U.S. News Diet Mirrors Latin America

Updated: 2025.10.03 18D ago 3 sources
Reuters data show 34% of Americans now name social media as their main news source, a level close to Brazil (35%) and well above the UK (20%), France (19%), and Japan (10%). This places the U.S. in a different information ecosystem than peer democracies in Europe and East Asia. The implication is that political narratives, trust dynamics, and misinformation pressures may track Latin American patterns more than European ones. — It reframes U.S. media-policy debates by shifting the comparison set from Europe/Japan to high-social-media environments in the Americas.

Sources

Have We Passed Peak Social Media?
msmash 2025.10.03 78% relevant
The article reports North America’s social-media consumption continues to climb and sits 15% above Europe by 2024, reinforcing the earlier finding that the U.S. inhabits a higher–social media ecosystem than European peers.
Appendix: Demographic profiles of regular social media news consumers in the United States
Sara Atske 2025.09.25 66% relevant
Pew’s appendix details which demographics get news on each social platform (e.g., WhatsApp’s news users are 52% Hispanic; X’s are 67% male and 56% GOP‑leaning), complementing the finding that the U.S. relies heavily on social media for news like parts of Latin America.
The Decline of Legacy Media, Rise of Vodcasters, and X's Staying Power
Dan Williams 2025.06.25 100% relevant
Reuters Institute 2025 Digital News Report figures: US 34% vs. UK 20%, France 19%, Japan 10%, Brazil 35%.
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