TikTok users are more interested in pop culture and entertainment than news and politics, study finds – Poynter

American adult TikTok users are much more interested in following accounts posting about culture and entertainment than those that post about news and politics, according to a new Pew Research Center study.

The study, released Tuesday, found that influencers and creators with between 5,000 and 1 million followers make up nearly half of all the accounts followed by adult TikTok users.

In contrast, journalists, media outlets and politicians make up less than 1% of accounts followed. Researchers analyzed the accounts of 664 people to produce the report.

Nearly 60% of accounts followed by adult TikTok users post about pop culture and entertainment, the study found. Only 5% of accounts they followed post about the news. Researchers further found that accounts that do discuss news and politics tend to mix their content with humorous videos and posts about entertainment and pop culture.

The results contrast sharply with a similar study Pew did in 2022 analyzing Twitter accounts. That study found that the accounts followed by adult Twitter users in the U.S. included a much larger share of accounts related to media, politics or government.

By Angela Fu, media business reporter

The latest New York Times-Sienna opinion poll shows Kamala Harris with a small lead over Donald Trump in the likely popular vote — not to be confused with the Electoral College vote, which actually determines the winner — for the first time this fall.

The first paragraph of the Times’ story highlighted another surprising finding: Harris, though part of an incumbent administration, was rated by those surveyed as more of an agent of change than the former president.

There was a third, paradoxical result of the survey, to which the Times devoted a separate story by chief political analyst Nate Cohn. Trump has opened a stunning 13 percentage point lead in Florida (my home state, no longer a battleground as it was for so many years). The margin was substantially wider than it has been in other polls of Florida.

That’s not as good for Trump’s candidacy as it sounds.

It means he would essentially be running up the score in a state he was going to win anyhow. Those unneeded Florida votes cut into the recent advantage Republicans have had in the Electoral College structure compared to a national poll result. Put another way, it shows Harris’s new gain in the popular vote polling in an even better light.

I was watching CNN as omnipresent commentator Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia explained these positives for Harris. Anchor Jim Acosta shook his head and said, in essence, “I don’t get it.” But wading at least a bit down into the weeds helps with keeping up with the polls and, in turn, keeping up with the horse race aspect of a presidential election.

By Rick Edmonds, media business analyst

Ta-Nehisi Coates revealed that he felt sorry for “CBS Mornings” co-hosts Gayle King and Nate Burleson during his recent and much-talked-about interview.

The acclaimed writer appeared on the morning show last week to promote his new book, “The Message,” and it was during that appearance that the interview turned tense when morning anchor Tony Dokoupil challenged Coates about his views on Israel and Palestine.

In a teaser for the forthcoming Oct. 10 episode of “What Now? with Trevor Noah,” the comedian and former host of “The Daily Show” brings up the interview. “I don’t think you understand the shock wave that interview created, not because of what you said, but because of the way people felt like you were treated,” Noah told Coates.

The Spotify original weekly podcast then replayed the clip where Dokoupil suggested that when reading “The Message,” the content of a particular section “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”

Coates said he expected criticism of his book. “I figured at some point it was gonna be a fight. You know, I didn’t know it was gonna be right then, but I figured at some point it was gonna be a fight.”

Coates then shared his thoughts on what went wrong in the interview and brought up King. He said the “CBS Mornings” host had gone through the book and told him what she planned to ask him. Coates also referred to King having handwritten notes. “I think while on the one hand, he (Dokoupil) probably did me a service by just kind of commandeering that interview, I don’t think he did Nate and Gayle a service, and I’m really, really sorry for them.”

The Washington Post reported that CBS News executive Adrienne Roark said during an all-staff meeting Monday that an internal review determined that Dokoupil’s interview was not in line with the network’s commitment to neutrality.

By Amaris Castillo, Poynter contributor 

Unionized media workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette rallied outside of the paper’s building Tuesday to mark the two-year anniversary of their strike.

Approximately 80 advertising and production workers walked off the job Oct. 6, 2022, after the company terminated their health care plans. Roughly 60 journalists at the paper followed suit two weeks later in protest of stalled contract negotiations. The Post-Gazette work stoppage is the first open-ended strike at an American newspaper since 2000 and is currently the country’s longest-running strike.

Of the five Post-Gazette unions that initially went on strike, one — a Teamsters local representing truck drivers — settled with the company in April. The other four unions — including roughly 60 employees, 29 of whom belong to the paper’s editorial union — are still on strike, according to NewsGuild organizer Jacob Klinger.

Since October 2022, the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh’s members have maintained the same demands to end the strike: the restoration of the union’s contract from 2017, a return to the bargaining table to negotiate a new contract, and the reinstatement of their colleagues’ health care coverage.

