Beyond staying in touch with friends and filling up spare time, keeping up with news and current affairs is in fact the most important motivation for using social media, says Global Web Index based on its experience across the 34 markets that it tracks. Four in 10 internet users cite this globally, with those in the Middle East & Africa being particularly enthusiastic about getting their news from social platforms.
These attitudes impact behaviors at a platform-specific level. In particular, Twitter’s role as a news aggregating network shines through: half of Twitter users say they gather news from social media – putting them ahead of Facebookers and Snapchatters – while reading a news story is now the most popular Twitter activity among those tracked by GWI.
