BY JESSE HOLCOMB, JEFFREY GOTTFRIED AND AMY MITCHELL
How do different social networking websites stack up when it comes to news? How many people engage with news across multiple social sites? And what are their news consumption habits on traditional platforms? As part of an ongoing examination of social media and news, the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation analyzed the characteristics of news consumers and the size of their population across 11 social networking sites.
News plays a varying role across the social networking sites.1 Roughly half of both Facebook and Twitter users get news on those sites, earlier reports have shown. On YouTube, that is true of only one-fifth of its user base, and for LinkedIn, the number is even smaller. And Pinterest, a social pin board for visual content, is hardly used for news at all.
