The recently concluded elections unfolded in an increasingly diverse and complex media environment. According to the Indian Election Study conducted by the Data Action Lab for Emerging Societies (DALES) over the 2024 polls, more than 3 in 5 users used a social media news source other than traditional media (television or newspaper), and nearly a quarter of users did not use traditional media at all for news. With a diverse array of sources and viewpoints, citizens have access to more and more information upon which to base their voting decisions. But media usage isn’t limited to just political information. Media shapes views on the economy and society at large, and even on events such as the Ambani wedding. And these issues, in turn, shape social and political attitudes.
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Access to media sources, social media in particular, is uneven. Many people do not have access to a mobile phone or a smartphone for personal use — even if their household has one — that is required for regular use of social media. To understand the contours of a shifting media space, it is useful to focus on a population that demonstrably has access to a mobile phone and plausibly to social media at large. In order to put some data to the problem, Artha Global’s Centre for Rapid Insights (CRI) conducted a national telephonic survey across 15,260 covering 421 of India’s 543 parliamentary constituencies, asking the question, “What is your primary source of news?” The National Family and Health Survey (NFHS) was used to adjust the results to make representative claims across age and gender in households that own a mobile phone.
Overall, we found that nearly the same percentage of people use YouTube as their primary source (33.6%) as television and newspapers (34.4%), although the poorest respondents, those in households without a two-wheeler or four-wheeler, report a higher rate of television and newspaper as a primary source (39.1%). A smaller but significant share of people use Facebook or Instagram (23.5%), with very few people using peer-to-peer social media such as WhatsApp or Telegram for news (8.5%). This is consistent with the recently released Digital Report 2024 by the Reuters Institute, which finds the popularity of Facebook dropping with an increasingly important role for platforms that can showcase short videos such as YouTube. Furthermore, the shift towards YouTube in the news space speaks to a preference for demand-driven, curated content as opposed to the peer-to-peer recommendations of Facebook or WhatsApp.
{{/usCountry}}Overall, we found that nearly the same percentage of people use YouTube as their primary source (33.6%) as television and newspapers (34.4%), although the poorest respondents, those in households without a two-wheeler or four-wheeler, report a higher rate of television and newspaper as a primary source (39.1%). A smaller but significant share of people use Facebook or Instagram (23.5%), with very few people using peer-to-peer social media such as WhatsApp or Telegram for news (8.5%). This is consistent with the recently released Digital Report 2024 by the Reuters Institute, which finds the popularity of Facebook dropping with an increasingly important role for platforms that can showcase short videos such as YouTube. Furthermore, the shift towards YouTube in the news space speaks to a preference for demand-driven, curated content as opposed to the peer-to-peer recommendations of Facebook or WhatsApp.
{{/usCountry}}When we disaggregate the data by age group, we find some striking trends. YouTube is universally popular, with the use of YouTube as a primary news source relatively consistent across all age groups. But younger age groups have noticeably shifted away from traditional media, with those age 18 to 30 using YouTube (35.4%) to a much greater extent than television or newspaper as a primary source (21.5%).
By contrast, the oldest population in our sample — those over 60 — use YouTube (32.5%) to a much lesser extent than traditional media (49.2%). We do see much higher usage in the younger groups on Facebook or Instagram, likely reflecting the growing popularity of Instagram as a source, with those aged 18 to 30 using Facebook or Instagram (34.8%) to a much greater extent than those above age 60 (12.1%). As wealthier and younger populations start to shift away from television and newspapers, the future for traditional media looks grim, possibly prompting many media houses to re-package their offerings for social media.
The inequality of media access by gender is apparent in our response patterns, with only 19% of those who respond to all survey questions being women. But the good news is that conditional on having mobile phone access, our data shows that men and women have relatively similar media consumption patterns (in fact, women avail of YouTube at slightly higher rates than men). As I have argued with co-authors Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur, the demand-driven nature of social media combined with personal access to mobile phones allows women to avail of information of their own choosing, unlike a television which can be controlled by the male head of household — and this allows women to form independent, informed opinions that can have genuine social and political consequences.
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This is something that we may already be seeing with different political parties cultivating bases of female voters. The demand-driven nature of social media content combined with demographic shifts in media consumption patterns will allow citizens to access diverse information than ever before.
This is the latest instalment in a new series that uses insights from rapid polling across the country on topical issues. The polls are run by the Centre for Rapid Insights (CRI), based at Artha Global. Neelanjan Sircar is its director.
The polls have a sample of about 13,000 to 15,000 households across India covering 421 of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies. NFHS data is then used to re-weight the data to be representative of households with mobile phones down to the assembly constituency level. The estimations themselves are done using the technique of multilevel modelling, which helps account for different caste, wealth, and spatial demographics in the measurement.