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Marcus Johnson (00:00):

In today's economy, every ad dollar counts. That's why performance marketers are turning to Rokt's ads to reach 1.1 billion people, unique customers, I should say, globally in the transaction moment when they're completing a purchase online. You only pay when customers engage. Learn more at rokt.com/emarketer. That's rocks, R-O-K-T.com/emarketer. Hey gang, it's Monday, March 30th. Jenny, Mike, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER podcast made possible by Rokt. I'm Marcus, and joining me today for the conversation. We have two folks. One of them lives in New York City. She's our head of all the research we have. It's Jennifer Pearson.

Jennifer Pearson (00:48):

Great. I'm excited to be here.

Marcus Johnson (00:50):

Jenny, welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show. We're also joined by special guest. Jenny's special, too. Based in DC, associate director of research at Pew Research Center. We're thrilled to have them on. In particular him, it's Michael Lipka.

Michael Lipka (01:05):

Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. Excited for the conversation.

Marcus Johnson (01:07):

Absolutely, sir. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you both for being here. Anytime we have a special guest on from outside the company, we start with a speed intro. Two questions for you, Michael. One for Jenny at the end. Mike, what do you do in a sentence?

Michael Lipka (01:24):

I study how Americans get their news. Yeah, that's a short sentence. It sounds simple, it's not. These days, people can't even agree on what news is, so it's a very complicated thing, but that is what we do here on my team.

Marcus Johnson (01:38):

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Just the definition alone is up for debate. Second question, what are your two favorite podcasts?

Michael Lipka (01:48):

So, I don't know if it's sacrilegious on a podcast when you're on a podcast to admit that you're not a huge podcast listener. I've always been more of a reader than a listener, but-

Marcus Johnson (01:56):

Me neither, really.

Michael Lipka (01:58):

...I do listen to some podcasts sometimes. I would say if I had to call out two, I do listen to the Ezra Klein Show quite a bit. I think the main thing I really like about those shows is that he has on a nice variety of guests on a lot of different topics. And it's not always people who agree with them. It's people who have a variety of different views on things, and they challenge each other. And I feel like that's increasingly rare these days to hear people have a good substantive conversation with different perspectives on something. So, I like Ezra. And the other one, baseball season starting up, and I'm a baseball fan. This podcast called Rates and Barrels that I listen to. It's associated with the athletic. Really smart conversations about baseball, and everything related to that. So, that's the other one I'd say.

Marcus Johnson (02:44):

Okay. Who's your team?

Michael Lipka (02:47):

I'm from Boston originally, so I'm a Red Sox fan.

Marcus Johnson (02:49):

That was it. Oh, Jesus. We'll let it slide because we need you to be here on the episode. But good choices. Ezra Klein read him a lot at Vox, and then moved over. He's with The Times, right?

Michael Lipka (03:01):

He's with New York Times now. Yep.

Marcus Johnson (03:02):

Yeah. Okay. I might have to give his podcast a listen. Jenny, how about for you?

Jennifer Pearson (03:06):

Aside from the EMARKETER podcast, a longtime listener. Not a heavy listener, but Good Hang with Amy Poler. I'll see, and listen to every once in a while. It feels like a great conversation with friends, obviously people who are not my friends, but it just is some interesting conversations.

Michael Lipka (03:25):

Yeah. I see clips from that on social media, and I'm always like, "Wow, that seems fun. I've never actually listened to the whole thing, but I should check it out."

Marcus Johnson (03:32):

Yeah, I've heard great things too. A Bit of Optimism is one of my favorites. So, Simon Senec, really great conversations, and I always learn. I have to bring a notepad most of the time because I learn so much, and then forget it all as soon as it's finished. But it's brilliant, really good stuff. But there are two guests for today. We're really happy to have them on the show. Today's real topic, what we'll be discussing, America is rewriting its relationship with news. So, we are thrilled to have Pew Research join the show. I've been using their research since the beginning of time. Jenny might've been using them before that.

Jennifer Pearson (04:14):

Oh, yeah.

Marcus Johnson (04:15):

Yeah. Before time existed, she's been using Pew Research. Right, Jenny, we've had a really great relationship with them, and we rate them at the very top in terms of credibility, in terms of authority on things. And it's really one of our huge go to sources.

Jennifer Pearson (04:32):

Absolutely. I demanded to be on this podcast. Thank you all.

