Opinion – The use of social media for informational purposes is on the decline

In response to the newly passed Bill C-18, Meta confirmed its intention to block news media content from its Facebook and Instagram platforms. Inevitably, such an action would affect the digital information ecosystem as we know it.

The results of the Digital News Report*, an annual international survey of online news habits and perceptions of issues related to digital news, shed some interesting light on the current situation. For the purposes of this text, we will be interested in data from French-speaking Canada, produced from 95% Quebecois online samples of approximately 1000 adults from one year to the next, weighted according to the French-speaking population in the country. .

These data, collected in January and February, indicate that the use of social media for information purposes is on the decline (as is general interest in current events, for that matter), although these occupy now an important place in information habits. In 2023, 44% of French-speaking respondents in Canada indicated that they had learned about current affairs through social media in the week preceding the survey, while 52% had done so in 2022. This share is higher among 18-34 year olds (55%) than among the oldest (41%). For 19% of Francophones and for more than a third of 18-34 year olds (35%), social media is considered the main source of news. Even 9% of Francophones and 18% of 18-34 year olds indicate that they have learned only from social media in the week preceding the survey.

And Meta?

Both for general use and for reading, sharing and commenting on news, Facebook remains the social media of choice among French-speaking Canadians, even if its numbers are declining. In 2023, 46% of French speakers say they have interacted on Facebook with news content in the week preceding the survey (39% of 18-34 year olds and 48% of 35 year olds and over). And if we add Meta’s other platforms (Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp), the proportion is 56%, among both younger and older adults, which is even higher than the proportion of people who consider finding out about it. Indeed, we can transmit or comment on social media information learned elsewhere.

Half (50%) of French-speaking Facebook users who interact with the news there say they pay particular attention to the content of journalists or press companies, whether it be mainstream news media (37%) or alternative media (24%). This exceeds the share of respondents who say they pay attention to news on Facebook from sources like arts and sports celebrities (22%), social media personalities (12%) or politicians and activists (12%). ).

It therefore emerges, without great surprise, that the withdrawal of content from press companies does not correspond to a request from the public. Already, reports from both the company and the media, which have felt the consequences, suggest that the importance given to news in Facebook’s algorithms has diminished in the past year. And this, before Meta began to block access to content from press companies for certain users. Yet in the 2022 edition of the Digital News Report, a majority of Facebook (57%) and Instagram (54%) users in French-speaking Canada rated the amount of news media content reaching them as “adequate”. on the platform. They were slightly more numerous to find the presence of news insufficient (14% for Facebook, 20% for Instagram) than to consider that this presence was excessive (respectively 12% and 10%).

On the one hand, these figures raise questions about Meta’s real desire to remove news media content from it, knowing that this will likely have an impact on the use that a large proportion of French-speaking Canadian users make of Facebook and, potentially, on their interest in it or the time they spend there. On the other hand, as nature abhors a vacuum, this reinforces the impression that if Meta’s maneuvers materialize, the disappearance of news media from the group’s platforms will leave more room for actors for the secondary moment in the transmission of current affairs information, with the potential benefits and risks that this entails. Because contrary to what the company implies, it is difficult to believe that these contents are only incidental in the use that we make of a social media like Facebook.

*The Center for Media Studies is the Canadian partner of the Digital News Report. The survey is overseen by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. For more details on the methodology, you can consult cem.ulaval.ca.

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