DIGITAL NEWS PROJECT
DECEMBER 2022
How Publishers are Learning
to Create and Distribute
News on TikTok
Nic Newman
1
Contents
About the Authors 2
Acknowledgements 2
1. Introduction and Key Findings 3
2. Methodology 5
3. How and Why Publishers are Moving
onto TikTok 6
4. TikTok’s ‘Magic’ Algorithm –
How it Works 13
5. What Strategies are Publishers Pursuing
on TikTok? 14
6. News Creators and Activists 23
7. What next for TikTok and News? 27
8. Conclusion 30
APPENDIX A – List of Interviewees 32
APPENDIX B – List of Top Publishers
by Country 33
DOI: 10.60625/risj-gfyx-3v66
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
2
About the Authors
Nic Newman is Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute and has been lead author of
the Digital News Report since 2012. Nic also writes an annual study looking at the latest trends
in technology and the business of journalism. He is a consultant on digital media, working
actively with news companies on product, audience, and business strategies for
digital transition.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to the many media executives, creators, and other experts who gave their
time to be interviewed for this report. The research team at the Reuters Institute provided
valuable input at various stages, including thoughtful comments on the manuscript. Thanks
also to Georgia Newman for her detailed research in helping to identify top news publishers
on TikTok in more than 40 markets and to Alex Reid for keeping the publication on track at all
times.
Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism with the support of Google and
the Google News Initiative.
3
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
1. Introduction and Key Findings
TikTok is currently one of the world’s fastest-growing social networks with its addictive
algorithm surfacing an endless stream of short, entertaining videos. Until recently the network
had a reputation built almost exclusively on fast-moving, funny or musical memes, but stories
such as Black Lives Matter, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine have helped make
news a much bigger part of the mix. Changes to the platform, enabling longer videos and the
promotion of live streams, have also made TikTok more attractive for news publishers looking
to engage younger audiences.
Despite this, our Reuters Institute Digital News Report research suggests that news on TikTok is
still mostly generated by social media influen ers, activists, or ordinary people rather than by
journalists.
1
Qualitative studies of younger consumers show that although TikTok is loved for
its humour and engaging presentation, many worry about the credibility of the information
they see there and the potential for misinformation and disinformation.
2
Understanding the nature of news on any social platform is a huge endeavour given the highly
personalised nature of the experience and the limited availability of public data. Partly for these
reasons, in this report we focus mainly on the production of content for TikTok by publishers, as
well as some independent news creators. We have tracked the extent of publisher activity across
more than 40 countries, one of the first a tempts to do this, and interviewed some of the most
successful news organisations such as the Washington Post, Sky News, and Le Monde about their
motivations and key learnings.
As this fast-moving platform matures and grows, we have also identified areas in which Tik ok
itself may need to focus more on publisher concerns about the quality and range of news
content provided and the transparency of take down rules. Given the number of publishers now
involved – and the speed of change – this report should not be seen as a comprehensive picture
of publisher activity, rather a snapshot that we hope contains insights that will be useful to
news organisations, regulators, and researchers.
Key findings
• Around half (49%) of top news publishers are now regularly publishing content on
TikTok – based on lists drawn from our 2022 Digital News Report covering 44 markets.
3
A large proportion of these have joined TikTok in the last year.
• Publisher adoption is not evenly spread. The vast majority of Indonesian (90%),
Australian (89%), Spanish (86%), French (86%), and UK (81%) publishers operate active
accounts on TikTok, along with more than three-quarters in the United States (US) (77%),
and around two-thirds in Brazil (68%). News organisations in Japan (31%), Italy (29%),
Denmark (27%), and Bulgaria (7%) have been slower to move onto the platform.
1
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2021/dnr-executive-summary
2
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/kaleidoscope-tracking-young-peoples-relationships-news
3
Publishers with more than 4% national online reach in the 2022 Digital News Report survey (see Methodology for more details),
based on representative samples of ≈ 2,000 people. The number of countries and markets is 44, not 46, because TikTok is banned
in India and is not available in Hong Kong.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
4
• News organisations are attracted by the fast-growing audience and younger demographic,
but they are also motivated by the desire to provide reliable news, amid fears about
widespread misinformation on the platform.
• Other publishers are staying away or engaging cautiously. Some worry about the Chinese
ownership of the platform and the potential implications for free speech; others fear that
the ‘TikTok-ification of n ws’ risks trivialising important stories as well as undermining
business models that depend on referral traffic from social net orks.
• There is no single recipe for success on TikTok. A number of publishers use a strategy
based on young creators who are native to the platform and its unique language. Others
prefer to showcase the talents of the entire newsroom, making minimal changes to
existing tone or content.
• The process for getting ‘verified status on TikTok seems to be opaque and inconsistently
applied. Our research showed that many publishers with a strong track record for trusted
content, including debunking and fact-checking, do not yet have a blue tick, especially
outside the US and Western Europe.
• Going forwards, our interviewees say that publishers would like TikTok to offer greater
prominence, more transparency, better monetisation opportunities, and access to more
detailed demographic data. Many are unhappy that TikTok sometimes takes down or
limits access to hard-hitting news stories from their accounts, arguing that legitimate
news providers should be treated differently.