Marcus Johnson (04:36):

She came to my home.

Jennifer Pearson (04:37):

...humored me because yeah, I think since 2009 we've been citing Pew Research. I sent Marcus a very old chart from our database from 2006 that some of the first... And about news too, which is great. So, reputable, I agree. Top, maybe on par with just maybe the census, or [inaudible 00:05:01] just wonderful.

Michael Lipka (05:02):

Guys, you're going to make me blush over here. Take it easy. Thank you though. We appreciate the kind words, truly.

Marcus Johnson (05:08):

Yeah, it's very true. Yeah. We wouldn't say it if it wasn't. And they cover a lot of great stuff, but the conversation we wanted to have with them, with Mike today was about news. There's a lot of coverage of this particular topic. And so we'll start with a very, I don't know, it's probably a straightforward worded question, but extremely complicated. As you were saying, Mike, it's pretty complex how people view news, but why do Americans consume news?

Michael Lipka (05:42):

Because they can't avoid it. I mean, honestly, it sounds... I'm half kidding, but for a lot of people, I think that is the answer. I mean, there are so many people in this age of smartphones who feel like they're worn out by the constant flow of news, who sort of think of news in negative terms, at least emotionally. I mean, there's war, there's natural disasters, there's sad things happening that are often in the news. And so a lot of people feel like they can't avoid it. So, that certainly is part of it. That's not the whole story, of course. I mean, there are a lot of positive reasons people get news as well. I think one thing we wanted to get to the bottom of this question, in one of our recent studies we asked, do you mainly get news because you enjoy it, or do you mainly get news because you feel like you should?

(06:33):

Not that many people say that they only get news because they feel like they enjoy it. That number is only 9%. So, it's like that's not the main reason for most people. About a quarter say, I just do it because I feel like I should. They feel like some sense of obligation to be informed, or they feel like they need to know what's going on. But half of Americans said it's like a combination of those two things. So, I think I've heard in the past people say it's like eating your vegetables. If you turn on Netflix, and streaming your favorite shows, dessert-

Marcus Johnson (07:00):

I like that.

Michael Lipka (07:01):

...following the news is kind of like vegetables. There are some tasty vegetables, and it's good for you, but-

Marcus Johnson (07:07):

Yeah, no, eating them all over time.

Michael Lipka (07:09):

There are a number of specific things that people say they get out of news that are reasons why they're doing it. Obviously just feeling informed about what's going on. And I think that's been part of the human experience for a long time.

Marcus Johnson (07:18):

Yeah. Well, I think there's something about that which can feel enjoyable. It's hard to compare consuming the news to Netflix, and the enjoyment you get from one versus the other. But I think the idea... I do think people, whether it's subconsciously, or not, enjoy being informed, and they enjoy discussing events as long as it's civil, and they're not screaming at each other. So, I think that the reasons that you had, or you found in this research, why are they consuming news to feel informed, to discuss events, and then it was to make voting decisions as well. I think that it does feel more enjoyable when you're informed on issues.

Michael Lipka (07:58):

Totally. And yeah, I was going to mention those other things. I mean, we asked people in another study, what are the main emotions you feel when you're getting news? And so informed, it's not really an emotion, but it's a feeling. And that was kind of the one really positive thing that rose to the top, followed by a list of more negative things, angry, sad, scared, confused. A lot of those things come up too, but the feeling of being informed rose to the top. And then yeah, like you said, discussing current events with other people, news is a big way that people are able to connect with their neighbors, with their friends, with their family, talk about what's going on. So, that's a really, really big thing that people mentioned. And then making voting decisions. This is the core of the idea behind democracy. An informed voter is making a choice in an election. And so it's all connected there, and that's a big reason people are doing it. Yeah.

Jennifer Pearson (08:49):

What jumped out at me from some of this research was that the older Americans, and the respondents in the survey got, the more they felt obligated, or at least answered in that way that they follow the news, and should follow the news. So, I think that's really interesting as you get older in life, it's so much more important.

Michael Lipka (09:11):

It's a common topic of conversation is, all right, we see these differences by age. Is this a lifecycle effect? Is this like when the young people get older, are they going to be more like the older people, or is it actually generational change where when the people are in their 20s today are in their 60s, they're actually not going to be like the people who are in their 60s now. Maybe. I mean, we can't answer that, of course. We have to wait, and look at the data over the coming decades.

