Digital News Report 2023

This year’s report comes against the backdrop of a global cost-of-living crisis, a continuing war in the heart of Europe, and further climate instability across the world. In this context, a strong supply of accurate, well-funded, independent journalism remains critical, but in many of the countries covered in our survey, we find these conditions challenged by low levels of trust, declining engagement, and an uncertain business environment. Our report aims to bring new insights on these issues at what is a particularly difficult time for the industry as well as for many ordinary people. We look in more detail what is behind low engagement and selective news avoidance – and we explore public appetites for approaches that might combat this. More specifically, we look at the sources people use to inform themselves about their personal finances and the extent to which different groups find this type of information easy or difficult to understand. Perhaps the most striking findings in this year’s report relate to the changing nature of social media, partly characterised by declining engagement with traditional networks such as Facebook and the rise of TikTok and a range of other video-led networks. Yet despite this growing fragmentation of channels, and despite evidence that public disquiet about misinformation and algorithms is at near record highs, our dependence on these intermediaries continues to grow. Our data show, more clearly than ever, how this shift is strongly influenced by habits of the youngest generations, who have grown up with social media and nowadays often pay more attention to influencers or celebrities than they do to journalists, even when it comes to news. This twelfth edition of our Digital News Report, which is based on data from six continents and 46 markets, reminds us of the different conditions in which journalism operates in many parts of the world, but also about the common challenges faced by publishers around weak audience engagement and low trust in an age of abundant digital and social media. The overall story is captured in this Executive Summary, followed by chapters containing additional analysis, and then individual country and market pages.