According to the latest study of Pew Research Center, around 26 percent of US adults get news through YouTube videos. The study was carried out after examining how does YouTube influence the users and what are its consumptions. The study also found out that the renowned and well-established news organizations have lost control over the news that Americans watch. 23 percent of people, or in other words, one out of five YouTube users have said that they get to know the news from channels associated established news firms. The exact another percent of people said they get their news by independent channels not affiliated with any news organization.
As per the studies, 49 percent of renowned news channels are associated with established news organizations, whereas 42 percent are independent channels. A very small 9 percent of channels were associated with other publishing organizations such as research centers, government agencies, etc.
Pew research ran a survey for detailed analysis on 12,638 American adults for 14 days that included days from January 6th to January 20th, 2020. The results somewhat came out like, 59 percent of people agreed that YouTube is an important source of news; on the other hand, 13 percent of consumers say that it is the most important.According to the Republicans and independents who are likely to lean Republican, YouTube's biggest problems include demonetization, political biasness, and censorship. Whereas, the biggest issues as per democrats and independents that lean democrats were harassment and false information.
Another discovery by the analysis was that four out of ten famous channels on YouTube were personality-driven which means, they are oriented around a particular individual. The individual could be an independent person or an employed journalist by a renowned news firm.
Pew also closely analyzed that how often do the YouTube channels highlight a conspiracy theory. After examining around 3,000 videos from the top 100 most viewed channels, it was found out that 21 percent of videos mentioning conspiracy theories were by independent channels and only 2 percent of videos by progressed news organizations.
From the records of December 2019, the videos that shared the major part were related to the Trump administration, which averaged as massive as 250,000 views. Meanwhile, other topics had 122,000 views on average.