Marcus Johnson (09:32):

But you show that though. I like the research you have because you don't just show a snapshot in time today. You show what did people in their 20s 10 years ago say versus people in their 20s today.

Michael Lipka (09:42):

Yes.

Marcus Johnson (09:42):

So, you can see those changes. It is fascinating.

Michael Lipka (09:44):

We often say, we wish we had data from 1965 to be like, all right, what did the people who are older now, what were they like in their 20s? We don't go back that far. So, unfortunately, there's some Gallup data. Gallup has some really long trends on some of these questions, so it is helpful. But yeah.

Marcus Johnson (10:02):

We were talking about voting, and how news helps informs people about making voting decisions. What's interesting is there's another chart you have in one of your reports which looks at people's sense of, I guess, civic duty being a good member of society. And following the news, it had a decent amount of people saying that it was very, or extremely important, about over 40%, but voting in elections, paying taxes, respecting the opinions, and beliefs of others you disagree with, serving jury duty, volunteering, all those things were above the news, which I thought was quite interesting. So, it's important, but it's not what people see as the number one civic duty.

Michael Lipka (10:42):

Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. We really wanted to do this. We wanted to put it on that list, and be like, "Where does this rank for people? " Because I think a lot of people, certainly if you're in the news industry, there's a big sense of importance, and people feel really strongly about the role that journalism does play in our democracy, and the role that information does play. But yeah, when you put it on that list with some of that other stuff, it definitely doesn't rise to the top. I mean, it's still most people saying that it's at least somewhat important, right?

Marcus Johnson (11:06):

Yes, yes.

Michael Lipka (11:06):

It's not that everyone's saying this isn't important at all, but if you just are looking at the percentage of Americans who say, all right, this is extremely important, very important, it's a little bit below half that say that that's the case for following the news.

Marcus Johnson (11:21):

Yeah, exactly.

Michael Lipka (11:21):

And you get big majority saying that, of course, those other things you mentioned, voting, jury duty, paying taxes, those things are...

Marcus Johnson (11:28):

And it was higher than going to protests, or rallies as well. So, yeah, it is still incredibly significant for folks in terms of being a good member of society. Mike, where are people saying that they get the news from, and how's that changed?

Michael Lipka (11:44):

Yeah, a lot of different places. I mean, that's the biggest story probably in news consumption over the last... The internet era, I guess I'd say, is just a lot of people talk about the fracturing of the information ecosystem. There used to be a more limited number of potential news sources out there, your local newspaper, cable news. If you go back before the 80s, there was no even cable TV news. It was just kind of the big networks, maybe your radio station. As the internet has grown, and evolved, and there's just been so many more different media popping up, now people are getting their news in so many different places. And now, of course, AI now is becoming a source of news for some people. That's the newest thing that we're looking at. So, yeah, there's still plenty of people, especially older folks getting news from more traditional platforms, radio, TV, print, TV being kind of the biggest of those still.

(12:37):

But then when you look at younger folks, it's much different. It's all digital. Social media is huge, huge source of news for the younger generation. Podcasts, of course, have increasingly become a source of news for folks, especially in the last 10 years, or so. Email newsletters are another one that's popped up for a decent segment of society search. A lot of people are just like, they hear something, and they just go to Google to find out more, and who knows about it. And now it's probably a lot of times taking them to an AI summary of whatever topic they've plugged in there. And then of course, within some of these, there are so many podcasts, there are so many social media feeds. Within each of these broader [inaudible 00:13:16] platforms, there's so many different areas that could be so many different specific sources that people could be hearing from. So, it's hard to make sense. It's dizzying, really. I mean, it's so many different...

Marcus Johnson (13:26):

If you asked a hundred people what their news media diet looks like, you'd have 101 different combinations.

Michael Lipka (13:35):

Yeah. And I mean, even the biggest specific news sources, when we're talking about actual traditional news outlets, even the biggest are only regularly used by... There's no source that more than half Americans are saying, "I go to that for news regularly." The biggest ones, which are still the biggest TV networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as Fox News, and CNN, those are the ones where the highest share of Americans say that they're regularly getting news from those sources, even those are not more than half of the population.

