Sep 11, 2018

Reddit's rising popularity as a news platform

Sara Fischer

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.

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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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