With each side unwilling to budge, some union members have pinned their hopes on the courts to end the strike. In August, the National Labor Relations Board sought an injunction to compel the Post-Gazette to bargain new contracts with the four unions and return the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh to their 2017 contract, among other measures.

From the start, the strike has been deeply divisive among editorial workers. The strike vote passed 38-36, and roughly 40 journalists decided to continue working. In the years since, the Post-Gazette has hired dozens of replacement workers. Those workers have faced some backlash from sources. For example, editorial page editor Brandon McGinley wrote in an August column that Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has barred Post-Gazette journalists from campaign events.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette spokesperson Allison Latcheran noted in an emailed statement that even as some workers strike, the paper has been named News Organization of the Year by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association for three consecutive years. “We are very proud of the commitment to sustained excellence demonstrated by our employees every day.”

Since Post-Gazette workers went on strike, a handful of other newsrooms have launched their own open-ended strikes and dozens more have held one-day work stoppages. Unionized Long Beach Post reporters have been on strike since March, when the company instituted mass layoffs, and workers at the New Yorker and the Alden-owned Southern California News Group newspapers are currently threatening strikes. Tech workers at The New York Times have also threatened to strike.

By Angela Fu, media business reporter

• Legendary journalist Bob Woodward is about to publish his latest book, called “War,” and, as often happens with Woodward’s books, its juicy revelations are already making news. Among the most newsworthy: Donald Trump sent American-made coronavirus tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2020 while they were still in short supply and, oh, Putin and Trump seem to chat somewhat frequently. For more, here’s The Washington Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker with “5 key revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book” and The New York Times’ Peter Baker with “Book Revives Questions About Trump’s Ties to Putin.”
• The New York Times will soon launch a new game called Zorse, a “phrase guessing game where every puzzle is a mash-up of two phrases,” the company told Semafor’s Marta Biino and Max Tani in a statement. Perhaps hinting at how the game will be played, the name refers to the offspring of a zebra and a horse. The Times’ games section, along with its cooking section, has been a major driver of revenue growth in recent years — buoying the publication’s finances as others have struggled. “Earlier this year,” Biino and Tani reported, “some media analysts joked that at this point the Times was a gaming company based on how much time subscribers were spending playing games versus reading its news online.”
• Chris Wallace appeared on Mediaite’s “Press Club” podcast and spoke at length about his high-profile departure from Fox News in late 2021. “I had no problem with conservative opinion any more than I do with liberal opinion,” he said. “But what I do have a problem with is conspiracy and lies. The truth is nonnegotiable.”
• Margaret Kenny Giancola has been named editor-in-chief of The Buffalo News. “Kenny, 52, a Buffalo native who last week celebrated her 30th anniversary at The News, has been the managing editor for the past year,” the News said in a release. “She becomes the ninth editor in The News’ 144-year history and the second who is a graduate of Nardin Academy, joining Margaret M. Sullivan on that list.” Jim Heaney of Buffalo-based nonprofit Investigative Post reported that the previous editor, Sheila Rayam, had been “ousted” and that Lee Enterprises, “the paper’s chain owner, didn’t explain the move. I’m told Lee hasn’t explained its decision to the newsroom staff, either.”
• Generative artificial intelligence company OpenAI has signed another deal with a news organization. Hearst, which operates more than 20 magazines and more than 40 newspapers — including the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire and Cosmopolitan, — will share content from its publications. The Hollywood Reporter’s Winston Cho notes that OpenAI has signed similar deals with Axel Springer, owner of Politico and Business Insider; News Corp.; The Associated Press; the Financial Times; Vox Media; and The Atlantic.
• USA Today analyzed all 3,113 U.S. counties and found “a striking realignment since 2012 that has intensified the partisan leanings in states across the country, leaving only a handful where the outcome of the Nov. 5 presidential election remains in doubt.” Susan Page, Suhail Bhat, Savannah Kuchar and Sudiksha Kochi write more about the findings in “Red states are redder. Blue states are bluer. And our politics? Hotter.”
• The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that tracks online hate, disinformation and extremism, outlined how falsehoods about Hurricane Helene and its aftermath spread across social media, “providing a snapshot of the misinformation, hate and abuse proliferated by a range of actors.” Among other things, the study found that on X, “33 posts containing claims debunked by FEMA, the White House and the US government had together generated more than 160 million views as of October 7.”
• CNN’s Brian Stelter and Liam Reilly with “Florida is threatening to prosecute TV stations over an abortion rights ad. The FCC chief calls it ‘dangerous.’”

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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