Marcus Johnson (14:04):

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, Jenny, it's interesting, people are getting news from so many different places, and we've got the traditional TV, radio, print. Then we've got digital, which I was looking over 85% according to your research, Mike, over 85% of 18 to 65-year-olds, which is a big swath of the population, get their news online now. So, it's no longer like younger... No, it's basically everybody. But then you drill down, as Mike's saying, Jenny, into how people are getting news digitally, and there's a lot of differences there, particularly generationally. What stands out to you about how Americans get their news?

Jennifer Pearson (14:40):

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (14:41):

Or sorry, where they're getting their news.

Jennifer Pearson (14:42):

Yeah, I think it correlates to where they're spending their time. So, younger audiences are definitely spending more time on digital, EMARKETER forecasts, and tracks media that the general population's spending time. [inaudible 00:14:57] Traditional TV is still at the top, but that's because we have an older cohort who's bringing up that number over two hours a day. But then our digital numbers, an hour, and a half, but for younger audiences, two plus three hours daily on social media. And I think that where they're at is where they're consuming their news, where they're spending their time is where they're consuming their news. I looked up some older Pew data that we had cited, and I think it's so interesting that 10, 15 years ago, younger audiences were getting their news on the internet That has kind of transformed to social now. So, it was internet, TV, and internet was young, and TV was older audiences, and now social media is where young folks are, and older audiences are a mix of TV, and digital internet.

Michael Lipka (15:53):

Yeah. And that totally tracks with what we find. I mean, I don't want to list a bunch of numbers here because that can put people to sleep, but just to throw one of the starkest things we see. So, you look by age at the percentage of adults who get news often, or sometimes is the way we frame it in this question, from social media, it's 76% of the youngest adults. So, that's 18 to 29 year olds. 76% are getting news on social media. If you look at the oldest group, 65 plus, that's only 28%. So, we're talking about almost a 50 point gap on that measure, and that's really the one place. I mean, podcasts are another one. Younger people, not nearly the same extent of a split, but younger people are more likely than older people to get news on podcasts. But on most of the other things that we're measuring, older people are more likely.

(16:40):

But with social media, it's the complete opposite. It's just a complete huge split. The specific spaces where we really see the big age gaps are Instagram, and TikTok. I mean, Facebook we know, I think is the users' Facebooks are trended a little bit older lately. It's not as popular with some of the younger folks as it was a while back. X is a little bit more of a mix as well, but Instagram, and TikTok are like, those are really young, young folks getting news there, and not a lot of older folks in those spaces getting this.

Marcus Johnson (17:12):

That gap between younger folks getting news from social media versus older folks is almost the complete inverse when you look at getting news on TV. It's a similar chasm-

Michael Lipka (17:22):

That's exactly right.

Marcus Johnson (17:23):

...between the two groups. I want to really quickly, before we move on to something you said, you mentioned AI chatbots, and how people... How much are people getting news from them?

Michael Lipka (17:35):

So, it's not a huge percentage of the population yet that's saying that they're regularly getting news from chatbots. I believe it's around 10% who say that they're often, or sometimes getting news from chatbots at this point, but we know that this is sort of increasingly... It feels so rapid in how much these things are growing, and influence, and picking up users. So, we wanted to start tracking that early. We're also looking at AI summaries in search. It's actually on the agenda for us to look at more this year because that's been this thing that has popped up, and it's gotten a lot of attention. And I know online publishers are very interested because there's been a lot of talk about traffic, search traffic, everything like that. So, we know that AI is already having an impact on the way people consume news. It's not a huge percentage of people at this point who are sort of noticing that, or deliberately seeking out news from AI sources, but it's definitely starting to play a role in the...

Marcus Johnson (18:30):

And I guess at some point you have to start to make the distinction between if you're using AI, to what you're saying, how are you using AI? Is it an AI overview? Are you going to a particular LLM to type in questions about the news? There are a variety of ways that an AI could help you get the news.

Michael Lipka (18:49):

Totally. Yep.

Marcus Johnson (18:51):

I want to touch on something Jenny said, because I think it's a great point, which is you are seeing a reflection on how people get the news, and where they're spending their time. And I noticed something, or we noticed something in your data, Mike, when we were talking about this episode, which is that news is no longer about just going to find it. A lot of the time it's, I'm there already, and it hit me in the face whilst I was consuming something else. Talk to us a bit about how people's relationship with news has changed in terms of this kind of, not push-pull, but whether the relationship between them going to get it, and it just happens to conveniently be there when they're trying to look at something else.

