Creators are becoming news anchors. Why do viewers prefer them to mainstream outlets?

The “influencer election” just closed out, with Donald Trump giving nods to streamers and podcasters like Adin Ross and Joe Rogan in his victory celebration, and some of Election Day’s biggest news presenters being content creators like Hasan Piker and V Spehar. Ross, Rogan, Piker, Spehar, and thousands of other creators who broadcast content around the election come from all across the political spectrum, but they have one thing in common: viewers are increasingly using their videos and livestreams as primary sources of news.

It’s a trend that’s been tracking upward since the 2020 election–and one the White House has started to watch. Pew Research is also keeping an eye on this phenomenon, having devoted several studies to examining content creators’ growing presence and importance in the news cycle.

Pew’s latest study on news influencers is its largest yet: It conducted a survey of over 10,000 U.S. adults and analyzed 500 individual news influencers across YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. In order to count as a “news influencer,” creators had to have over 100,000 followers and “regularly post about current events and civic issues,” according to Pew.

The results? 20% of U.S. adults overall, and a notable 37% of adults ages 18-29, say they regularly get news from content creators on one or more of those platforms.

Perhaps the most important point of data here is that out of the people who say they regularly get news from influencers, 70% say they go to content creators for news because the news they get from creators is “at least somewhat different from the news they get from other sources,” Pew says. 23% of people say the news they get from creators is “extremely or very different” from what they’d get at traditional news channels like CNN, Fox, NBC, etc.

Respondents also said they’re drawn to creators as news sources because creators share a mix of basic facts, breaking news, and their own opinions. 66% of respondents said the opinions and context creators provide helps them better understand current events.

That’s an important component here, since Pew (which conducted this research during summer 2024, so it could have a picture of what was happening during the leadup to the presidential election) found that when it looked at content from the 500 news creators, 55% of their posts were about U.S. politics, the U.S. government, or the presidential election. Another 18% of posts were about major election issues like LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, while 14% of posts were about international issues, like the Israel-Palestine conflict. These creators were posting about constituents’ main concerns–and likely giving them context around what presidential and representative candidates had to say about those concerns. For a voter who was undecided and/or uneducated about candidates’ positions, a creator giving perspective could have swayed their vote.

“News influencers have emerged as one of the key alternatives to traditional outlets as a news and information source for a lot of people, especially younger folks. And these influencers have really reached new levels of attention and prominence this year amid the presidential election,” Galen Stocking, senior computational social scientist at Pew Research Center, said in a statement. “We thought it was really important to look at who is behind some of the most popular accounts – the ones that aren’t news organizations, but actual people.”

So what does all this boil down to? Previous data from Pew and Reuters indicate that more and more people (especially younger folks) are getting their news from creators because they want something different than TV news. According to this new research from Pew, viewers want what content creators are known for: a look into their own personal lives and opinions. Viewers go to creators for news because they want to hear news through creators’ unique lenses.

That puts creators in a powerful position–both in the present, and for future elections. We just hope they remember Uncle Ben’s advice.