How our media habits feed political bias

1. Digi rules

The transition from conventional news sources to digital platforms and applications has picked pace in the last few years. A large chunk (32%) of urban Indians prefer digital spaces for their daily dose of news and information, with social media feeds and WhatsApp or Telegram forwards emerging as the most preferred method of obtaining such content when the survey was held in late 2021. This was followed by television news (28%) and newspapers (24%), including their websites. Despite growing digitization, just 10% of the respondents rely on digital-only news platforms.

The survey covered 206 cities. Roughly 45% of the sample were millennials, one-third post-millennials (aged 18-24), and the rest pre-millennials (40+).

Notwithstanding the notoriety of provocative and fake news on social media, the prominence of unconventional sources for news in India still lags behind the West, the survey suggests. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that most American adults now get their news from digital platforms.

2. Generation gap

Despite the popularity of social media, the nature of the frenzy has changed a lot since the last time we asked respondents similar questions. The younger you are, the more likely you are to use Instagram, and the older you are, the more you turn to Facebook, the latest survey showed. Facebook has lost popularity across age groups since the 2018 survey, while Instagram and Twitter have gained.

Almost 85% of those born after 1997, and 82% of those born between 1991 and 1996, said they used Instagram. Even the oldest cohort, those born before 1981, have been using Instagram much more since the 2018 survey. Nine in 10 of those born between 1981 and 1989, and 85% of those born before 1981, use Facebook.

The 2018 survey round had 5,000 respondents. Back then, 55% and 40% of the older millennials and pre-millennials, respectively, used Instagram, which has now risen to 74% and 65%, respectively.

3. Partisan biases

Our choice of news media can shape our opinions, especially our political leanings, studies have shown. But the YouGov-Mint-CPR survey found a fundamental link between news sources and the very tendency to support a political party.

Views and information floating on social media belong across the political spectrum, which could make such news consumers more sceptical in their political views. Those who do not identify with any political party at all were the likeliest to rely on social media feeds and messaging apps for their news consumption. While 38% of non-identifiers used this mode for news, this was true for less than 30% of party supporters.

Just 23% of the non-identifiers said television news was their primary source of information, as against nearly 30% among party supporters. Supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party were the most likely to rely on TV news (31%).

The converse is also true: those who relied on social media for news were most likely to not identify with any party, and those using TV news preferred the BJP.

4. Approval ratings

The media holds great importance in conveying crucial information to the public during times of crisis. When the covid-19 pandemic struck, the news media drew attention to early outbreaks. But later, some sections were criticized for falling back on politically motivated coverage, especially during the second wave when government measures were found to be wanting.

Nearly 75% of respondents in the survey said their state government had managed the pandemic “somewhat well” or “very well”. However, such a perception of the state government’s performance was more widespread (81%) among those who got their news from television or newspapers. Those who prefer social media were relatively less likely (74%) to rate their state government positively.

The trend was true for the central government as well. Although Indians were overall less satisfied with the Centre than with their state governments, here, too, TV news watchers were the happiest.

5. TV’s positivity

Before the pandemic struck and brought the country’s economy to a halt, growth in Asia’s third largest economy was already slowing. Yet, that pre-pandemic economic output level continues to be a convenient benchmark for economists to assess how well we are recovering from covid-19. Have we reached that level?

Half of the respondents in the survey felt the Indian economy was already there or would be there within a year. But just like political optimism, economic optimism was also most common among adults who identified TV news channels as their top news source. Among those relying on social media for news, nearly half (47%) felt the economy could take longer than a year to reach pre-pandemic levels.

This suggests that those using the conventional modes of news media were more optimistic about the state of the Indian economy than those who relied on social media platforms.