Michael Lipka (19:38):

No, that absolutely is a perfect connection between what we were talking about. Yeah. I mean, this is a trend that we've really been focused on a lot lately because it's such a change. I mean, we've seen the change over the last several years in that an increasing number of people are saying, we ask this question, it's kind of just like forced choice. You got to choose one side, or the other. Do you usually get news because you're looking for it, or do you usually get news because you happen to come across it as the way we word it. But we really talk about these folks as passive news consumers, incidental news consumption. You can come up with whatever way to describe it.

Marcus Johnson (20:10):

The intentionality about it. I think the one the words used is intention.

Michael Lipka (20:13):

Exactly. So, we've seen the number growing. It's now about half, and half of Americans who get news each way.

Marcus Johnson (20:19):

Wow.

Michael Lipka (20:19):

We've seen the number growing of the percentage who say that they are just news is finding them. They're not looking for it. News is finding them. And I think you think about it, put yourself in the shoes of someone in the 80s, or whatever. If you want to get news, you had to turn on the TV, you had to open the newspaper, or turn on the radio. I mean, you might hear things through word of mouth just in social conversations, but otherwise if you wanted news, you had to take the action to get it. It wasn't just going to find you. But now you got your smartphone in your pocket, and it's buzzing however many hundreds of times per day. And I think that a lot of people have made that calculation that you know what?

(20:59):

A, we were talking about some of the negative emotions before. A lot of people are worn out. They're like, "I'm not opting." If something's important, it's going to find me, I'm going to hear about it. So, that's good enough for a lot of people. And I think that's how a lot of people do sort of approach their news consumption at this point. and then within this world of incidental news consumption, there's a number of ways it could go. Some people do sort of deliberately set up alerts, or newsletters, or whatever, things that they aren't having to go find that are finding them, but they have sort of made a choice at some point to set up that flow in their direction. Whereas I think for other people, yeah, it's probably more random. It's probably just whatever they happen to do, whatever pops up in the algorithm. So, it really depends. But this is another one where there's huge age differences. Younger people are way more likely to say that they're just happening. The news is finding them, and older people are much more likely to say that they seek it out.

Marcus Johnson (21:50):

A similar sized gap, 22% of young people, basically people in their 20s intentionally seek out news versus close to 70% of older Americans doing. So, a huge Grand Canyon between those two groups as well. Jenny, what do you make of this shift?

Jennifer Pearson (22:06):

I thought it was so interesting the question from the December survey that, do you follow news very closely? And not so many, but then in the past 10 years, do you think the amount of news Americans consume has been rising, staying the same, or falling? 50% say rising. And so there's this disconnect between those who very closely follow the news, but then this perception that we're following, it's rising where there's just news everywhere. And it's such an interesting...

Marcus Johnson (22:37):

Almost like this new era of passive consumption to what Mike's talking about, and Jenny, the almost cognitive dissonance maybe. I don't know, this paradox that is going on.

Michael Lipka (22:50):

Yeah, no, that's a great observation, Jenny. I mean, I think a lot of people have made those deliberate choices to sort of limit. They feel like there's so much out there. They've made those deliberate choices to limit their news consumption in certain ways, because there's just so much of it out there. And so yeah, you're right. We have seen this number coming down just in the share who say that they follow the news very closely. We've seen it come down quite a bit over the last 10 years, which does sort of indicate... Now, does that mean that Americans are getting less news? I don't know. It just means that people are, again, not doing it as actively, not intentionally seeking it out quite the same way because that has the word follow in that question. Do you follow the news? So, a lot of people might look at it as, "Well, no, I'm not following it. It's following me" kind of thing.

(23:36):

So, that's, I think, part of the dissonance there. And then you're right, many more people say when they have to... We ask this general read about society as a whole, many more people saying that news consumption is rising as opposed to falling. And I think it's hard to explain exactly why that is. I think people sort of feel the vibes out there in this frenetic news cycle, news environment. They just feel like, all right, there's so much more news out there these days, and it's happening so much faster, people must be getting more of it. If I had to guess how people are thinking through that one, but you're right, it's a very interesting paradox there.

Jennifer Pearson (24:09):

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (24:10):

You can feel like... Sorry, please, Jenny.

Jennifer Pearson (24:12):

Oh, I was just curious about how you think trust factors in. We've seen some other research. We have this, we follow Edelman Trust Barometer, and a few other sources, and that has gone, trust in certain organizations has gone down noticeably, especially over time in surveys. So, I'm curious how you think that's affecting some of the current news consumption.

