• Men far outnumber women as news influencers on social media, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.
• This contrasts with other parts of the creator industry dominated by women.
• As trust in legacy media declines, influencers are becoming an increasingly important part of the news ecosystem.

News reporting was once a male-dominated enterprise, led by the likes of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. This gender skew is reemerging in the latest news platform: social media.

Male influencers far outnumber female creators when it comes to delivering news on social media, according to a new study. to work From Pew Research Center.

Pew analyzed a sample set of 500 news influencers with at least 100,000 followers and found that 63% were men and 30% were women. The remaining 7% were either non-binary or of undetermined gender.

This gender difference stands out for several reasons:

• First, there is a much narrower gender divide among working U.S. journalists (51% men and 46% women), according to Pew’s 2022 report questionnaire.
• Secondly, women generally outnumber men in the influencer industry. Influencer agency Izea saw this: gender difference Comparing the share of sponsorship deals won by women (77%) and men (21%) in 2022.

As creators take on a larger role in educating the public about current events, the gender gap among social media news influencers could shape which stories reach people.

There was gender discrimination on social media hotkey problem Both parties in the 2024 US presidential election courted influencers Creating content around their campaigns.

Donald Trump and JD Vance may have benefited from this media strategy focused on male influencers. Candidates went for a walk type This year, we aim to reach young men by appearing on stage with Joe Rogan, Nelk Boys and Adin Ross. said John Della Volpe, polling director at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. described “my brother’s whisper” strategy. Exit surveys It suggests that Trump is gaining ground among young men in 2024 compared to his 2020 race.

Kamala Harris tapped a diverse range of creators to reach young women; including an interview with “Call Her Daddy” podcaster Alex Cooper.

Harris has also made offers to reach men, such as appearing on shows like the sports podcast “All The Smoke” and “The Howard Stern Show.” However, after the election loss, some political commentators was close The decision not to appear on Rogan’s podcast, which consistently ranks at the top on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

According to Pew’s analysis, there was a much smaller (and reverse) gender gap in the overall audience for news content on social media. 23 percent of U.S. adult women said they hear from news influencers regularly, compared to 19 percent of men.

“The influencers who provide news and the people who get it may not necessarily look the same,” Galen Stocking, a senior computational social scientist at Pew who co-authored the report, told BI.

This suggests that a strategy that tries to reach female voters by focusing on podcasts produced by women may miss a portion of the electorate.

Among teens, 37% of those ages 18 to 29 said they regularly hear from news influencers, according to the data.

Are news influencers widening the political gender gap in the United States?

Young people are increasingly divided along partisan lines. Men between the ages of 18 and 29 are becoming more conservative, while women in this age group are becoming more liberal. Gallup poll. However, the extent to which media diets contribute to this change is more difficult to investigate.

Pew’s sample of news influencers was somewhat conservative; 27% identified as right-leaning and 21% as left-leaning. Still, only about half of news influencers openly shared their political orientation.

Whatever their impact on partisanship, it’s clear that creators are taking on a larger role in shaping the information landscape as traditional newsrooms lose some trust. Fifty-nine percent of U.S. adults surveyed by Pew in September said they have a lot or some confidence in information from national news organizations; This rate was 76 percent in 2016. Trust in information from social media remained stable over the same period; % to 37%.

YouTube had the largest gender gap, TikTok had the smallest

The gender gap among news influencers in Pew’s study was fairly consistent across all platforms. The only exception was TikTok, where 50% of news creators were men and 45% were women.

TikTok has become one increasingly important news source Among young adults who turn to the app for news commentary and current events videos.

YouTube saw the largest gender gap among news influencers; According to other researchers, this difference also appeared in YouTube viewers. A Spring survey of Americans ages 18 to 29 by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics found that 31% of young men turn to YouTube to learn about current events, compared to 20% of women.