Cable news has had a tremendous impact on how people consume news. We discuss the growth and impact of cable news including the good, bad and downright ugly.
Changes to the Facebook Algorithm Decreased News Visibility Between 2021-2024
Platforms, especially Facebook, are primary news sources in the US. In its widely criticized "War on News," Meta algorithmically deprioritized news and political content. We use data from 40 news organizations (5,243,302 Facebook posts, 7,875,372,958 user reactions) and 21 non-news pages (396,468 posts; 1,909,088,308 reactions) between January 1, 2016 and February 13, 2025 to examine how these changes influenced news visibility on the platform. Reactions to news declined by 78% between 2021 and 2024 while reactions to non-news pages increased, indicating targeted suppression of news visibility. Low-quality sources were especially suppressed, yet the 2025 end to "War on News" increased user reactions to news, especially low-quality ones. These changes do not reflect decreased news supply, Facebook user base, or interest in news over this period.
You couldn't create a more anti-news internet if you tried
What behavioral economics can add to the story of news decline.
Ground News
The biggest source for breaking news around the world. Compare headlines across the political spectrum using media bias ratings driven by data.
News Influencers Fact Sheet
About one-in-five U.S. adults say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media, and this is especially common among younger adults.
News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
News is bad for you. It leads to fear and aggression. It hinders your creativity and makes you sick. We should stop consuming it, says Rolf Dobelli, who's abstained for years
Artificial Intelligence in the News: How AI Retools, Rationalizes, and Reshapes Journalism and the Public Arena
<p>Download the pdf here. Executive Summary Despite growing interest, the effects of AI on the news industry and our information environment — the public arena — remain poorly understood. Insufficient attention has also been paid to the implications of the news industry’s dependence on technology companies for AI. Drawing on 134 interviews with news workers […]</p>
Why Don’t We Learn from Social Media? Studying Effects of and Mechanisms behind Social Media News Use on General Surveillance Political Knowledge
Does exposure to news affect what people know about politics? This old question attracted new scholarly interest as the political information environment is changing rapidly. In particular, since c...
Following news on social media boosts knowledge, belief accuracy and trust
Many worry that news on social media leaves people uninformed or even misinformed. Here we conducted a preregistered two-wave online field experiment in France and Germany (N = 3,395) to estimate the effect of following the news on Instagram and WhatsApp. Participants were asked to follow two accounts for 2 weeks and activate the notifications. In the treatment condition, the accounts were those of news organizations, while in the control condition they covered cooking, cinema or art. The treatment enhanced current affairs knowledge, participants’ ability to discern true from false news stories and awareness of true news stories, as well as trust in the news. The treatment had no significant effects on feelings of being informed, political efficacy, affective polarization and interest in news or politics. These results suggest that, while some forms of social media use are harmful, others are beneficial and can be leveraged to foster a well-informed society.
How we decide what news is important, and why that process maybe flawed
Have you ever thought about the type of news that populates on your Facebook feed? Where does it come from and how is it specifically…
Opinion: Losing the Local Journalism Initiative leaves communities in the dark
With more outlets vying for federal funding, why are national outlets opening up new bureaus in communities with healthy media ecosystems?
How Social Media Brings Out the Worst in Us
A new book argues that social media does more harm than good and we might be happier and healthier using it less.
The death of the newsfeed — Benedict Evans
What do we do now that there’s more in the newsfeed than we can possibly read? Can the algorithmic sample ever actually work, or do we swing back to 1:1 messaging? How do Stories rebundle that? And what happens to all the traffic that the newsfeed provides?
The Rise of the Right-Wing Media Machine
This conservative media machine now rivals—and may well surpass—the power and the influence of the old-line press. It holds sway over much of the national agenda, deciding which ideas and...
Push journalism vs. pull journalism
Let's experiment with making news products so relevant that people pull them into their lives
The Metric Media network runs more than 1,200 local news sites. Here are some of the non-profits funding them.
<p>This is the first part of a two-part investigation. The second piece can be found here. As local news outlets across the US struggle to stay afloat, pop-up newsrooms are filling the void. Organizations with ties to political parties, special-interest groups, and lobbyists have emerged under the guise of news. One of the biggest such […]</p>
Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News
I grew up believing that following the news makes you a better citizen. Eight years after having quit, that idea now seems ridiculous—that consuming a particularly unimaginative information produ...