Michael Lipka (24:37):

Yeah, it definitely plays a role. I mean, I think it's all connected. It's definitely, yeah, it's been a bleak story in terms of trust over time in the last decade, or more. If you're a journalist, or if you're in the news industry, it's definitely not been numbers that people have been happy to see. I mean, that number, percentage of Americans in our data who say that they have at least some trust in the information that comes from national news organizations is one way we ask it. It's gone down by 20 points in the last 10 years. And we ask another question, how much confidence do you have? This is a question we've asked for a long time, how much confidence do you have in journalists to act in the best interest of the public? And that's fewer than half. I think it's like 43% now.

(25:15):

So, you have a majority of people saying that they basically don't have confidence in journalists to act in the best interest of the public. So, a lot of this is political. There's huge party gaps have opened up on this. Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to have confidence, have trust in the media in general. I think younger people are also less trusting of these institutions. And it's not just the news industry, it's institutions broadly. This is something we've noticed across the whole Pew Research Center. A lot of traditional institutions are getting regarded with more skepticism by younger generations than their older peers. So, it's definitely something that has a lot of people concerned, has a lot of people talking about, is this a problem for society? And it's not like young people are, like we were talking about social media, young people are getting news on social media.

(26:07):

It's not like they're trusting everything they see there either. There's plenty to be skeptical of in that space. But we do see, if you look at that youngest cohort, 18 to 29, pretty much the same. It's about half say that they have some, or a lot of trust in news from national news organizations, almost exactly the same for social media. So, they're kind of looking at things with the same skeptical eye across the board.

Marcus Johnson (26:29):

But they're trying to do something about it. I was asking you about, of all the things we're going to be talking about today, Mike, what is an under the radar finding from your research? And you were saying about the level of accuracy from the news, and the response from folks in terms of trying to tackle that problem.

Michael Lipka (26:49):

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, we've noticed this for a long time. People are feeling like they're seeing a lot of inaccurate news. I mean, anyone who goes on the internet now, if you put it politely, there is a wide variance in quality of the information that you can find in social media, and just on [inaudible 00:27:05] the internet in general. And so people used to maybe have a little more, they had these trusted messengers, they had these news brands that they would put their faith in, and that would be the information that they would get, and they would trust it. Now, given that the trust has fallen in traditional journalists, and given that a lot of people are in these spaces online, people have a whole extra job of trying to sort through what's true, and what's not, and what's legitimate, and what's not. And so yeah, in our work, we've seen a huge...

(27:33):

Everyone agrees that Americans have a responsibility to do this now, that this is something that needs to happen. People need to be verifying the accuracy of the information that they're getting. That's just across the political spectrum, across the ages. Everyone agrees that this is an important thing now, but-

Marcus Johnson (27:48):

Yeah, you have 65% of Americans you show, I think it's very, or extremely important [inaudible 00:27:53].

Michael Lipka (27:53):

Yes. And then if you throw in the somewhats, it's like almost everybody, right?

Marcus Johnson (27:56):

Yes.

Michael Lipka (27:56):

And so it is definitely something that people are recognizing as an important thing these days. But where you get into some of the problems with it is that people tend to have confidence in themselves to do it. Most people saying they're at least somewhat confident that they would know what to do to check the accuracy of a news story. But when we ask them, "All right, well, how much confidence do you have in other people?" It's like very few. It's like only 3% say that they're very confident.

Marcus Johnson (28:24):

Wow.

Michael Lipka (28:25):

It's like 25% say they're at least somewhat confident, but a majority say that they have no confidence, little to no confidence in other people. So, there's this sort of people do not have a lot of faith in their fellow Americans to be able to navigate this news environment, and be able to distinguish truth from fiction. And yet we asked this other question like, all right, well, who should be responsible? Who should be responsible for making sure that Americans know how to determine what's true, and what's not? And there's no easy answer there either.

(28:54):

I mean, the most common answer is people say individuals themselves. So, while they're saying that they don't have a lot of confidence in folks to do this, they're also saying that it's individual's own responsibility to sort of figure it out. It's not news orgs, it's not schools. We thought maybe schools would be like, people think that media literacy should be taught in high school, or something. I mean, some people certainly feel that way, and some people are really trying to push for that, but that didn't get a huge number of huge support from the public in the survey. So, yeah, it's a vexing problem for sure.

