The @risj_oxford report on news and the 2019 election is, as usual, very helpful.
1. News & views shared by people in social networks was as influential as mainstream media for under 35s.
1. News & views shared by people in social networks was as influential as mainstream media for under 35s.
A lot of this originates in mainstream media (e.g political analysis, investigative, clips of TV interviews) and under 35s are cumulatively a much smaller voting group than over 35s.
But this is still a big change - we're more influenced by what our peers think and share.
But this is still a big change - we're more influenced by what our peers think and share.
2. TV debates directly influenced around 1/3 of voters. But very likely they influenced more because of social sharing.
3. A strikingly low 14% of people say they saw an advert on social media. Even given 10% of people offline, and targeting of adverts, it's likely that a lot of social media advertising doesn't cut through or isn't understood to be an ad.
4. Social media attacks on the BBC have cut through - but only to a fairly small minority - 19% of social media news users.
5. And bias by the media is more of a concern to Labour voters - likely because of the relatively large influence of right wing newspapers online as well as offline.
6. Social media users were in *less* of a bubble than those who didn't. This is similar to US research.
7. The BBC is a key reason that people don't stay in bubbles - because people see or hear its reporting on TV, radio and online.
8. Only the Mail Online comes anywhere close to the BBC in online influence.
9. We don't know how much time people spent on news websites - because it's hard to distinguish reading about celebrities on the Mail website from reading news there. On reach, the Mail is similar to the Guardian - even though it *appears* to be read for three times as long.
10. And a reminder: Even during elections people spend very little time thinking about politics - only 3% of their media time spent on news sites. At 16 minutes a week this is not much more than before the campaign.
11. Finally some reassurance. Less than 10% of people read the most extreme websites like The Canary, RT etc.
12. One more thing. Process still an absurdly high proportion of election stories (see this list of top stories by week) compared to policy.
While research from Loughborough University, presented last week, suggest it's falling, it's still a challenge to people understanding choices at an election.
