Sep 11, 2018 - Economy

Reddit's rising popularity as a news platform

Reddit — not Facebook or Twitter — is the social media site where the highest portion of users are exposed to news, according to a new study from Pew Research Center. This is up from last year, when Twitter was surveyed as having the highest share of users mining news on its platform.

Adapted from Pew Research Center; Note: Survey conducted July 30–Aug. 12, 2018; Axios Visuals

Why it matters: As Reddit becomes a more popular destination for news, it too will need to focus on the dangers of misinformation on its platform. For example, a recent report suggests that Reddit users flagged Iran's fake news campaign on the platform a year ago, but that executives ignored the warnings.

  • Reddit's audience has by far the biggest proportion of male users to female users out of all the companies surveyed. It also has the second-most educated audience, next to LinkedIn.
  • Yes, but: Facebook's user base is much larger than Reddit's, so proportionately more people still get news on Facebook than Reddit.
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