2024 Digital News Report out now, documenting scale and scope of 'platform resets' and much more. Team effort by @nicnewman @richrdfletcher Craig Robertson @amyross87 and partners, covering 47 markets. Report Follow #DNR24 A few highlights in thread 1/9.

"Neither Prof Przybylski nor Prof Etchells dispute the grave threat of certain online harms, such as grooming and exposure to explicit or harmful content. But both argue [the]current debate around screen time is in danger of driving it further underground"

There is increasing interest in the possibility of using legislation to proactively shape what we see online. I wrote more here for @politiken about the principled and practical questions - if you pick winners, you also create losers

Commission pushed ahead despite calls for a pause (including from some big EU companies), got key EU tech co and most of the large US ones to sign the voluntary Code, but judging from this statement they lost much of the creative industries along the way

Many governments are talking AI and tech deregulation - but what about the public? New survey suggests citizens across the six countries covered "are not in favor of the recent push for deregulation and allowing AI innovation to progress unchecked".

Still, many of our respondents do not go to news, and esp. those with lower levels of formal education and those who are more disengaged from conventional forms of politics, are less likely to say they would turn to news media. All that and more here 3/3.

Generally, the most widely identified are news sources that the respondent trusts, official sources, and search engines. Overall, we find that most people identify two or more sources they might turn to, with trusted news sources generally one of, or the, most widely named. 2/3.

Much of the public is concerned about what is real and fake when it comes to online news. So what do people do if and when they want to check something important in the news that they suspect may be false, misleading, or fake? . I wrote about it here 1/3

RT @ReutersPR: Reuters, AFP, AP and BBC News issued the following joint statement on July 24, 2025: .

3) Meanwhile publisher visibility in Google Search continue to decline Enders Analysis suggests. (Vast majority of decline predates AI Overviews. So far they seem to mostly impact high-volume, low click-through rate celebrity and informational queries) 4/4.

2) ”Google says AI Overviews are driving 10 per cent more queries in searches where they appear and haven’t dented revenue. Paid clicks were up 4 per cent year on year, the company said in a call with analysts” the @FT reports 3/4.

1) “Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links [than] users who do not see one” and “are more likely to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with an AI summary” @pewresearch finds 2/4.

More zero-click searches, same revenue for Google, less visibility for publishers?. Three things to read together on (1) how users respond to AI summaries, (2) what the company says it means for volume of queries and revenue, and (3) outside analysis on publishers’ visibility 1/4.

Game on!.

As always, I recommend reading @Ofcom's work. It is careful, serious about engaging with evidence, and, as here, willing to look towards possible futures beyond the status quo. 5/5.

Such legislation would be hard in most EU member states, but as and when AVMSD is revised, those of us in the EU too can look forward to discussions of if and how one can intervene politically in prominence on digital platforms - picking winners, but also, implicitly, losers 4/5.

There is both a principled decision here about how far one wants politicians involved in platforms’ ranking decisions and pragmatic questions about WHO one would then want to give greater prominence. We have to keep in mind that attention is likely to be a zero-sum game. 3/5.

There are at least 3 different facets to what Ofcom is floating. 1) Boost public service media. But also, in passing, two other intriguing possibilities -. 2) Boost new providers with PSM-like qualities made by new non-PSM providers. 3) Boost some existing private providers. 2/5.

What would it look like if politicians used legislation to more actively shape what we see on digital platforms?. @Ofcom has suggested the UK government “may wish to consider legislation” to ensure greater prominence of specific providers on platforms. 1/5.

The results are broadly aligned with important work pioneered by a number other academics we build on - part of the added value here from our point of view is the comparative, international design esp. including both Brazil and India to overcome WEIRD bias in much research 6/6.

The difference between corrections without a link and corrections with a link was not statistically significant. The corrections had no spillover effects on uncorrected true and false posts. 5/6.