A report from Digital News has found that WhatsApp is becoming an increasingly common source of news for users across the world. However, the survey also found that the percentage of people using the app as a news source varied widely in different markets. For example, more than half of respondents to the study in Malaysia said that they used WhatsApp to find news at least once a week, whilst only 3% of Americans did the same. The report also found that only 43% of people in the UK trust news outlets. Ahead of WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube lead the way as social media platforms used as news sources, but WhatsApp has seen the highest gains in recent years around the world. According to one of the report's authors, WhatsApp's appeal lies in that fact that “users don't get interrupted by brands, making it a very pure form of messaging”. It is now the second most popular platform in nine of the 36 countries studied, behind Facebook. Facebook was named the most popular social media platform for news in almost all of the countries surveyed, with the exception of just Japan and South Korea.Â
