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Traveling by public transport has always provided a good opportunity to test the changing ways of media consumption. Seventy years ago, you could see a sea of heads buried in it newspapers. Since about 15 years ago, eyes were attached to screens. At first, the picture today is the same, but that reveals a subtle difference. Previously those screens tended to display words; now you'll see endless video storytelling in bite-sized videos.
This latter change may seem more subtle than the former, but I'm not sure that's true.
Print has been around for decades, but perhaps the most underappreciated use of print media at all. The share of adults who read news articles online in the US has fallen from 70 to 50 percent since 2013. The share of Britons and Americans who now use no mainstream media at all has ballooned from 8 to 30 percent. While the going down of print has largely been a problem for newspapers, the decline of media consumption is a problem for society.
Social media rules now. Today, US adults under the age of 50 are more likely to get their news directly from social feeds than from a news article whether in print or online, according to the latest Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report. Digital News Report. The practice in many other countries is similar.
These changes have important consequences, some of which we are only beginning to appreciate.
At a basic level, going from a few hundred articles to 280 words in the 2010s meant a shift from even the least amount of detail and subtlety in media reporting to a world that is taken for granted. Trade-offs and complications are invisible.
This is not about short formats. Instant feedback in terms of likes and share counts quickly taught people that the best performing content is the norm. with exaggeration and hostility instead of being central and nuanced. The burgeoning mass media scene did not favor academia, but it was a boon to celebrities and radicals.
The latest phase of the digital media revolution, the rapid rise of the shortcut videoit's definitely a bigger change. Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are now dwarfed by Facebook, X and Bluesky among young people, and the same change continues among adults.
These platforms are very different. Text-based media still favors mainstream journalism, in part because pithy writing is helpful — and rewarding news in turn. With the pivot to video, the balance looks different. In TikTok and Instagram, money is charisma, power and distribution: being the first is less important than being more involved.
This is reflected in several Reuters data showing that even as social media began to destroy news websites, the majority. major news reports on text-based social platforms were still mainstream journalists and news organizations. In the world of video, people are more likely to turn to influencers and content creators than traditional sources, not just for lifestyle content but for news.
This is another thumb on the scale for people outside politics. The news media is by definition less flexible when it comes to appointing politicians, and independence from big legacy brands also means it is freer to capture and publish what the mainstream media won't. Research reveals the latest category of media influencers lean to the right according to their politics, but they also have different politics anti-establishment.
Changes in the way people listen to the news are part of the same pattern. Podcasts, which we usually listen to in private with earphones, are a very different beast than the radio, whose culture and content were formed at a time when a couple or a family can listen together in the car or in the kitchen. This facilitates both a fragmented landscape and greater comfort with a contrasting product. It's very easy for digital media to remain iconoclastic “Manosphere” shooting in this world than before.
In terms of form and function, tone and motivation, the emerging media landscape of 2024 is very different from that of 2014, let alone 2004 or 1994. It would be surprising if this had no impact on our politics.