In this report, we start by setting out data on the extent of publisher adoption alongside
motivations for joining TikTok. We pull together top tips from TikTok creators and discuss
the metrics most commonly used to evaluate success. Next, we explore different strategies
for engaging users on the platform, highlighting case studies from early pioneers as well
as independent news creators and activists. Finally, we look at future opportunities for
monetisation and ways in which publishers would like TikTok to better support reliable and
trusted news sources.
5
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
2. Methodology
In order to understand the extent of mainstream media involvement with TikTok, we identified
the top news brands in 44 countries from our Digital News Report. We excluded India, where
TikTok is banned, and Hong Kong, where it is unavailable. We looked at all brands that have
significant online onsumption in our 2022 survey
4
and checked to see if those brands had a
presence on TikTok and had posted in the previous week. In a very few cases, we also included
socially native news organisations that have a very large following on TikTok, even though they
did not meet our other criteria. In all cases, we noted the follower numbers for each brand and,
in the case of the most successful, we also measured the average views from the last 50 posts
and the date when they joined the platform.
It should be noted that the content of the TikTok accounts varied enormously from hard news
to entertainment. We checked each account to ensure that the content was broadly news
related. It is possible that we missed some news organisations for a variety of reasons: due to
issues of language, unusual naming of brands on TikTok, or accidental oversight.
In order to root the report in audience understanding, this report also references consumption
and demographic data about TikTok from the 2021 and 2022 Digital News Reports and from our
supporting qualitative interviews. The majority of this research, however, is drawn from original
interviews with 20 different news organisations and individuals. These include large companies
such as the Washington Post, Sky News, the Guardian and Le Monde; digital-born brands like
Infobae, Fanpage, and Nexo Jornal; socially native brands like Ac2ality, The News Movement,
and Geopop; as well as some individual creators and activists. The interviews were conducted
between 29 September and 7 November 2022. TikTok were not willing to provide an interview.
They did, however, respond to specific queries and re erred us to publicly available statements
about news on the platform.
4
We defined 4% online reach as the ey threshold across countries, a figure which sh ws significant national reach but does n t
tend to exclude important offline T and print brands.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
6
3. How and Why Publishers are Moving onto TikTok
TikTok is a social media app that was launched in 2018 by Chinese company Bytedance.
Containing a mix of short videos often accompanied by some form of viral song or audio, it now
has more than one billion active daily users.
5
It has been the world’s most-downloaded mobile
app since early 2020 and is especially popular with younger audiences (Figure 1), many of whom
have started to turn away from more traditional networks like Facebook.
A turning point for the platform seems to have been Covid-19 lockdowns, when many young
people, trapped at home, experimented with the video app and its simple editing interface to
share their experiences. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further boosted the platform’s reputation
for news, with young Ukrainians sharing eyewitness stories of life under bombardment in real
time, and some news providers joining the platform for the first time
When TikTok was launched, it was just about dancing. Not today. Even though the videos are
fast, they bring immediate information.
24-year-old TikTok user, Brazil, February 2022
A TV reporter who has a TikTok page gives us regular updates on the situation. It feels
comforting and more intimate than watching on TV news.
22-year-old TikTok user, UK, March 2022
Figure 1: Ukraine war boosted news coverage, especially with younger groups
Source: Digital News Report 2022 (Survey Jan/Feb 2022). Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week for
any purpose/for news? Base: All markets = 93,432; 18–24s = 11,046.
5
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/27/tiktok-reaches-1-billion-monthly-users.html
15%
of 18-24s use
TikTok for any
news
40%
of 18-24s use
TikTok for any
purpose
2
TikTok fastest growing network for news
Fastest growing network in general and for news – Most popular with under 25s
Digital News Report 2022 (Survey Jan/Feb 2022), Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week for any purpose/for news? Base: All
markets = 93432, 18-24s = 11046
3%
6%
7%
10%
15%
11%
19%
23%
28%
40%
55+
45-54
35-44
25-34
18-24
Any purpose For news
7
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
Figure 2: Growth in TikTok for any purpose 2019–2022, selected countries
Source: Digital News Report 2022 (Survey Jan/Feb 2022). Q12a. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week for
any purpose? Showing TikTok code. Base: Each market ≈ 2,000. Data not available for 2019 in Spain and Canada.
Some of the fastest growth has taken place in Latin American countries, such as Brazil, which
have traditionally seen high adoption of new social networks (Figure 2). But we find ven higher
usage in parts of Asia and Africa (Figure 3).
6
In some of these countries, TikTok growth has been
fuelled by free or cheap usage as part of mobile phone data packages.
Figure 3: Markets with highest usage, selected countries
Source: Digital News Report 2022 (survey Jan/Feb 2022). Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week for
any purpose? Showing TikTok code. Base: Each market ≈ 2,000.
Driving adoption has been an easy-to-use app that, in contrast with other social networks,
does not depend on up-front configuration such as ollowing friends or celebrities. Instead, an
algorithm learns what type of content a viewer likes and refines that ver time. In qualitative
studies for the Digital News Report, users talked about the magical nature of this algorithm and
the fun and compelling experience:
It’s so addictive… and where it lacks in trustworthiness, it excels in presentation.
22-year-old TikTok user, UK, February 2022
6
Samples in African countries are younger (55 and under) as older groups tend not to be online, which may also account for higher
relative numbers here.