Jennifer Pearson (29:24):

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (29:25):

82% of people at least sometimes do their own research about a news story you show. What does doing your own research mean to folks?

Michael Lipka (29:34):

Yeah, that's a very loaded question these days I feel like, and we tried to dig into this because that term has been used in a lot of different ways lately, and people do associate a lot of different things with that. I mean, for some people doing your own research, for a lot of people doing your own research is just looking at multiple sources, literally Googling something for maybe the more intrepid, bold people, reading scientific studies, and seeing if you can dive into those yourself, and figure out what's going on in there. But as someone who reads academic studies for my job a lot, it's often not super easy to get to the truth in there, or get to just the clarity on what's going on. But a lot of academic, any academics to get mad at me. There's a lot of academics doing amazing work, and it's really valuable for our field. It's just not always the most accessible for an average person to jump into.

Marcus Johnson (30:26):

You can't read a paper on every single thing you're trying to figure out.

Michael Lipka (30:30):

But of course, right. So, then when it comes to doing your own research, a lot of people also associating this term with questioning the official narrative, the official, whether it's from news organizations, whether it's from the government, whether it's from medical sources, that term has been used a lot in regards to vaccines, and public health stuff. People who say they're doing their own research sometimes are really mean, and the public recognizes really mean just they're questioning the official recommendations, or the official story on stuff.

Marcus Johnson (30:57):

Yeah. Some of the research you have about this showing that really high shares of people comparing information from different sources, looking at studies, scientific studies, researching something on a search engine, or questioning, as you said, big organizations is like over 70% of from all those categories. Discussing with friends, and family, not so much that one was a lot lower. I want to circle back to, or close out the episode with... We were talking about basically drinking from the fire hose when it comes to consuming news. For a couple of years now, I stopped for a short while, but I started doing it again by the newspaper every Sunday. Just so it's a finite amount of information. I could choose the stories I want in there. There are ads, but nothing kind of popping up, or autoplaying, or flashing at me, and I have to close a million things.

(31:50):

And when you finish it, you have this sense of completion. Finality, I did it's done. Okay, what's next? That's one of the ways that I've changed how I receive news. Some of the research showing six in 10 Americans reducing their overall news intake. And I thought this was a really interesting stat. The share of Americans who have stopped talking about political news going from 45% to 56% from the pandemic to today. Mike, how are some other ways that you've seen folks change how they receive news?

Michael Lipka (32:27):

We've done some qualitative research on this, focus groups, and just interviews where folks are saying, "I don't want to end my friendships." There's such a political divide in this country. There's so much political polarization in this country that people are afraid of. If they go into those conversations, that it's just going to lead nowhere good with folks that they want to maintain relationships with. So, that's part of it there for sure. Yeah. I mean, how we've seen people change. You said that one stat, and I think that we're really interested in trying to dig into this because I think a lot of times people go in cycles. They might be hearing a lot about a certain story, and just be like, "I can't handle this anymore." I think the pandemic was a good example for a lot of people. There was so much news about this crazy news event where literally no one had ever heard of this thing.

(33:13):

And then all of a sudden it was dominating all of our worlds. And so people get burnt out on something, and they try to tune it out for a bit. Or the other thing we've seen is specific sources. People find reason to, for one reason, or another to become skeptical of a particular source, whether that was a mistake that the source made, or whether that's political views evolving on one side, or the other, or whatever. So, we've seen people tune out of news in general. We've seen people tune out a specific source quite a bit. Whether these things are permanent, or temporary, it's hard to say. These things are hard to track because people's habits are changing all the time. And one of the big challenges we have in our research is people are getting so much information. They can't even recall where they're hearing certain things. There's just so much coming at them. So, survey research being our sort of main method of study. I mean, we do other stuff, too, but we're relying on people's own experience, recounting their own experiences.

Marcus Johnson (34:09):

Speaking of recounting their own experiences, Jenny, there was a really good quote in one of the pieces which I pulled. There was linked to, which I think is a really interesting trend, which has been happening for a while, but will obviously start to be reflected in the numbers more in the coming years because it's talking about younger people getting access to news earlier, and earlier. And this quote from, it's a woman in her 20s, but she was saying a large part of why I think it's rising the consumption of news, particularly on social media is because people are aware of it earlier. She says, the kids on TikTok, my middle school niece knew what was going on just as much as I did. I was not paying attention to the news in middle school, but it's popping up on her feed, and so she's asking about it. And so I thought that was an interesting observation in terms of how the way people receive news is changing.

