Forget the daily newspaper. More Americans are obtaining their news through Twitter and Facebook, a study by the Pew Research Center reveals.

Clear majorities of Twitter (63%) and Facebook users (63%) now say each platform serves as a source for news about events and issues outside the realm of friends and family. That’s a substantial increase from 2013 when about half of users (52% of Twitter users, 47% of Facebook users) said they got news from the social platforms. In addition, more users are turning to each other to fulfill their information needs.

Although Americans under 35 are somewhat more likely to obtain their news through the networks, the trend cuts across nearly every demographic group, including gender, race, age, education and household income.

Pursuing the News Business

Both networks are increasing their emphasis on news. Twitter is preparing its Project Lightning, feature. Expected to be released later this year, it will allow anyone – Twitter user or not – to view feeds curated by employees with newsroom experience. Twitter has already introduced a live video-streaming app, Periscope.

Facebook has launched Instant Articles that lets select media publishers run their articles directly on Facebook rather than linking to the publisher’s own websites. Although the Instant Articles initiative involves only a handful of media firms, many observers expect Facebook to accept many more. Facebook also introduced a “Trending” sidebar that lets users filter by news by topics. Facebook shares ad revenue generated from the articles with the publisher.

In announcing Instant Articles, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg positioned the initiative as a benefit to readers because Facebook could serve pages faster than the publishers. Facebook delivers news articles from the New York Times in seconds; on the Times’ own site, it now often takes a minute or more to open an article. The Pew survey indicates the Twitter and Facebook strategies are working.

The study may be a wakeup call emphasizing the importance of social media for traditional media organizations.

PR Implications

The trend toward consuming news through social networks has significant implications for public relations. It could alter how PR assesses and values media placements and how it creates content for distribution. The trend could change PR professionals’ relationships with media outlets as publishers modify job roles of their reporters and editors to meet the needs of social media networks. It could alter how PR releases and promotes announcements. PR pros with multimedia skills will gain a competitive advantage.

For PR, getting placement in news publications featured in Facebook and Twitter becomes even more important. In addition, because social networks use algorithms to select news articles for any given user based on that user’s previous interests, PR will have to become knowledgeable about the algorithms and figure out ways to gain wider or more targeted distribution within the social network for specific types of announcements or articles. It’s no longer a matter of getting the media placement. Now, getting distribution to the optimal number of social media viewers becomes a new issue to obtain maximum impact from media relations efforts.

Differences between Twitter and Facebook

The Pew study finds a significant overlap between the network users. One-in-five Facebook news users also get news on Twitter, and fully 78% of Twitter news users also find news on Facebook.

However, the two networks and their users show substantial differences. The proportion of Twitter users obtaining breaking news is almost twice as high as on Facebook. Facebook users are more likely to post and respond to feature content, while Twitter users are more likely to follow news organizations.

Twitter news users view a broader mix of topics. They are more likely than their counterparts on Facebook to report seeing news in four out of 11 topics: national government and politics, international affairs, business and sports.

In one demographic difference, women on Facebook are more likely than men to view stories about entertainment, health, and people and events in their community. Women on Twitter are more likely to see posts about entertainment, weather and traffic, crime, and health.

Bottom Line: The increasing number of social media users obtaining their news through Facebook and Twitter may have substantial repercussions for media publishers as well as public relations professionals. As the popularity of traditional media outlets continues to dwindle and the major social media networks position themselves as news sources, PR pros may need to re-evaluate their relationships with publishers and the social media powerhouses.

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William Comcowich

William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.