‘19 ‘20 ‘21 ‘22 ‘19 ‘20 ‘21 ‘22
25%
15%
5%
25%
15%
5%
‘19 ‘20 ‘21 ‘22
25%
15%
5%
‘19 ‘20 ‘21 ‘22
25%
15%
5%
United States Canada Spain Brazil
Markets with highest usage (all ages)
% for any purpose/for news
8
TikTok fastest growing network for news
Fastest growing network in general and for news – Most popular with under 25s
Q12b. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week for
news? Base: All markets = 93432, 18-24s = 11046
Philippines
33%/15%
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
8
3.1 News publishers and TikTok
Against this background it is not surprising that news publishers have begun to take TikTok
seriously. Across 44 countries we find that around half (49%) of publishers are regularly
updating TikTok accounts with news-related content (Figure 4). The fastest publisher adoption
has been in some larger western European countries, including France, Spain, and the UK, as
well as South-East Asia, Australia, the US, and Latin America. There has been less enthusiasm
in Nordic countries, Japan, and eastern and central Europe. This largely mirrors areas with the
highest consumption.
Figure 4: Proportion of top news publishers on TikTok by country
Note: Darker colours represent higher levels of adoption by mainstream news companies. Grey indicates no data collected due to
lack of source list or TikTok not operating.
Source: Compiled by Reuters Institute, 7–28 November 2022.
Highest adoption: Indonesia 90%, Australia 89%, France 86%, Spain 86%, UK 81%, US 77%.
Lowest adoption: Bulgaria 7%, Belgium 16%, Greece 23%, Denmark 27%, Korea 27%, Italy 29%, Japan 31%.
The list of the most-followed news accounts on TikTok (Figure 5, on next page) is dominated
by publishers from countries with large populations, such as the US, Indonesia, Japan, the
Philippines, and Brazil, but traditional news organisations from the UK and Thailand, Germany,
France, and Spain are also strongly represented.
Having said that, it is striking how well some socially driven youth brands are performing
in both Europe and the US. NowThis has more than 8.5m followers for its news and politics
accounts while Spanish start-up Ac2ality, which has a mission to ‘tell the news in one minute’,
has amassed 3.9 million followers since 2019. The French media brand Brut has more than 2.7
million for content aimed at under 35s. Fanpage (850,000) has brought a mix of investigations
and fun to TikTok, where it is the biggest news outlet in Italy, and Vice World News has built 2.6
million followers in less than a year, picking up a top award in the process.
7
7
https://awards.journalists.org/entries/vice-world-news-tiktok/
9
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
Figure 5: Top news publishers on TikTok by follower count
Source: TikTok follower counts compiled by Reuters Institute, 24–28 November 2022.
It has long been thought, however, that follower counts on TikTok have less impact on the likely
popularity of any particular post when compared with other platforms (See Chapter 4, How the
TikTok Algorithm Works). This becomes clear when we re-order these most-followed brands by
engagement, measured as average views per TikTok video (Figure 6).
On this basis, NBC News heads the lists with more than one million views per post, on average.
Brazilian brands did particularly well, perhaps because our research covered the period of the
2022 election results. Both Globo’s G1 channel and Metropoles contained numerous individual
videos with over 5 million views each. Yahoo! News US also scored highly with an average view
count of 653,480, while ABC News, CBS News, the Daily Mail, and TV Asahi slipped down the
list. Engagement with content tends to be much lower in countries like Indonesia and Thailand,
despite the high follower counts for many TV news brands. This may be because most are
pushing out available video clips with little attempt to re-version them for TikTok. By contrast,
most brands on the left-hand side of this list, including socially native brands like NowThis,
Ac2ality, Brut, and Vice World News, are putting considerable effort into the platform-specific
content (see case studies in Chapter 5), and this is refle ted in much higher engagement scores.
