Examining the Roles of Multi-Platform Social Media News Use, Engagement, and Connections with News Organizations and Journalists on News Literacy: A Comparison of Seven Democracies

The proliferation of misinformation in social media has raised concerns on the veracity of news that citizens consume. Recent scholarship has therefore emphasized the importance of news literacy as higher levels imply greater competence in navigating the streams of information in the social media space. Drawing from subsamples of respondents who use social media for news in seven democracies (UK, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Norway, and the US, N = 6774), this comparative analysis examines the dynamics of social media news platform use that influence news literacy. After controlling for demographics, news interest and news use frequency, analyses show that social media news engagement and connections to news organizations and journalists exhibited both positive direct and indirect relationships with news literacy. Multi-platform use of social media for news was also related to engagement, but in five countries the relationship with news literacy was negative.