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Report “Social media very widely used, use for news and information about COVID-19 declining”

Image is illustrative. Photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash

The report examines the use of social media to get news and information about the coronavirus pandemic in the UK based on a survey fielded from 18 to 24 June 2020. Among its highlights:

  • the use of social media has remained broadly consistent during the coronavirus pandemic, with a slight decline following the lockdown surge in Internet use in April
  • however, the use of many social networks specifically for news and information about COVID-19 fell from April to June as it became a less prominent news story and COVID-19 news use fell more generally
  • Facebook and Twitter are the social networks most widely-used for news and information about COVID-19
  • just 10% say that they trust news and information about COVID-19 on social media, video sites and messaging apps
  • around half of those who see news about COVID-19 on social media say they mostly see conflicting facts about it

The report is the sixth in a series of ten Factsheets included in the UK COVID-19 news and information project that analyses how the British public navigates information and misinformation about coronavirus and about how the government and other institutions are responding to the pandemic.

Authors

Reuters Institute

University of Oxford

Photo of Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is the Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Professor of Political Communication at the University of Oxford.

Photo of Richard Fletcher
Richard Fletcher

Richard Fletcher is a Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and leads the Institute’s research team.

Photo of Antonis Kalogeropoulos
Antonis Kalogeropoulos

Antonis Kalogeropoulos is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool and a Research Associate of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
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