Washington Post
United States
Times Live (SA)
Radio Jambo (KE)
Pulse (NG)
Meganoticias (CL)
G1-Globo (BR)
UOL (BR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Infobae
Todo Noticias (AR)
Latinus (MEX)
TV Azteca News (MEX)
Metropoles (BR)
News.com (AU)
DZRH (PHL)
GMA News (PHL)
INN News (THA)
Astro Awani (MYS)
Channel 7HD News (THA)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Thai Rath (THA)
Thai Channel 8 News (THA)
Khaosod (THA)
Liputan 6
Republika
Metro TV News
BBC News (UK)
Le Monde (FR)
El Mundo (ES)
Yahoo! UK
Fanpage (IT)
The Sun (UK)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
Konbini (FR)
ITV News (UK)
Vice World News
Brut (FR)
Sky News (UK)
Ac2ality (ES)
Daily Mail (UK)
MSNBC
CNN
USA Today
Washington Post
Brut America
Yahoo! News
NowThis Politics
CBS News
NBC News
ABC News
NowThis
Europe
Indonesia
Rest of Asia Pacific
Latin America
Africa
5,500,000
4,600,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
3,000,000
2,200,000
1,800,000
1,500,000
1,500,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
4,200,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
2,700,000
2,600,000
1,400,000
1,300,000
1,300,000
1,100,000
850,000
750,000
729,000
690,000
671,000
4,300,000
4,100,000
3,100,000
3,600,000
3,200,000
3,100,000
2,700,000
2,400,000
1,600,000
1,600,000
1,500,000
1,300,000
1,200,000
3,000,000
2,800,000
2,200,000
2,100,000
1,500,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
1,100,000
1,500,000
112,000
110,000
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
United States
Times Live (SA)
Radio Jambo (KE)
Pulse (NG)
Meganoticias (CL)
G1-Globo (BR)
UOL (BR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Infobae
Todo Noticias (AR)
Latinus (MEX)
TV Azteca News (MEX)
Metropoles (BR)
News.com (AU)
DZRH (PHL)
GMA News (PHL)
INN News (THA)
Astro Awani (MYS)
Channel 7HD News (THA)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Thai Rath (THA)
Thai Channel 8 News (THA)
Khaosod (THA)
Liputan 6
Republika
Metro TV News
BBC News (UK)
Le Monde (FR)
El Mundo (ES)
Yahoo! UK
Fanpage (IT)
The Sun (UK)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
Konbini (FR)
ITV News (UK)
Vice World News
Brut (FR)
Sky News (UK)
Ac2ality (ES)
Daily Mail (UK)
MSNBC
CNN
USA Today
Washington Post
Brut America
Yahoo! News
NowThis Politics
CBS News
NBC News
ABC News
NowThis
Europe
Indonesia
Rest of Asia Pacific
Latin America
Africa
5,500,000
4,600,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
3,000,000
2,200,000
1,800,000
1,500,000
1,500,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
4,200,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
2,700,000
2,600,000
1,400,000
1,300,000
1,300,000
1,100,000
850,000
750,000
729,000
690,000
671,000
4,300,000
4,100,000
3,100,000
3,600,000
3,200,000
3,100,000
2,700,000
2,400,000
1,600,000
1,600,000
1,500,000
1,300,000
1,200,000
3,000,000
2,800,000
2,200,000
2,100,000
1,500,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
1,100,000
1,500,000
112,000
110,000
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
United States
Times Live (SA)
Radio Jambo (KE)
Pulse (NG)
Meganoticias (CL)
G1-Globo (BR)
UOL (BR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Infobae
Todo Noticias (AR)
Latinus (MEX)
TV Azteca News (MEX)
Metropoles (BR)
News.com (AU)
DZRH (PHL)
GMA News (PHL)
INN News (THA)
Astro Awani (MYS)
Channel 7HD News (THA)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Thai Rath (THA)
Thai Channel 8 News (THA)
Khaosod (THA)
Liputan 6
Republika
Metro TV News
BBC News (UK)
Le Monde (FR)
El Mundo (ES)
Yahoo! UK
Fanpage (IT)
The Sun (UK)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
Konbini (FR)
ITV News (UK)
Vice World News
Brut (FR)
Sky News (UK)
Ac2ality (ES)
Daily Mail (UK)
MSNBC
CNN
USA Today
Washington Post
Brut America
Yahoo! News
NowThis Politics
CBS News
NBC News
ABC News
NowThis
Europe
Indonesia
Rest of Asia Pacific
Latin America
Africa
5,500,000
4,600,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
3,000,000
2,200,000
1,800,000
1,500,000
1,500,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
4,200,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
2,700,000
2,600,000
1,400,000
1,300,000
1,300,000
1,100,000
850,000
750,000
729,000
690,000
671,000
4,300,000
4,100,000
3,100,000
3,600,000
3,200,000
3,100,000
2,700,000
2,400,000
1,600,000
1,600,000
1,500,000
1,300,000
1,200,000
3,000,000
2,800,000
2,200,000
2,100,000
1,500,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
1,100,000
1,500,000
112,000
110,000
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
United States
Times Live (SA)
Radio Jambo (KE)
Pulse (NG)
Meganoticias (CL)
G1-Globo (BR)
UOL (BR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Infobae
Todo Noticias (AR)
Latinus (MEX)
TV Azteca News (MEX)
Metropoles (BR)
News.com (AU)
DZRH (PHL)
GMA News (PHL)
INN News (THA)
Astro Awani (MYS)
Channel 7HD News (THA)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Thai Rath (THA)
Thai Channel 8 News (THA)
Khaosod (THA)
Liputan 6
Republika
Metro TV News
BBC News (UK)
Le Monde (FR)
El Mundo (ES)
Yahoo! UK
Fanpage (IT)
The Sun (UK)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
Konbini (FR)
ITV News (UK)
Vice World News
Brut (FR)
Sky News (UK)
Ac2ality (ES)
Daily Mail (UK)
MSNBC
CNN
USA Today
Washington Post
Brut America
Yahoo! News
NowThis Politics
CBS News
NBC News
ABC News
NowThis
Europe
Indonesia