Jennifer Pearson (35:02):

Absolutely. And I thought it was interesting. The 2019 survey, it sounds like you asked the same question, are you worn out by news 2019 to the 2025 survey. And there were almost no age differences in 2019, but pretty sizable differences in the 2025 survey. I think the pandemic, like you mentioned, Mike, might have something to do with that. The 2019 survey, obviously pre-pandemic, but the younger age groups were more likely to say they were worn out. And I don't know if that correlates with the social, they're seeing it right in the moment it's being pushed to them in their face, or if it's just the nature of news right now.

Michael Lipka (35:48):

Yeah. And I think a lot of this stuff feels heavy for young folks. They're just entering the world, and when there's bad news about the economy, or there's bad news, but I think they probably feel more of a sense of insecurity in some ways. And then you also just look at from the other direction, older people just tend to be more interested in news. So, maybe their threshold for getting burnt out is a little bit higher if they actually want this information. But it was really interesting, Marcus, what you said about the teenager. We actually did some focus groups with teens last summer, and this is an area where we're interested in exploring. And I think a lot of people have this expectation that when we've talked about studying teens, and gotten people's opinions on it, some people, including myself, sometimes have been like, teens, they're not interested in the news.

(36:31):

It's not going to be that interesting to look at because they got so much other stuff going on, and you don't really see it. But nowadays, their focus groups totally kind of debunk that in my mind. Whether, or not they want it, they're in it. It's just like everybody else. The news is finding them. Once they're getting a phone, and then just all the conversations that people are having, I think given all the information that's out there in the air, it's permeating a lot of different spaces. And so it's getting to people younger. I mean, my kids, I have five-year-old, and a seven-year-old, and they're asking me questions about stuff they've heard at school. Obviously, they don't have phones yet, but they hear things, and they're asking questions that I'm totally not prepared to answer. "What about the war in Iran, daddy?" I'm like, "How do you hear about that?"

Marcus Johnson (37:14):

Play school, what do you... Kindergarten, they're talking about this in the playground? Yeah. The window of opportunity to hear about news is just, it's always now. Before it was between six to seven, and the evening news, or maybe you'd catch snippets of it in the car on the radio, and you definitely weren't trying to read the newspaper at that age because it was boring. And whereas now it's-

Michael Lipka (37:38):

I was reading the sports section, just to be clear when I was there.

Marcus Johnson (37:47):

Of course you were. It's from Boston. Well, unfortunately, that's all we've got time for Mike, we could talk to you forever, but we've taken enough of your time. Thank you so, so much for coming on the show, and we'd absolutely love to have you back, Mike. Thank you so much for being here.

Michael Lipka (37:56):

Well, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. It was a great chat.

Marcus Johnson (37:59):

Fantastic. Yes, it was. Jenny, thank you as always. We'll see you very, very soon.

Jennifer Pearson (38:02):

Thank you so much. So, glad to be here.

Marcus Johnson (38:04):

Yes, indeed. Thank you, of course, to the production team. We've got John in the background today hanging out, and helping us out with this one. So, thank you so much to him. Thanks to everyone for listening in to buying the Numbers EMARKETER podcast made possible by Rokt. You can tune in Wednesday if you want. No pressure. It's up to you. Reimagine Retail Show hosted by Susie. I should be talking to Skye, and Karina all about the three consumers retailers need to think about. Spoiler alert. One of them is a robot.

Jennifer Pearson (38:39):

New band name, The Somewhats. The Somewhats.

Marcus Johnson (38:43):

That was good.

Michael Lipka (38:44):

We never know what to do with those somewhats [inaudible 00:38:46] it's like the best survey practice now to have that middle group. We have these methodologists, and they're like... But then it's almost a challenge because you can either put them with the top group, and it'd be like, look, everybody is at least someone, or you can put them in the... So, it's in the eye of the beholder for sure.

Marcus Johnson (39:02):

They have to be former researchers. Though.

Jennifer Pearson (39:05):

I was like a new research think tank called The Somewhats.

Marcus Johnson (39:07):

The Somewhat. That's so good. That is so good.