Reuters Institute study: usage of Facebook for news has declined in a number of countries including the US, as messaging apps like WhatsApp gain popularity
Fewer people are using Facebook to discover and discuss news, as messaging apps such as WhatsApp gain in popularity, a study has suggested.
Context & Ripple Effects
This study marks a turn in the arc that began with Pew's 2015 finding that more Americans were getting news on Facebook and Twitter ([[a:831001]]), when the platform looked like an ever-growing news gateway. By 2018, Reuters Institute data shows that gateway narrowing: Facebook use for news is falling across several countries including the US, while messaging apps like WhatsApp pick up the discovery-and-discussion role.
The direction held after this story: the Institute's own 2023 Digital News Report found Facebook still dropping even as overall platform dependence grew ([[a:841067]]), and by 2024 WhatsApp Channels had become a meaningful traffic source for publishers, especially outside the US ([[a:875852]]) — evidence that the shift toward messaging was structural, not a blip.
First-order effects
- Publishers that built distribution strategies around Facebook referrals see their largest social audience shrink for news discovery and discussion in the affected countries.
- WhatsApp gains users who treat it as a news channel, moving sharing out of public feeds and into private conversations where publishers can't track or monetize reach directly.
Second-order effects
- Newsrooms respond by chasing the audiences that are growing instead: Instagram closes in on Twitter among under-25 news users ([[a:954709]]), forcing platform teams to spread effort across more, smaller networks.
- Publishers eventually build for messaging directly — WhatsApp Channels' late-2023 launch becomes a traffic line item for outlets, particularly for international readers, as social referral traffic keeps falling.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, news distribution splits between declining public-feed platforms and rising private messaging channels, weakening the shared-public-square model of news circulation.
- Fragmentation doesn't reduce dependence: the Institute's later reporting shows users leaning on platforms more overall even as any single platform matters less to publishers, keeping gatekeeper power concentrated.
The trend: News consumption is migrating from open social feeds like Facebook toward private messaging apps such as WhatsApp, fragmenting publisher distribution while deepening reliance on whichever platform hosts each audience.