Rest of Asia Pacific
Latin America
Africa
5,500,000
4,600,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
3,000,000
2,200,000
1,800,000
1,500,000
1,500,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
4,200,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
2,700,000
2,600,000
1,400,000
1,300,000
1,300,000
1,100,000
850,000
750,000
729,000
690,000
671,000
4,300,000
4,100,000
3,100,000
3,600,000
3,200,000
3,100,000
2,700,000
2,400,000
1,600,000
1,600,000
1,500,000
1,300,000
1,200,000
3,000,000
2,800,000
2,200,000
2,100,000
1,500,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
1,100,000
1,500,000
112,000
110,000
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
United States
Times Live (SA)
Radio Jambo (KE)
Pulse (NG)
Meganoticias (CL)
G1-Globo (BR)
UOL (BR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Infobae
Todo Noticias (AR)
Latinus (MEX)
TV Azteca News (MEX)
Metropoles (BR)
News.com (AU)
DZRH (PHL)
GMA News (PHL)
INN News (THA)
Astro Awani (MYS)
Channel 7HD News (THA)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Thai Rath (THA)
Thai Channel 8 News (THA)
Khaosod (THA)
Liputan 6
Republika
Metro TV News
BBC News (UK)
Le Monde (FR)
El Mundo (ES)
Yahoo! UK
Fanpage (IT)
The Sun (UK)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
Konbini (FR)
ITV News (UK)
Vice World News
Brut (FR)
Sky News (UK)
Ac2ality (ES)
Daily Mail (UK)
MSNBC
CNN
USA Today
Washington Post
Brut America
Yahoo! News
NowThis Politics
CBS News
NBC News
ABC News
NowThis
Europe
Indonesia
Rest of Asia Pacific
Latin America
Africa
5,500,000
4,600,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
3,000,000
2,200,000
1,800,000
1,500,000
1,500,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
4,200,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
2,700,000
2,600,000
1,400,000
1,300,000
1,300,000
1,100,000
850,000
750,000
729,000
690,000
671,000
4,300,000
4,100,000
3,100,000
3,600,000
3,200,000
3,100,000
2,700,000
2,400,000
1,600,000
1,600,000
1,500,000
1,300,000
1,200,000
3,000,000
2,800,000
2,200,000
2,100,000
1,500,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
1,100,000
1,500,000
112,000
110,000
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
United States
Times Live (SA)
Radio Jambo (KE)
Pulse (NG)
Meganoticias (CL)
G1-Globo (BR)
UOL (BR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Infobae
Todo Noticias (AR)
Latinus (MEX)
TV Azteca News (MEX)
Metropoles (BR)
News.com (AU)
DZRH (PHL)
GMA News (PHL)
INN News (THA)
Astro Awani (MYS)
Channel 7HD News (THA)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Thai Rath (THA)
Thai Channel 8 News (THA)
Khaosod (THA)
Liputan 6
Republika
Metro TV News
BBC News (UK)
Le Monde (FR)
El Mundo (ES)
Yahoo! UK
Fanpage (IT)
The Sun (UK)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
Konbini (FR)
ITV News (UK)
Vice World News
Brut (FR)
Sky News (UK)
Ac2ality (ES)
Daily Mail (UK)
MSNBC
CNN
USA Today
Washington Post
Brut America
Yahoo! News
NowThis Politics
CBS News
NBC News
ABC News
NowThis
Europe
Indonesia
Rest of Asia Pacific
Latin America
Africa
5,500,000
4,600,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
3,000,000
2,200,000
1,800,000
1,500,000
1,500,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
4,200,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
2,700,000
2,600,000
1,400,000
1,300,000
1,300,000
1,100,000
850,000
750,000
729,000
690,000
671,000
4,300,000
4,100,000
3,100,000
3,600,000
3,200,000
3,100,000
2,700,000
2,400,000
1,600,000
1,600,000
1,500,000
1,300,000
1,200,000
3,000,000
2,800,000
2,200,000
2,100,000
1,500,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
1,100,000
1,500,000
112,000
110,000
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
United States
Times Live (SA)
Radio Jambo (KE)
Pulse (NG)
Meganoticias (CL)
G1-Globo (BR)
UOL (BR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Infobae
Todo Noticias (AR)
Latinus (MEX)
TV Azteca News (MEX)
Metropoles (BR)
News.com (AU)
DZRH (PHL)
GMA News (PHL)
INN News (THA)
Astro Awani (MYS)
Channel 7HD News (THA)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Thai Rath (THA)
Thai Channel 8 News (THA)
Khaosod (THA)
Liputan 6
Republika
Metro TV News
BBC News (UK)
Le Monde (FR)
El Mundo (ES)
Yahoo! UK
Fanpage (IT)
The Sun (UK)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
Konbini (FR)
ITV News (UK)
Vice World News
Brut (FR)
Sky News (UK)
Ac2ality (ES)
Daily Mail (UK)
MSNBC
CNN
USA Today
Washington Post
Brut America
Yahoo! News
NowThis Politics
CBS News
NBC News
ABC News
NowThis
Europe
Indonesia
Rest of Asia Pacific
Latin America
Africa
5,500,000
4,600,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
3,000,000
2,200,000
1,800,000
1,500,000
1,500,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
4,200,000
3,900,000
3,000,000
2,700,000
2,600,000
1,400,000
1,300,000
1,300,000
1,100,000
850,000
750,000
729,000
690,000
671,000
4,300,000
4,100,000
3,100,000
3,600,000
3,200,000
3,100,000
2,700,000
2,400,000
1,600,000
1,600,000
1,500,000
1,300,000
1,200,000
3,000,000
2,800,000
2,200,000
2,100,000
1,500,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,100,000
1,100,000
1,500,000
112,000
110,000
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
10
Figure 6: Top news publishers on TikTok by average views per video
Source: TikTok average view counts 24–28 November 2022, compiled by Reuters Institute based on the most recent 50 posts.
