Every year since 2012, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) has released a Digital News Report, providing important insights on news consumption across the world. The 2025 edition (available here) is based on responses from nearly 100,000 people from 48 countries.
What can we learn about the Nigerian media ecosystem from this study?
Before you continue reading, you should know that the survey has some limitations. As the report states, the responses from countries like India, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa aren’t nationally representative because they are from English-speaking, online news users. Also, for Nigeria, “respondents are generally more affluent, younger (18–50 only), have higher levels of formal education, and are more likely to live in cities than the wider population.” Another limitation is that the survey is a reflection of people’s self-reported and not actual behaviours.
The analysis by country section of the report does not provide detailed insights. Information on each country only takes up two pages — with the actual survey results occupying just half of that. Still, there are at least four insights we can pluck from it.
Reach
Media outlets with the highest reach are typically international broadcasters, legacy corporations, state-owned firms, and national dailies. So, in the charts showing the top 24 media brands, you’ll only find names like Al Jazeera, BBC, Channels Television, CNN, Daily Trust, Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Radio Nigeria, The Punch, The Vanguard, TVC News, and so on. The only relatively new players on the scene are Daily Post, Legit.ng, and Pulse.ng — and even these were founded between 2011 and 2013.
We do not have any platform represented here that is reputed for investigative or niche journalism — not even those that have been around for more than a decade. This tells us, for example, why such organisations depend on grant funding to stay afloat and aren’t able to generate enough revenue through advert placements.
Source
Where are Nigerians getting their news from? Online sources, television, social media, and print — in that order. Of course, you would expect most of the respondents to get their news from online sources because the survey itself was conducted online. Still, the responses are further evidence that print journalism is taking its final breaths, especially when you consider the margin between it and the second-worst contender. (Viewed another way, though, it also seems to be making a comeback?)
The online sources include news websites, apps, podcasts, and AI chatbots. Yes, the Reuters Institute included AI chatbots in the survey for the first time this year and found that globally, 7 per cent of the respondents used them as a source of news — half the number of people who consult print media.
Unfortunately, the chart for Nigeria only covers five years, and so we can’t see how much the trend has changed over the last decade.
Trust
One thing stands out about the Digital News Report this year. It suggests that Nigerians have the highest amount of trust in the news in the world, a trend that’s seen an uptick, especially since 2023. Why is this so? I honestly don’t know. I do not know what factors are exclusive to Nigeria to warrant such an outcome. It could be that the more Nigerians distrust political leaders and other institutions, the more their trust in the press increases, the more they see journalists — investigative journalists, especially — as allies against the same enemy.
Responses to the question on brand trust show that government-owned platforms like NTA and the News Agency of Nigeria are some of the least trusted. But then there’s no substantial difference in how the various brands are perceived. BBC is the most trusted among the listed brands with a 90 per cent vote of confidence. ThisDay is the least trusted, but it still boasts of a 79 per cent vote of confidence.
I wish the list of brands in the poll were longer, but what this tells me is that the larger chunk of news consumers do not have such strong opinions about branding and ethical credibility as professionals. Media businesses in Nigeria rarely suffer from a reputational crisis; it doesn’t matter what sins you commit. That’s why many platforms don’t bother dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s in their reporting. It doesn’t matter. People will still read your publications. Your recklessness might even get you more followers. You only need to worry about the lawsuits and the police arrests and the predictable rage of advertisers.
Social media
What social media platforms do most Nigerians get their news from? The answer is WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Telegram, and Twitter (X) — in that order. If you’re wondering why TikTok is missing from the list, then that makes two of us.
If one more social media platform were added, though, then the seventh should be TikTok, considering the report states in a different section that 28 per cent of Nigerians reported using it for news in the last week.
TikTok is the second most popular social media platform in Nigeria, with 37.4 million users as of January 2025. So, could it be that many Nigerians do not engage with content on the platform to get educated or stay abreast of happenings around them? The more likely reason is that newsrooms still have a long way to go in capturing the audience on the app. Contrastingly, TikTok is the fourth most popular news source in South Africa, the fifth most popular in Kenya and Morocco, and the sixth most popular worldwide.
Bonus points
Here are some other tidbits from the report I found interesting.
- Globally, more people (15 per cent) get their news from podcasts than from radio broadcasts (13 per cent).
- The percentage of people who get news from television is down from 72 per cent in 2013 to 50 per cent this year. Print journalism has also seen a remarkable decline from 47 per cent in 2013 to just 14 per cent this year.
- Meanwhile, more and more people rely on social media and video networks for news. The number was 27 per cent in 2013 and now it has doubled, surpassing TV’s performance for the first time.
- Younger people prefer social and video networks (paving the way for the dramatic rise of news influencers), and older people prefer TV. Also, while younger people prefer to watch and listen to the news, older people prefer to read it. Not novel information, but it’s still fascinating to see the statistical gap.
- In some countries, content creators are more popular news sources on social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok than traditional media outlets.
- Africans, Nigerians especially, are most concerned about distinguishing between what is real and fake when it comes to online news.
- Finally, what do people consult if they are trying to check if a claim is true or false? Most people rely on credible media platforms, followed by official sources such as government websites, search engines, fact-checking websites, somebody they know and trust, comments from other social media users, and Wikipedia.
Ps. You should also check out Muck Rack’s 2025 State of Journalism Report. It’s about 50 slides of lots and lots of interesting information.