WASHINGTON – News consumption is increasingly shifting from social medialike Facebook to messaging applications like WhatsApp, according to a studypublished Thursday which also found high levels of international publicconcern about fake news online.
The Reuters Institute report, which covers 37 countries in five continents,found that the use of social media for news fell by six percentage pointsin the United States compared to last year.
“Almost all the decline is due to a decrease in the discovery, posting andsharing of news in Facebook,” said lead author Nic Newman, a foundingmember of the BBC News website.
Facebook suffered its worst public relations disaster in its history when ahuge data privacy breach was revealed earlier this year.
The scandal saw many users around the world opt to move away from Facebook,and to spend more time on other apps like WhatsApp and Instagram — whichare also owned by Facebook. – APP/AFP