3.2 Why some publishers are embracing TikTok and others are
holding back
The growth of TikTok has coincided with sometimes existential concerns from both publicly
funded and commercial publishers about how to attract and engage younger audiences. Under
25s, in particular, are spending more time scrolling through apps like TikTok – around 57
minutes a day in the UK according to the media regulator Ofcom
8
– and are less likely to go
directly to news websites or apps.
Almost all the publishers we spoke to for this report recognised that they need to take their
content to these audiences wherever they are: ‘It is a platform in which there are a lot of young
readers, young viewers,’ says Fabrizio Barbato, CFO of Ciaopeople, which owns Fanpage and a
number of other publishing verticals. ‘We thought that we should be present on it, even if there
is no direct business model right now.’
Other publishers note that recent changes to the platform, such as the promotion of live-
streaming and longer video lengths, have made it more conducive for news publishers: ‘It’s got
huge reach. It’s got huge engagement,’ says Alan Strange, Editor for On-Demand content at Sky
News. ‘But it’s not just a case of having to be there. We want to be there.’ Sky recently clocked
up 16 million views for a live broadcast of the Queen’s funeral and tens of millions of views for
8
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11119265/Young-people-watch-TikTok-broadcast-TV.html
Astro Awani (MYS)
Republika (IDN)
Konbini (FR)
Le Monde (FR)
GMA News (PH)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Pulse (NG)
UOL (BR)
Liputan6 (IDN)
CBS News (US)
Thai Rath (THA)
Aftonbladet (SE)
Daily Mail (UK/US)
Yahoo! (UK)
Sky News (UK)
Khaosod (THA)
Latinus (MEX)
USA Today (US)
Infobae (AR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Washington Post (US)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
ABC News (US)
News.com (AU)
Fanpage (IT)
Meganoticias (CL)
MetroTV (IDN)
ITV News (UK)
Metropoles (BR)
NowThis (US)
NowThis Politics (US)
Brut (FR)
The Economist
BBC News (UK)
El Mundo (ES)
Todo Noticias (AR)
The Sun (UK)
Yahoo! News (US)
Vice World News
Ac2ality (ES)
G1-Globo (BR)
NBC News (US)
1,081,280
784,020
699,620
671,320
653,480
616,249
535,008
487,360
483,980
477,157
428,000
405,920
375,780
374,000
369,360
367,380
350,500
345,785
328,781
343,220
321,360
256,040
254,540
238,340
234,280
220,153
207,760
205,260
202,186
191,460
155,720
159,360
153,020
144,980
119,642
116,800
95,840
88,000
87,920
63,580
50,320
45,320
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
Astro Awani (MYS)
Republika (IDN)
Konbini (FR)
Le Monde (FR)
GMA News (PH)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Pulse (NG)
UOL (BR)
Liputan6 (IDN)
CBS News (US)
Thai Rath (THA)
Aftonbladet (SE)
Daily Mail (UK/US)
Yahoo! (UK)
Sky News (UK)
Khaosod (THA)
Latinus (MEX)
USA Today (US)
Infobae (AR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Washington Post (US)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
ABC News (US)
News.com (AU)
Fanpage (IT)
Meganoticias (CL)
MetroTV (IDN)
ITV News (UK)
Metropoles (BR)
NowThis (US)
NowThis Politics (US)
Brut (FR)
The Economist
BBC News (UK)
El Mundo (ES)
Todo Noticias (AR)
The Sun (UK)
Yahoo! News (US)
Vice World News
Ac2ality (ES)
G1-Globo (BR)
NBC News (US)
1,081,280
784,020
699,620
671,320
653,480
616,249
535,008
487,360
483,980
477,157
428,000
405,920
375,780
374,000
369,360
367,380
350,500
345,785
328,781
343,220
321,360
256,040
254,540
238,340
234,280
220,153
207,760
205,260
202,186
191,460
155,720
159,360
153,020
144,980
119,642
116,800
95,840
88,000
87,920
63,580
50,320
45,320
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
Astro Awani (MYS)
Republika (IDN)
Konbini (FR)
Le Monde (FR)
GMA News (PH)
TV Asahi News (JPN)
Pulse (NG)
UOL (BR)
Liputan6 (IDN)
CBS News (US)
Thai Rath (THA)
Aftonbladet (SE)
Daily Mail (UK/US)
Yahoo! (UK)
Sky News (UK)
Khaosod (THA)
Latinus (MEX)
USA Today (US)
Infobae (AR)
Jornal da Record (BR)
Washington Post (US)
ARD Tagesschau (DE)
ABC News (US)
News.com (AU)
Fanpage (IT)
Meganoticias (CL)
MetroTV (IDN)
ITV News (UK)
Metropoles (BR)
NowThis (US)
NowThis Politics (US)
Brut (FR)
The Economist
BBC News (UK)
El Mundo (ES)
Todo Noticias (AR)
The Sun (UK)
Yahoo! News (US)
Vice World News
Ac2ality (ES)
G1-Globo (BR)
NBC News (US)
1,081,280
784,020
699,620
671,320
653,480
616,249
535,008
487,360
483,980
477,157
428,000
405,920
375,780
374,000
369,360
367,380
350,500
345,785
328,781
343,220
321,360
256,040
254,540
238,340
234,280
220,153
207,760
205,260
202,186
191,460
155,720
159,360
153,020
144,980
119,642
116,800
95,840
88,000
87,920
63,580
50,320
45,320
Mainstream news brands
Socially native brands
11
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
a correspondent video from Ukraine. It now sees TikTok as one of its most important off-site
platforms, along with YouTube.
