The 2023 Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute published recently indicates a shift among online news consumers in India, who are increasingly turning to search engines and mobile news aggregators as their main source of news, thus moving away from websites of traditional outlets. The report underscores that among Indians who engage with news online, the majority favour watching or listening over reading the news.
In Scandinavian countries, well-established news brands continue to enjoy robust direct engagement with consumers for online news. In these markets, people still widely use social media platforms, but mainly for other activities rather than news consumption. In stark contrast, in regions such as Asia, Latin America, and Africa, social media reigns supreme as the main gateway to news, making traditional news outlets increasingly reliant on third-party traffic for audience reach.
Additionally, in specific Asia-Pacific markets such as Japan and Korea, local portals such as Naver and Yahoo! remain the dominant channels for news access. Meanwhile, in India and Indonesia, the role of mobile news aggregators as primary news sources is on the rise.
Chart 1 | The chart plots responses to the question, “Which of these was the main way in which you came across news in the last week: Mostly direct, mostly social, mostly aggregated?”
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In countries with a strong tradition of reading, such as Finland and the United Kingdom, approximately 80% of respondents still favour reading news online. Conversely, in India and Thailand, around 40% of people said they prefer to watch news online. Even more dramatically, over half (52%) of the respondents in the Philippines favour video news consumption.
Chart 2 | The chart plots responses to the question, “In thinking about your online habits around news and current affairs, which of the following statements applies best to you: Prefer to read, prefer to watch, prefer to listen?”
The Digital News Report has also identified alarming declines in both the consumption and dissemination of news in India. The data show that access to online news has sharply fallen by 12 percentage points between 2022 and 2023, a trend that is particularly pronounced on social media platforms, which saw an 11-point decline. These platforms have traditionally been the primary news sources for a younger demographic.
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Similarly, television, which commands a wide audience, has not been immune to this trend, experiencing a 10-point dip in viewership among our sample group comprising mainly younger and urban individuals. This decline in news engagement can be partially linked to the diminishing influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly since lockdown measures were relaxed in April last year.
Chart 3 | The chart shows sources of news for Indian news consumers between 2021 and 2023.
Chart 4 | The chart shows the share of respondents in India who said that they trust ‘most news most of the time’. In India, the overall trust in news has remained stagnant at 38% between 2021 and 2023.
Chart 5 | The chart plots the share of respondents across nations in the Asia-Pacific who said that they trust ‘most news most of the time’. With 38%, trust levels in India are among the lowest in the region.
In countries such as Finland (69%) and Portugal (58%), there are higher trust levels, with lower trust levels in countries with higher degrees of political polarisation such as the United States (32%), Argentina (30%), Hungary (25%), and Greece (19%).
Note: Data from India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa are representative of younger English-speakers and not the national population
Source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023. For the report, research was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2023.
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