Updated · Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard · Jun 15
RISJ Finds News Sites Lose Ground in 30 of 48 Markets as Chatbot News Use Hits 10%
Updated
Updated · Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard · Jun 15
RISJ Finds News Sites Lose Ground in 30 of 48 Markets as Chatbot News Use Hits 10%
3 articles · Updated · Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard · Jun 15
Summary
Social media and video platforms now outrank publishers’ own sites and apps as news sources in 30 of 48 markets, according to RISJ’s 2026 Digital News Report based on nearly 100,000 respondents.
Publishers are losing audience even as digital news consumption grows elsewhere: use of news websites and apps fell 5 percentage points from 2023 to 2026, and video viewing on owned platforms dropped 5 points from 2025 and 10 since 2021.
chatbots are gaining as a supplementary source, with global news use rising to 10% from 7% last year and reaching 16% among under-35s, led by Asia, Africa and Latin America.
That shift brings little traffic back to publishers: only 4% of chatbot users said they often or always click through to cited sources, versus 19% from search and 17% from social media.
The report suggests the bigger problem is retention, especially among younger audiences, raising the risk that some users leaving legacy and publisher platforms may drop out of news altogether.
As AI chatbots become the new front page, how can original journalism survive the death of the click?
With younger audiences trusting individual creators over news brands, is the era of the institutional newsroom ending?
Digital News Report 2026: Social Platforms Overtake Traditional Media as Trust Hits Record Lows
Overview
The RISJ Digital News Report 2026 highlights major changes in how people consume news, showing that audiences are shifting away from traditional platforms and changing their engagement with information. A new interactive tool, developed by Lars Verspohl and Ashish Singh with the Reuters Institute, lets users explore detailed data for their own markets and compare across countries, using over a decade of tracked variables. This tool, available in English and Spanish, breaks down data by gender, age, education, and political leaning. The report aims to provide critical insights into these ongoing transformations in the news landscape.