The German publisher ARD was one of the first publishers to set up an a count, in November
2019. ‘We have the task to transform our brand with younger audiences and inform society as a
whole,’ says Patrick Weinhold, Head of Social Media for Tagesschau, who implemented a two-
tier strategy of news and fun, which often involved creating ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos: ‘We
wanted to make our brand more natural, more interactive, and more pleasant on a personal
(eye-to-eye) level. Our brand image comes from a traditional, studio-based TV setting. We
wanted to lighten this up.’
But TikTok is not an obvious choice for all. Some public broadcasters such as BBC News
have been ambivalent, initially staying off the platform to focus on other networks such as
Instagram. Other public broadcasters, including NRK (Norway), NHK (Japan), DR (Denmark),
and Yle (Finland) have been slow to engage, partly due to worries that the tone may not be
conducive to serious news or because of free-speech concerns related to the Chinese ownership
of the platform. Many subscription-based publishers, such as the New York Times, have also
stayed away, with limited prospects for monetisation a likely additional factor.
But other subscription publishers we spoke to are interested in TikTok because it offers the
opportunity to build a relationship with younger audiences that they hope will pay off later.
‘We’ve done a good job developing a really large Instagram audience and the aim is to replicate
that on TikTok,’ notes Liv Moloney, Head of Social Media at The Economist. ‘Also, with the trend
to more vertical video on Instagram and YouTube, we thought why not push ourselves and
go onto TikTok.’ Like many others, The Economist is not going ‘all in’ on TikTok. It has posted
fewer than 50 videos since it started in July 2022 but has exceeded 20 million views and is busy
experimenting with different approaches to see what works best.
In Sweden, a number of subscription-based publishers have joined the platform in 2022,
including Sweden’s paper of record Dagens Nyheter and the tabloid Aftonbladet. The TikTok
presence at Aftonbladet was part of a specific initiati e to develop relationships with next-
generation audiences. Future Editor Nathalie Mark has been tasked with identifying platforms
and formats that build loyalty and reach. ‘TikTok is very important to that young audience,
giving them news stories so that they later on may feel they go to Aftonbladet rather than go to
the opposition,’ she says.
One other important reason cited by several interviewees relates to concerns about the spread
of misinformation on the platform. Jan Žabka, a Czech journalist with the public interest
website HlídacíPes.org, saw his young brother scrolling through his ‘For You’ page for up to
seven hours a day and worried about the reliability of the news he was seeing. ‘It was sad that
there were no news sites at the time from the Czech Republic – so I wanted to be there,’ he says.
Žabka secured around €20,000 from innovation funds and foundations in the EU and the UK
and has used the money to make TikTok videos to help improve news literacy on subjects such
as maintaining online privacy, identifying different types of disinformation, and how to use
open sources of information. ‘When I have a topic, I make three or fi e videos then I publish,’
he says.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
12
Different types of misinformation explained on TikTok – HlídacíPes.org
Fact-checking and verification has also be ome a key part of the Washington Post’s strategy
as the platform has matured. ‘There’s not a lot of fact-checking on the app and there’s quite
a bit of misinformation,’ says Dave Jorgenson, one of the first journalists to ado t TikTok. In
the early stages of the war in Ukraine the team identified a nu ber of fake videos, and it now
encourages users to tag their account so they can help to verify footage. ‘That’s very much the
strategy, to focus on being the authority figure on the plat orm that can actually help you tell
fact from fi tion,’ says Jorgenson.
In summary, publishers are moving onto TikTok primarily because they want to engage younger
audiences that are spending increasing amounts of time there. They are also motivated by
a desire to combat misinformation with reliable news. The purity of the content-focused
algorithm seems to match well with the speed and immediacy of news, but short videos do
create constraints in terms of depth. Most traditional publishers are not focused on making
money from TikTok at this stage, but rather see this as an opportunity to build relationships
with younger people and experiment with new vertical video formats.
13
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
4. TikTok’s ‘Magic’ Algorithm – How it Works
The highly personalised algorithm is what makes TikTok so addictive. It learns what content
you like based on a variety of signals including watch time, commenting, liking, and sharing. As
soon as any video is published, it is shown to a handful of people on their ‘For You’ page. Based
on how those people react – how long they watch, whether they like it, or how many friends
they share it with – it is shown to another set of people until interest dies down.
Key metrics that publishers looK at:
Followers: This gives your video a head start as it is more likely to be shown to those
that have expressed an interest, but as previously noted this is not as big a factor as on
other platforms.
Views: This is the best metric for understanding how well a piece of content has done,
and whether it is getting traction.
Complete rate: A good average watch time as a proportion of video length would be
over half – say 60% of a one-minute video.
Likes, comments, and shares: These are also believed to be used as signals by the AI
algorithm that a video is provoking conversation and so worth showing to others.
