- News influencers – People who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) or YouTube.
- Political orientation – A measure of a news influencer’s partisan or ideological views. A right-leaning news influencer is one who publicly expresses that they identify as a Republican or conservative or support Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. A left-leaning news influencer is one who publicly expresses that they identify as a Democrat, liberal or progressive or support Vice President Kamala Harris (or supported President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race) in the 2024 election. This information was found in the bio, profile picture, banner image, pinned posts or recent posts on an influencer’s social media account, any personal website or professional page, and prominent media coverage.
- Values and identities – Language or imagery in the bio, profile picture, banner image or pinned posts on an influencer’s social media account that expresses specific beliefs or identities.
- News organization affiliation – An influencer with this affiliation is one who either currently works for or previously worked for a news organization, as well as freelancers who have regularly contributed to news organizations. A news organization can be any news outlet that has a staff and multiple bylines. Researchers considered affiliated influencers to have this background regardless of their news organization’s political orientation, audience size or primary publishing method (digital, TV, print, etc.).
- Major social media sites – The five primary sites we studied, chosen based on audience size and the presence of discussion about news: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube.
What is a news influencer?
In this study, we use the term “news influencers” to refer to individuals who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) or YouTube. News influencers can be journalists who are or were affiliated with a news organization or independent content creators, but they must be people and not organizations.
Refer to the methodology for more about how we identified news influencers.
Once we had a sample of 500 popular news influencers to analyze, our researchers combed through each account to characterize who these influencers are. This chapter looks at news influencers’ gender, political orientation, and expression of particular values and
identities.
We also looked at whether each influencer is or used to be affiliated with a news organization; details are discussed in Chapter 4. We were unable to code for other attributes of news influencers, such as race, ethnicity and age.
Gender
There is a wide gender gap among news influencers in this study. Almost two-thirds of news influencers (63%) are men, about twice the share who are women (30%). A small number (fewer than 1%) identify as nonbinary in their online profiles. (For details on how researchers coded news influencers’ gender, refer to the methodology.)
The gender gap among news influencers is present on most major social media sites, with men outnumbering women by about two-to-one or more on YouTube, Facebook, X and Instagram. For instance, 67% of news influencers on Facebook are men, compared with 30% who are women.
However, the gender gap is much smaller on TikTok, where half of the news influencers on the site are men and 45% are women.
Political orientation
Slightly more news influencers explicitly identify with the political right than the left. About half of news influencers in this study (52%) publicly express a political orientation – including party affiliation, political ideology or support for a presidential candidate – in their social media profile, posts, personal and professional websites or media coverage.
Researchers also considered other specific keywords or groups: For example, someone with “MAGA” in their account profile would be categorized as right-leaning, while someone who says they are “progressive” would be coded as left-leaning. Left-leaning news influencers include “progressive political host” Brian Tyler Cohen and V Spehar from Under the Desk News, while right-leaning news influencers include radio host and YouTuber Dan Bongino and podcaster Ben Shapiro.
A slightly larger share of these influencers say they are Republican, conservative or Donald Trump supporters (27% of all news influencers) than say they are Democrats, liberals or supporters of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris (21%). An additional 3% of news influencers have other political orientations, including independents or Libertarians.
Similar to its more balanced mix of genders among popular news influencers, TikTok also has the most even balance of news influencers who explicitly identify with either the political left or right: 28% identify as liberal, progressive or Democratic, while 25% are conservative or Republican.
There are more news influencers who identify with the right than the left on all other major social media sites. This difference is particularly stark on Facebook, where about four-in-ten news influencers (39%) explicitly identify as right-leaning, triple the share who say they are left-leaning (13%).
Values and identities
Researchers also assessed accounts for additional political stances or personal identities through an examination of the banner image, profile photo and bio of news influencers’ social media account profiles.
In these spaces, it’s difficult to distinguish between a value and an identity: A rainbow flag, for instance, could be an expression of support for LGBTQ+ rights or a declaration of the influencer’s LGBTQ+ identity. The content of the posts themselves (except for pinned or featured posts) was not assessed for these values, because we wanted to find influencers who make these values and identities a key part of their public persona.
About two-in-ten news influencers (18%) openly associate themselves with certain political or social causes, values or personal identities. Among the most common are LGBTQ+ identity or support (6%) and support for Palestinians (5%), Israelis (3%) or Ukrainians (3%).
Additionally, 2% prominently declare their opposition to abortion, while only a handful of news influencers in the sample (less than 1%) express support for abortion rights in this way.
News influencers on TikTok are more likely than those on other sites to show support for LGBTQ+ rights or identity in their profiles (13%). And amid ongoing discussions about the conflict in Gaza, about one-in-ten news influencers on TikTok (9%) express a pro-Palestinian stance, compared with 2% who are pro-Israel.
