42% of Canadians get their news through social media: Study
Share
Article content
Canadians love getting their news — fake or not — through social media.
This is according to the Pew Research Center, which released a new study that shows out of 17 advanced countries, Canada ranks second only to South Korea when it comes to using social media for news.
About 27% of Canadians get their news information several times a day in contrast to 47% of South Koreans at the top of the list and 15% of Japanese at the bottom of the survey.
“Across countries, a global median of 42% say they use the internet to get news at least once a day (either once a day or several times a day). Another 20% go online less than once a day to get news and 35% say they never do so,” reads the survey released Thursday.
Article content
The study also takes into account, 21 emerging and developing countries who are likely to use social media for news and found Lebanon as the most likely at 42% and Tanzania at the bottom at 8%.
Looking at the total of 38 countries listed in the survey, South Korea still ranks highest at 57% overall and Canada trailing next at 42%.
“Compared with internet use for news – where the relationship between national economic status and online news use is evident – social media news use is not strongly related to country-level wealth. People in advanced economies (median of 36%) use social media daily for news at similar rates to those in emerging or developing economies (33%),” said the report.
“In almost all countries surveyed, people who are younger, are more highly educated and have a higher income are more likely than their counterparts to use social networking sites to get news daily,” it added.
jyuen@postmedia.com
