(Photo: Atilgan Ozdil/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
South African news consumers are increasingly concerned about the spread of misinformation and fake news, according to a new report on digital media trends.
According to the 2024 Reuters Digital News Report, concern about misinformation has increased by 6 percentage points over the past year and now stands at 81%, significantly higher than the global average of 59% concern about misinformation.
Interest in South African politics has also fallen to 70% from 81% in 2021, according to the report, not ideal for a country that held a general election on May 29.
Concerns over misinformation can undermine trust in the media.
“Disinformation and misinformation are contributing factors, as is the proliferation of competing sources of information, including some that only aggregate for-profit disinformation,” said Chris Roper, deputy CEO of Code for Africa, an African nonprofit digital democracy institute and data journalism network that helped produce the report.
The report highlights that distrust in South Africa's media is also driven by infighting between news organisations.
“Some compromised media outlets continue to spread misinformation, leading to unpleasant exchanges between media outlets. The most obvious example is Independent MediaContinued publication of misinformation about News 24 and Daily Maverick“This is clearly retaliation for investigative journalism by these newspapers,” Roper said in the report.
Trust in South African media is at 57%, unchanged from last year – down from 61% in 2022 but still up from 48% during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
“Despite some sophisticated examples of conscious disinformation campaigns and politically motivated attacks on the media, trust in news brands appears to have remained stable for the most part. As always, trust and credibility do not necessarily go hand in hand.”
According to public opinion, the most trusted news brands are: News 24 (83%) E-commerce (81%) A.B.C. (79%), The Sunday Times (75%), Mail & Guardian and Citizen The answer was 71%.
The report comes days after it was reported that Media24 would be closing several of its major print publications. City Press, LaPorte, Bield and Daily Sun During October.
This comes as print media is facing significant financial constraints due to rising distribution costs, declining advertising revenues and a shift in readership to online platforms. Print circulation is also on the decline.
In his report, Roper also highlighted the closure of two other newspapers. Pretoria News and Weekend post.
“The South African National Editors' Forum laments the impact these cuts are having on diversity and pluralism of voice in the newsroom,” he said.
The report found that online, print, television and other social media have all declined as news sources, with print now at 25%.
Asked about the future of media in South Africa, Roper said: “I think the old model has been irretrievably broken, but there are still opportunities to produce relevant and important news within our larger news ecosystem.”
The platforms people get their news from are diversifying, with many consumers turning to TikTok. The short-form video-sharing platform saw the strongest growth among news platforms, increasing usage by 6 percentage points to 28%, while YouTube increased by 1%. Facebook, WhatsApp and X all saw declines as news sources.
Globally and generally, younger people, those with lower incomes and those with lower education tend to trust the news less, including those who feel less “watched” or underserved by the news media, the report said.