WhatsApp is becoming one of the prevailing ways
people discover and discuss news, according to a study. But use of the
messaging app appears to vary widely between countries.
In Malaysia, more than 50% of those surveyed said
they used WhatsApp for news at least once a week. But in the US, the figure was
only 3%, and in the UK it was 5%. The Digital News Report also indicates the
Brexit debate has led to growing mistrust of the UK's media.
It said only 43% of respondents declared that the
news could be trusted - down from 50% last year - with the BBC in particular
criticised for having both a pro-EU bias and failing to expose the
"distortions" of the leave campaign.
The research was carried out by the Reuters
Institute For The Study of Journalism and covered 34 countries in Europe, the
Americas and Asia, in addition to Taiwan and Hong Kong. It was sponsored by the
BBC and Google among others. A total of 71,805 people were questioned by YouGov
in January and February to generate its data.
The results indicate that Facebook remains the most
popular social media and messaging service for news engagement in all but two
countries - Japan and South Korea - where, respectively, YouTube and Kakao Talk
dominate.
But it adds that use of Facebook for news had dipped
in more than half of all the territories where a year-on-year comparison was
possible. By contrast, sharing news stories and chatting about them appears to
be on the rise within private instant messaging apps, and WhatsApp in
particular.
According to the report, WhatsApp is now the second
most popular social service for news in nine of the 36 locations, and the third
most popular platform in a further five countries. The authors provide several
potential explanations for WhatsApp's rise.
Its use of end-to-end encryption means messages can
only be seen by their senders and recipients, offering users protection against
being monitored by the authorities. "Some of the biggest growth we've seen
is in places like Turkey, where it's positively dangerous for people to express
anti-government preferences on open networks like Facebook," explained one
of the study's authors, Nic Newman. "As a result people are using closed
groups where they are more confident of expressing their views."
WhatsApp has also benefited from the fact that in
much of Latin America and elsewhere mobile networks are offering unlimited data
use within the program, so encouraging its use. Furthermore, several Spanish
and Chilean media outlets have embraced the app. Radio stations commonly ask
listeners to send in short voice recordings via the service, and local news
sites have added share-to-WhatsApp buttons to their pages.
However, Mr Newman said beyond that, it was
difficult for the media to take advantage of the app's popularity beyond
publishing stories that people want to share. "You can set up branded
areas or groups of people on your own, but it's incredibly clunky and time
consuming, and there are few tools to help," he explained. "And part
of WhatsApp's appeal is that users don't get interrupted by brands, making it a
very pure form of messaging. That's something [its developers] will really try
to hold to."
The report also highlights widespread concerns about
so-called "fake news". It highlights users' suspicions that social
media's lack of rules and use of viral algorithms have helped low-quality false
stories spread quickly.
But it says there is also strong distrust of the
mainstream media, in particular in Asian and central, southern and eastern
European countries, where the industry is perceived as being too close to
government.
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