Lose "Terrain" Facebook -The other social media that are ... pushing

Fewer people now use Facebook to read and discuss news as other media like WhatsApp is gaining ground.

This is what the new Digital News Report of the Reuters Institute for Journalism Study at the University of Oxford has said.

The decline in Facebook's popularity is mainly attributed to the growing concern of several international users about the violation of their personal data and misinformation through fake news. The recent change in Facebook's algorithms, which now gives less priority to news and higher on posts from friends and relatives, has also played a role.

The new report is based on an online sample survey of YouGov to about 74,000 people in 37 countries, including Greece. It shows, among other things, that younger users tend to use alternative sources (WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) to get informed about the news of the day, partly because they want more privacy to talk about.

Within four years, according to the BBC and the Reuters agency, the percentage of those claiming to be informed through WhatsApp, which was created in 2009 and 2014, has been acquired by Facebook, like Instagram, has tripled to 15%. In countries like Turkey, where it is dangerous to openly express their views on topical issues, WhatsApp's share is much higher. In many countries WhatsApp is more important than Twitter to inform citizens.

In the United States, the percentage of Facebook users has dropped by 9% compared to 2017, while the decrease is 20% in the younger age group. A similar trend is recorded in other developed countries. Anxious about fake news is 54% of users worldwide.

Rates are higher in countries such as the USA, Brazil and Spain, where strong political polarization is combined with the high use of social media. Overall, the trust in the news reported that they had 44% of the respondents, but only 23% trust the news they find on social networks.

On the other hand, the survey found that users are not in a good mood to start paying online media subscriptions. Also, more and more people are hearing news either through smart intelligent speakers (Amazon Echo, Google Home etc) or via podcasts, and it seems to be losing interest in watching videos with news content in Europe and the US.

In the United States, Wall Street Journal gathers the highest levels of credibility among the media (conservatives rely more on Fox News and the left on CNN), while in Britain the BBC.