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Report & Data Visualisation: Shaza Al Muzayen
Editor: Sakina Mohamed
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 12 (Bernama) -- News consumption has reached a turning point: social media now edges television and news websites as the most widely used source of news.
This changing mix of traditional and digital news sources is reflected in the 2026 edition of the annual Digital News Report, published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Across the 48 markets covered in 2026, social media was the most widely used source of news, averaging 54 percent. Television followed at 52 percent, while news websites were used by 51 percent.
In 2017, television led at 73 percent and news websites at 69 percent, while social media stood at 54 percent. Its move into first place therefore reflects the decline of the other two sources more than long-term growth in its own reach.
Malaysia’s shift is even more pronounced. Nearly seven in 10 respondents used social media for news in 2026, compared with 42 percent for news websites and 36 percent for television.
What stands out over the decade is not the growth of social media, which has remained above 60 percent since 2017, but the retreat of established news channels.
News website use fell 24 percentage points and television dropped 18 points. Print recorded the steepest fall at 31 points.
Radio remained a smaller and more volatile source, reaching 23 percent in 2026.
Among Malaysian respondents overall, AI chatbot use stood at 11 percent in 2026, compared with nine percent in 2025. Podcast use was eight percent, compared with nine percent the year before. With only two years of data available for both, it is too early to establish a longer-term direction.
Social media is not only where Malaysians consume news. Increasingly, it is how they find it.
In 2026, 63 percent discovered news through social media, compared with 44 percent through search engines and just 27 percent through direct visits to news websites and apps.
Other routes remained less common, with news aggregators and mobile alerts both at 20 percent, while email stood at 12 percent.
Taken together, the figures suggest that the change is not simply a move from traditional to digital media. Social media now plays a dual role: it is both a source of news and the main route through which Malaysians discover it.
The platforms carrying that news are changing too.
WhatsApp overtook Facebook as Malaysia’s most widely used platform for news in 2026, although only narrowly, at 50 percent versus 49 percent.
The bigger shift, however, has been towards video. TikTok surged from just two percent in 2019 to 45 percent in 2026, while YouTube climbed from 26 percent to 41 percent over the decade.
Together, their growth points to video becoming a much larger part of how Malaysians find, watch and share news.
The platform mix also continues to change. Threads reached 11 percent in 2026 after appearing in the survey at two percent in 2024, while X fell to nine percent after peaking at 22 percent in 2022.
That growing dependence on social platforms also raises a harder question: how carefully are users checking what reaches them?
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s Internet Users Survey 2024 found that 61.5 percent of internet users shared news, while the proportion checking its validity and source reliability fell from 79.2 percent to 70.7 percent.
The survey also noted growing reliance on automated or platform-based fact-checking. It added that trust in online content was declining amid the rise of fake news, particularly political and health misinformation.
Social media crossed generations, with usage ranging from 65 to 71 percent across every age group in 2026.
The sharper differences appeared in the use of other news sources. Respondents aged 55 and above recorded higher use of news websites, television, radio and print than younger age groups, while younger Malaysians were more likely to turn to newer formats.
That contrast was especially clear with AI chatbots. Twenty-one percent who use them in 2026 were among those aged 18 to 24. A mere six percent of the respondents were aged 45 and above.
Podcast use showed a similar, though less pronounced, pattern, with younger respondents recording the highest use.
The age divide was therefore not a simple split between digital and traditional media. Older Malaysians remained active on social media while continuing to use established news sources at higher rates, whereas younger users were more likely to add newer formats such as AI chatbots and podcasts to their news habits.
A study of Malaysian Generation Z published in Media Asia identified virality, news awareness, the ubiquity of news and credibility as themes in how participants understood news. The findings offer some context for a media environment in which news appears alongside entertainment, personal updates and commentary rather than occupying a space of its own.
Gender differences were modest for social media but considerably wider for some established news sources.
Social media use was almost identical among women and men, at 69 and 68 percent respectively. News websites showed the biggest gap, however, reaching 48 percent of men compared with 36 percent of women.
The pattern was less pronounced for AI chatbots. In 2026, they were used for news by 12 percent of men and 11 percent of women, after use among women rose from seven percent the previous year. Podcast use showed a wider difference, at 10 percent among men and six percent among women.
For Malaysians, the shift today is not simply about where news is consumed, but how it is discovered, shared and encountered. Traditional sources remain important, especially among older audiences, but social platforms now play a much greater role in determining what news reaches people in the first place.
Note on the data:
The Digital News Report is based on annual online surveys conducted by YouGov. For the 2026 edition, fieldwork was carried out between mid-January and the end of February. The Malaysian sample comprised 2,076 respondents, while annual samples from 2017 to 2026 ranged from 2,004 to 2,108 respondents.
The number of markets covered increased from 36 in 2017 to 48 in 2025 and 2026, meaning the international trend figures are annual averages across the markets surveyed rather than a fixed group. Respondents could select more than one news source, so the figures do not add up to 100 percent or represent market shares.
-- BERNAMA