Social media is our main source for "News"

The quintessential morning ritual for crores of Indians, of newspaper with a hot a cuppa of tea, might soon be a thing of past. If the research finding of a study published by Pew Research Center is anything to go by, the news consumption over social media is fast overtaking the joy of flipping through a newspaper.

Pew research shows that of 4,600 people surveyed for the research, majority of them log on to social media—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube—to feed on news.

The study also states that Facebook, with over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, is the most visited site as news source, among all social media sites available. It’s a significant finding, considering Facebook’s recent controversy around the way it suggests Trending Topics.

The company recently came under fire from its users after a former trends contractor alleged that Facebook might have been filtering out right-leaning news and opinions. The study also gains significance if we compare it to the first such research Pew conducted back in 2013. The statistics on Facebook usage for news, jumped significantly to 66 percent in the recent study, than 47 percent in the 2013 paper.

For micro-blogging site Twitter, the statistics haven’t changed much. Nearly 60 percent of the people surveyed said they used Twitter as a news source in the recent paper, a measly rise from 52 per cent in 2013. LinkedIn, which was popular with 19 per cent of the users for news, has the largest majority of college educated users, while YouTube has the least users with college degrees.

Facebook and Instagram have the most female users—57 percent and 65 percent, respectively. On Tumblr, the figure sits at 31%. But the fact that people are now using social media or online to gather information and news is not quite shocking, considering the debate on how online media is rapidly replacing the print media has been raging for decades. Former journalist, and now a social media and digital exert, Sree Sreenivasan is one of those informed people who expected the transition sooner or later. “The fact that people are gathering their news from these platforms reminds the media about the importance of being on various platforms and connecting with them there,” Sreenivasan says.

But this doesn’t mean that the traditional media is as good as dead. While some users go back to the same source repeatedly, some use a mix of sites to get the best news possible. The Pew Study notes that users often do not have a specific news or site to search for. Some accidently come across an article and read it and share, while many would search at random for a particular topic. The study says that these users also pay attention to news on traditional media. About 39 percent of Facebook users still watch the local news or read it in the paper. Twitter users are much more tech savvy, with just 8 percent of its users who still consume content from print. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram news users are more likely to get their news online mostly by chance, when they are online doing other things, the study states.

Other sources of news online included Yahoo’s Tumblr and Vine(!). The newst entrant in the social networking space Snapchat also garnered a significant number of users—about 17 percent—who said they use the platform for news. The data is not just to highlight the penetration of social media, but it will also be helpful for other media companies who are currently part of Snapchat Discover digital magazine platform.