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One of the hardest questions to answer during the election is also one of the simplest. What were Americans watching and reading as they voted? Even a week later, the numbers are still not totally clear.
In 2016, when Donald Trump first won the presidency, the bulk of Americans followed along through a few major networks and publishers. Less than a decade later, that is no longer reliably the case. While it is possible for major news media companies to break through, itâs not a predictable or even easily understandable phenomenon, as social media platforms change alongside their viewers.
âThere are no traditional publishers left on X doing any numbers that matter anymore,â said Ryan Broderick, who runs the internet-focused newsletter Garbage Day. âThey’re not even close to the top. And there are no news publishers that are growing in a meaningful way on YouTube compared to the biggest channels.â
On TikTok, the news influencer Dylan Page was one of the top news sources for election night. His video announcing the calling of the election got over a million engagements and over six million views. That is roughly the same number as MSNBCâs average on live broadcast for Election Day, and approaching the ten million who watched on Fox News.
âWe’re definitely seeing news influencers on TikTok who are practically doing their own breaking news, reporting on events and getting way more engagement than I would say a [news] publisher is getting on the same social channel,â said Haley Corzo of NewsWhip, the social media engagement tracking firm.
Over half of US adults get at least some news from social media sites, according to a Pew Research study on American news diets from September. Especially for younger audiences, digital platforms have proved to be the dominant news source. About half of TikTok users under thirty use it for news. On Instagram, 79 percent of users forty-nine and under see breaking news events as they are unfolding on the site.
âI think it is kind of indicative of how this entire election has felt since the launch, which is that no one is really watching the same election,â Broderick said. While people in his group chat were sending around screenshots of the New York Timesâ âNeedleâ graph, a picture uploaded to the Reddit subgroup r/pics, captioned as Donald Trumpâs âfinal political rally,â was one of the biggest hits on the site for election nightââin the end there were over eight thousand comments.
On Twitch, Broderick says, the gaming streamer Hasan Piker was âdoing something bigâ for election night, although he doesnât get Twitch numbers until later this month. InfoWars, the conspiracy theory media site, broadcast its own livestream on X, complete with hosts on the ground and in its recording studio; it received over six million views. Elon Musk also had three out of the top ten posts on X for Election Day. On Instagram, Donald Trumpâs account received the most action; four of the top ten posts from November 5 were his. One video urging people to stay in line to vote received almost three million likes, the top post on Instagram overall that day.
âThis is very much why Elon Musk is so interested in buying Twitter and overhauling it,â Broderick said. âMusk and Trump want to create an environment where they can speak directly to supporters and crowd out traditional broadcasters, traditional journalists, traditional outlets.â
Broderick notes that itâs not just about what people are tuning in to, but what they are able to tune in to. A hallmark of digital media is that it is free to use. âA lot of people under the age of, let’s say, forty-five probably don’t have a full cable package,â he said. If they have access to a streaming service, âthey were probably watching whatever network the streaming app is putting there.â The streaming service Max, for example, had CNN at the top of its recommended offerings on election night. Peacock has NBC and MSNBC; Disney has ABC; Fox News has its own streaming network.
âDepending on your demographic, depending on what you’re interested in, depending which way you’re leaning, you are getting your news in a way that suits your views on a different platform,â Kevin Twomey, the senior vice president of marketing at NewsWhip, said.
The candidatesâespecially Trumpâappeared to move in this direction before the news media itself did. Trump anecdotally received a huge boost from appearing on Joe Roganâs podcast, while Kamala Harris appeared on Call Her Daddy. âI think that one of the major things that everyone is trying to figure out now is: In a world where there is no central feed that we’re all watching, there’s no agreed-upon set of news channels, how do you communicate?â Broderick said.
As for print, NewsWhip found that almost a hundred thousand English-language articles about the election were published across social media platforms globally on Election Dayââa 110 percent increase compared with the previous day. And there was one old-media anomaly.
The New York Times did exceptionally well on Facebook, which Corzo found mysterious: there were no signs the company had done anything outside the norm to prompt such a bump. Broderick likewise described the Timesâ performance as an anomalyâthe company had never ranked on Garbage Dayâs Facebook ratings before this month. His tracking showed that four of the five top links shared to Facebook in the month of October were from the Times. âNo other news outlet on any other platform is doing as well as the New York Times is on Facebook,â Broderick said. He doesnât have a clear explanation.
For the analysts, it was the exception that proved the rule. Based on NewsWhipâs tracking, the days of legacy media dominating the news space on digital media platforms are gone. âThis rise of the news influencerâor the news creator, whatever you want to call itâthat’s something that is going to be really important for people, because they’re the new New York Times,â Twomey said.
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