Candidates’ social media outpaces their websites and emails as an online campaign news source

In the digital news era, presidential candidates and their campaigns have a greater ability to serve as direct sources of news and information for the public. Pew Research Center has studied this evolution for the last five presidential cycles and finds that in 2016, the candidates’ social media posts outpace their websites and e-mails as sources of news.

Roughly a quarter of US adults (24%) turn to social media posts from either the Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump campaigns as a way of keeping up with the election, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted June 7 to July 5, 2016. This exceeds the portions that rely on the candidates’ campaign websites (10%) or their emails (9%). Overall, three-in-ten Americans get election news from at least one of these three online sources for news about the election. What’s more, most of those who rely on the candidates’ websites and e-mails for news also turn to candidates’ social media posts for information, whether on Twitter, Facebook or some other platform. About two-thirds of those who get news from either candidate’s website (63%) and about the same portion who turn to candidate e-mails (68%) also turn to a candidate’s social media posts.