Mothership beats mainstream news platforms, becomes most used online source
Chong Xin Wei
MOTHERSHIP, a news site that converts viral social media posts into short-form articles and videos, has emerged as the most used online news source – surpassing mainstream competitors Channel News Asia and The Straits Times.
In a study published in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023 on Wednesday (Jun 14), researchers found that 48 per cent of the respondents in Singapore used Mothership weekly, while 46 per cent accessed Channel News Asia weekly, and The Straits Times, 42 per cent.
Some 2,025 respondents were sampled. The study is conducted by associate professor Edson Tandoc Jr and researcher Matthew Chew at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in Nanyang Technological University.
Despite Mothership’s popularity, it still lags in brand trust, with 52 per cent of respondents saying they trust the online news platform.
This contrasts mainstream outlets, which remained the most trusted news brands, the researchers noted.
Some 75 per cent of respondents said they trust Channel News Asia, and 73 per cent said they trust Channel 5 and The Straits Times. The trio gained three percentage points each from 2022.
The researchers noted that 34 per cent of respondents share news via social platforms, messaging channels or e-mail.
Messaging platform Whatsapp remained the most popular social app for news (38 per cent), while Facebook declined (36 per cent). Social media app Instagram is emerging as a platform for news, with 19 per cent of respondents sharing news via the channel, as well as Tiktok at 12 per cent.
Overall trust in news inched up to 45 per cent in 2023 from 41 per cent in 2017. Singapore ranked 129th in the world press freedom index.
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