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New platforms and shrinking trust: How Brazilians get their news
Reporting by Reuters Institute for the Study of JournalismRead the original at reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
Executive Summary
Brazil is experiencing a profound shift in news consumption characterized by a general decline in trust, interest, and engagement across almost all traditional platforms. While social media once surged during the pandemic, its dominance is waning, and traditional TV news has seen a sharp decline, particularly among right-leaning citizens. In its place, AI chatbots and independent news creators are emerging as complementary sources, especially for younger and more politically engaged demographics.
Political polarization remains a defining feature of the information landscape. While right-leaning and left-leaning citizens now share similar levels of social media usage, they differ significantly in their trust levels and perceptions of misinformation. Right-leaning individuals express lower overall trust in news and are more likely to view journalists and news organizations as sources of misinformation, whereas left-leaning individuals are more concerned about misinformation spread by ordinary citizens. Despite the overall drop in systemic trust, professional news brands maintain higher trust ratings than news in general, suggesting a remaining valuation of professional journalism.
Facts Only
* Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro are the candidates in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election.
* Social media surpassed TV as the primary news source during the pandemic, though social media use for news has declined 19 points over the last decade.
* 19% of Brazilians under 25 use AI chatbots for news.
* Facebook use for news has decreased 41 points from its 2014 peak.
* Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube are currently the top social/video networks for news.
* One-third of Brazilians use news creators, with 17% stating these creators cover all or most of their news needs.
* Trust in news fell 23 points over the last decade to 36% in 2026.
* Trust in specific Brazilian news brands ranges between 47% and 62%.
* News interest fell 36 points from 87% in 2013 to approximately 50% recently.
* 37% of Brazilians prefer news from sources with no particular point of view.
Full Take
The strongest version of this narrative is that Brazil serves as a global bellwether for "news avoidance," where extreme polarization and the fragmentation of platforms have led to a systemic collapse of the shared information commons. The data suggests a society moving away from institutional gatekeepers toward a decentralized, algorithmic, and creator-driven ecosystem.
The underlying paradigm is one of cognitive exhaustion. The plummeting interest in news and the decline in active participation (sharing and commenting) indicate a population retreating from a toxic digital environment. This is not merely a change in platform preference, but a psychological withdrawal. The "load-bearing" tension here is the divergence between the high trust in specific professional brands and the low trust in "news" as a concept, suggesting that Brazilians still value the *craft* of journalism but distrust the *industry* or the *narrative* it produces.
This shift represents a significant risk to human agency; as users migrate toward AI chatbots and niche creators, the potential for personalized "echo chambers" increases, further eroding the possibility of a consensus-based reality. The benefit accrues to platform architects and charismatic individuals who can bypass traditional editorial standards.
Patterns detected: none
The content is a data-driven briefing. If this were a coordinated influence campaign, it would likely exaggerate the "collapse" of trust to justify the dismantling of press freedoms or to promote a specific alternative "truth" platform. The actual content does not match this pattern; it provides nuanced, longitudinal data across a political spectrum.
Bridge Questions:
1. Does the rise of AI chatbots for news signify a search for "neutrality" or a surrender to algorithmic curation?
2. If trust in professional brands remains higher than trust in "news" overall, what specific barriers prevent that trust from translating into wider news interest?
3. How does the decline in news participation among the youth change the nature of political mobilization in future elections?
From the original · Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
DNR Briefing New platforms and shrinking trust: How Brazilians get their news Brazilians will soon head to the polls for the second round of their presidential election. The vote is a close contest between left-wing incumbent Lula da Silva and right-wing challenger Flavio Bolsonaro.Read the full story at reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
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