A 2012 Reuters Institute survey of online news consumers in the UK, US, Germany, France and Denmark found social media starting to challenge search engines as a route to news. In the UK, 30 per cent found news through search against 20 per cent on Facebook or Twitter; among young people the social figure rose to 43 per cent.
Not all sharing counted equally. The report identified a core of heavy news consumers, 7 per cent of the sample, who shared news more than twice as often as the average. Twitter was that group’s network of choice, which the report said “backs up a growing body of evidence around the special importance of Twitter for news”. People were also more likely to click a link from a friend than from elsewhere, matching a 2010 Canadian study that found readers twice as likely to take links from friends as from news organisations.
Facebook was the most important network for news, with 55 per cent of news sharing in the UK, ahead of email at 33 per cent and Twitter at 23 per cent. Part of that weight came from the social reader applications the Guardian and Washington Post had launched, which shared stories automatically as they were read.
The effect was uneven across brands: 21 per cent had come across a BBC story through social discovery, against 41 per cent for the Guardian and 46 per cent for the Independent. The newspapers also carried more of the commentary and opinion that provokes a reaction, while the BBC worked under impartiality guidelines.