A new poll commissioned by The Canadian Journalism Foundation and conducted by Maru/Matchbox shows that while social media is a top news source for both Canadians and Americans, it is among the least trusted source for Canadians.
While social media (such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) is a top news source for 52% of Canadians (alongside news websites) it was also the least trusted, at only 32%. This is especially true for Canadian millennials; social media is the most common (73%) but least trusted news source at 36%.
In the U.S., social media is also one of the top news sources at 48%. However, Americans trust in social media is higher than among Canadians, at 43%. And, in stark contrast to Canadians, trust in social media rises to 60% among American millennials.
The poll found that both Canadian (53%) and American respondents (54%) believed that “fake news” was most likely to dominate politics, topping other news categories such as entertainment, lifestyle or business. The poll also showed that Americans (51%) are more likely than Canadians (37%) to believe that fake news is easy to spot.
For this survey, a representative sample of 1,516 Canadians and 1,523 Americans who are members of the Springboard America and Maru Voice Canada panels were interviewed via an online survey on March 27-28, 2019. The margin of error on a probability sample of this size in each market is +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
You can read more about the poll results here.
