Nearly half of Taiwan users turn to YouTube for news: Survey

Taipei, June 25 (CNA) Almost half of Taiwanese get news from social video website YouTube as traditional media outlets scramble for strategies to counter social media's rising influence across the globe, the latest Reuters Institute report has found.

Forty-six percent of Taiwanese respondents turned to YouTube for news in the latest survey conducted from mid-January to the end of February for the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, compared to 38 percent in 2021.

Other than Facebook, other social media platforms, such as Line, Instagram, Tiktok and Threads, also showed growth of between 1-6 percentage points from the previous year, according to the report, released June 17.

Line ranked second among the social media platforms relied on by Taiwanese for news at 42 percent, followed by Facebook, which dropped two percentage points to 37 percent.

Instagram ranked fourth at 14 percent, followed by Tiktok's 10 percent and newcomer Threads' 8 percent, according to the report.

Meanwhile, traditional media outlets in Taiwan continued to see their popularity as a source for news decline, with TV news at 56 percent this year compared to 77 percent in 2017 and print media falling from 41 percent in 2017 to 14 percent in 2025.

Shrinking advertising income -- the result of diminishing popularity -- and the changing media environment have led a growing number of traditional outlets to upload their video news to YouTube, according to the report's Taiwan section, authored by Lin Lihyun (林麗雲), a National Taiwan University professor.

They are also adapting long-form stories into short videos for social platforms, Lin wrote in the report, which published its 14th edition this year.

At the same time, Taiwanese users' trust in news slid by 3 percentage points to 30 percent, which ranked 39th in the 48 markets the report surveyed.

The survey found that Taiwan is no different from other countries in terms of media environment and trends.

Lead author Nic Newman wrote in the executive summary that two emerging themes command attention: the rise of an alternative media ecosystem -- YouTubers, Tiktokers and podcasters -- and AI chatbots are being used as a source of news for the first time.

While the numbers are still small, AI chatbots are a source of news for 6 percent of Taiwan's news market.

An accelerating shift toward consuming news via social media and video platforms is further diminishing the influence of "institutional journalism," Newman wrote, adding that changing platform strategies mean that video continues to grow in importance as a source of news.

(By Chris Wang)
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