Forget The Newspaper! Research Says 30 Percent Of American Adults Get Their News From Facebook
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Newspapers are so last year, according to recent calculations from Pew Research. It estimates almost 60 percent of adults in the United States use Facebook and half of those users get their news there.
YouTube is next in the charge with about 50 percent of Americans using the website and a fifth of them receiving their news info there. Twitter is up next in the ranking. The site reaches about 16 percent of all Americans and its where half of those individuals get their news.
Around three percent of Americans use Reddit and a large chunk of them, 62 percent, have gotten news from there.
Not only are more Americans getting their news from these social media platforms, they are sharing and participating in it. Fifty percent of users have shared stories, pictures or videos and 46 percent have participated in a discussion about a news incident.
Pew Research also found that this year 14 percent of users posted their own photos of a news event to a social media site and 12 percent of users have uploaded videos.
Locally, social media recently played a part in the arrest of three suspects wanted in an assault of a gay couple in Center City. Users shared the suspects photos and one by one they were identified to police, and eventually turned themselves in.
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