scholfield and Marchi wrote “Facebook serves as a ‘social lubricant’ that allows people to broadcast life occurrences and to seek support or useful information.” (p. 120) Major social media platforms provide youth connectivity with others, and desired information that legacy news may not. Reuters Institute reported that “traditional news brands see news as: what you should know. Young audiences see news as: what you should know (to an extent), but also what is useful to know, what is interesting to know, and what is fun to know.” The growing disconnect between the youth and professional journalism is slowly anchoring youth towards news consumption on social media, as Hendrickx’s previous analysis suggests, and noting that “not only are young people less able to actually know the names of big news outlets. They are also less able to identify and explain what they stand for or used to stand for.”

“It’s kind of depressing. I stopped watching the news, because … Every day  I hear somebody died, Some explosion, Somebody else kidnapped. I couldn't really deal with that. I didn't want to be depressed (Clark & Marchi, p.70) Professional news organizations not only have difficulty preventing news fatigue in their audiences, youth respond with much more aversion, especially when they can readily choose other news deliverers that match their moods, interests and style. “Many of the youth we interviewed felt that grabbing the audience’s attention by bombarding them with sensational, negative and/or trivial stories failed to serve the news needs of everyday people.” (Clark & Marchi, p.70) 

Youth on social media lean on their communities to receive newsworthy events and topics, like adults. “While they [youth, age 10-36] exhibit diverse news preferences, they also seek news from multiple perspectives and are influenced by family, peers, and societal contexts.” (Duvekot et al, 2024) They are likely to digest news shared within their echo chambers on social media partly due to the points expressed by the teens in Clark and Marchi’s research, which may not involve any professional news organization reports. “Challenges arise in evaluating news credibility amid the vast digital media landscape, compounded by a general distrust of mainstream media, difficulty discerning professional journalism, and reliance on social networks and technology platforms.” (Duvekot et al, 2024) The challenges of a lack of media literacy may further distance news organizations from the youth’s ideal news source and place social media content above. 

“Contrary to what is often said, much research actually shows that both older, but also younger people are actually very interested in what is happening in the world,” said Hendrickx. Social media has streamlined news media groups to youth that may encourage further investigation and accessing original news sources – possibly reifying utilization of legacy news sources or as backup sources. “From the broad supply of media coverage, young people are easily confronted with multiple sides to issues, which consequently increases their wish to consume the multiple vantage points presented in the news. Therefore, they prefer to consume news from both “alternative” and “mainstream” media.” (Duvekot et al, 2024) 

However, Duvekot et al. also reported that “though the term “alternative” still lacks a unified definition among youth, they are appreciated by young people because they tend to adopt a specific political position, something they recognize less in mainstream media.” (2024) Youth may experience distrust with passive news delivery from journalists who have been deemed as beating around the bush. “The use of alternative media next to established media signifies a conscious effort by young people to seek out sources that align more closely with their interests and offer different perspectives.” (Duvekot et al, 2024)

“In a news story, you can’t say certain things. Like you can’t point fingers and say, ‘well, he screwed up the economy by overpaying everybody and making stocks crash’ You have to be more 'objective,' [sarcastic tone] about it, you have to say [mocking official voice], ‘this company crashed because of the financial crisis,’” said sixteen year old George. (Clark & Marchi, 2017) Youth’s preference for an impassioned and opinionated news delivery might be influenced by social media’s intersection of entertainment and strong opinions. “There is now more of an expectation from young news consumers to have journalists provide analysis and commentary from their own standpoint, rather than simply presenting information objectively,” said Hendrickx.

The youth has implicitly and explicitly demanded news to fit their needs that legacy news does not seem to provide. Social media has facilitated participatory journalism by it can be used as a news platform. “Shah et al. (2005) proposed the citizen communication model, stating that mass communication influences political behavior through political discussions.” (Cheng, Z., et al, 2022) Youth can be active paticipants by practicing journalistic research and sharing on social media, which can elevate their contributions to the solving of social issues. Clark and Marchi wrote “youth are capable of telling stories that make a difference in the lives of their communities. And that they can marshal these skills for political participation and action.” (p.137) 

Social media tool for connective journalism, which helps provide the youth a role in citizen journalism. Clark and Marchi leverages youth citizen journalism to professional journalism, like amateur- assisted journalism that “contribute to the efforts of formal news organizations.” The authors note that some scholars and journalists don’t not see citizen journalism as completely beneficial to professional news, and more so “superficial observations rather than considered judgement.” Youth have proven to properly involve themselves in political affairs that encourage political engagement and actions from their communities. (2017) 

While professional news has been on a decline, news organizations are finding ways to adapt to the social media age: “‘Tiktokification’ of news, in which we see the reverse of what used to be the case for people who wanted to start their own newspaper or their own TV network, needed to adhere to those rules and guidelines of what was already there. And right now we're seeing the other way around when it comes to social media platforms, whereas news publishers are not the first ones to be active on those social media platforms, they then have to follow the trends that are already there,” said Hendrickx. 

As professional news organizations continue to implement entertainment and style trends on social media, youth, age ranges although varied in studies mentioned, are desiring to consume news at their pace, and have proven to have been willing active participants in news dissemination. Through research and expert opinion on this topic, globally, youth are open to engage in the political atmosphere with professional news organizations as a news source, whether it is social media debates, becoming participants in the journalistic process, or packaging and delivering news on their own in a way that resembles professional journalist styles. With that, youth do regard, and are influenced by news reported by professional journalists, despite the prevalence of the more personality-involved and personally-involved styles of news delivery from social media influencers. Their expectations of professional journalists might indicate they can potentially be more involved with established news organizations if certain features are tweaked that are considerate of youth involvement. Youth trends in news consumption do not reveal a dramatic research finding in comparison to older adults when it comes to sentiment of news organizations, however, they are much more likely to prefer the mode of information that is through social media as a news distributor, and rely on it. 

References

1. Clark, L. S., & Marchi, R. (2017b). Young people and the future of news. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108116015

2. Cheng, Z., Zhang, B., & Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2022). Antecedents of political consumerism: Modeling Online, Social Media and WhatsApp News use effects through political expression and political discussion. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 28(4), 995–1016. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221075936 

3. Duvekot, S., Valgas, C. M., De Haan, Y., & De Jong, W. (2024). How youth define, consume, and evaluate news: Reviewing two decades of research. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241262809

4. Hendrickx, J., & Vázquez-Herrero, J. (2024). Dissecting Social Media Journalism: A Comparative Study Across Platforms, Outlets and Countries. Journalism Studies, 25(9), 1053–1075. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2024.2324318

5. How young people consume news and the implications for mainstream media. (n.d.). Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/how-young-people-consume-news-and-implications-mainstream-media