One of the benefits of the Tik ok algorithm, according to some publishers, is that you do not
need to build up millions of followers to be successful. Paula Miraglia, co-founder and CEO at
Nexo Jornal in Brazil, says their first videos a historic series about Brazil’s democratic elections,
took off despite having zero followers until then: ‘On TikTok we had a million views just like
that. So it’s a different sort of engagement. For us to get a million views on YouTube takes
a long time.’ Ac2ality say it is important to post regularly – up to six videos a day to get the
maximum benefit from the algorithm: ‘The more you post, the more your account is going to be
shown to other people,’ says co-founder Gabriela Campbell Gomez. ‘If you post a lot, in the end
it’s going happen that at least one of your videos is going to go viral.’
Authenticity is also critical on TikTok: ‘The algorithm feels very malleable. It’s not something
you get stuck on,’ says Nikhita Chulani, Social Platforms Editor at the Guardian. ‘The way that
the barriers to entry are low has contributed to that. You get rewarded for making a TikTok
that looks like a TikTok. And it can be low production as long as it’s authentic and honest in
its purpose.’
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
14
5. What Strategies are Publishers Pursuing on TikTok?
This research has identified t o main approaches to news content on TikTok: a ‘creator-first
strategy’, which often involves a team of younger specialists – or hosts – who are native to
the platform, and a ‘newsroom-led approach’, where the story is the star and the talents of a
wider group of journalists are showcased. Some individual correspondents also run successful
accounts, but these are less common.
5.1 Creator-first approache
Noting the very different tone and language associated with TikTok, many of the early adopters
decided to set up a bespoke team of creators to front up coverage.
The Washington Post: Humour and substance
Dave Jorgenson was recruited to make light-hearted videos for
YouTube but ended up having more success on TikTok after
being given the green light to put out test content in 2019.
Much of the initial approach was trying to match the expectations for fun that come with
TikTok with the brand values of a 144-year-old legacy news organisation. Jorgenson has won
several awards for the creative and humorous way in which he has tried to square that circle. In
keeping with the mission to connect with people who may not regularly consume traditional
news,
9
information is often slipped in under the radar. A recent sketch about trick-or-treating,
for example, dealt with ‘shrink inflation in the packaging of sweets (see image below). An offi e
conversation about Thanksgiving led to a discussion about the impact of bird flu – while also
dressed as a turkey. ‘The comedy element is part of the TikTok DNA. And I don’t want to ignore
that,’ says Jorgenson. ‘But I do think the Washington Post is now an established presence. People
know us, so they’re more likely to stop and listen and get that information from us.’
A mix of comedy and facts, but not for every story
Since Covid-19, Jorgenson says the Post’s videos have got ‘newsier’. The Post team finds itself
able to do more serious stories, such as an explainer about the importance of the mid-term
9
Micah Gelman, Director of Editorial Video at https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2021/08/24/washington-post-deepens-
investment-storytelling-tiktok-announcing-two-new-positions/
15
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
elections (see photo above right), and at a greater length than would have been possible in the
past. ‘The platform actually seems to promote [longer videos] more, too,’ says Jorgenson.
Another member of the team, Chris Vazquez, who joined initially as an intern, says while they
still try look to incorporate trending sounds or themes, there is no one formula for how to be
successful on TikTok: ‘We’re not going to do a sketch about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for
instance, or, you know, a record number of Covid deaths. I think different news stories call for a
different formula.’
But how important is that specific plat orm knowledge? Do you need be a creator to be
successful on TikTok? ‘I don’t think you need to,’ says Jorgenson, ‘But you need to think
like someone who creates TikToks. You shouldn’t think like someone who’s made videos for
Facebook or for YouTube. It’s very specific ’
The Los Angeles Times: Everything is an experiment
The LA Times has also leaned into the creator-led approach
setting up a team, named 404, with a specific brief to reach
younger, more diverse audiences.
Angie Jaime, who runs the unit, has the title Head of Creator Content, perhaps the first of
its kind ever for a mainstream newsroom. She has assembled a team of artists, filmma ers,
cartoonists, journalists, and even a puppeteer to ‘invent new types of experimental content’,
primarily for TikTok and Instagram.
It is still early days, but the TikTok strategy involves a number of regular formats, including
the puppet-led Sorry Report – featuring Judeh the sheep – with a focus on climate change and
the environment. Other initiatives include mini documentaries or explainers that are specific
to Los Angeles, culture news, trends, and memes. Jaime argues that these approaches, which
often tackle difficult subje ts with a heavy dose of irony and sarcasm, appeal naturally to
GenZ audiences in particular: ‘There’s so many things going on in this world now that are not
solvable in the immediate future. And so what do you do about it? You kind of have to laugh in
order to survive through it.’
Experimental visual storytelling from the 404 team
There are no immediate targets to make money. This is primarily an exercise in storytelling
innovation: ‘Every single piece of content is an experiment into seeing what might work,’
says Jaime. ‘Is it actually achieving the goal, which is distributing information to a
wider audience?’
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
16
Kleine Zeitung: Regional news in accessible format
Austria’s largest regional publication has an ageing readership
that has been transitioning slowly to digital. In the last year
the paper has moved away from posting links to Facebook,
where traffic has been declining and rebuilt its social media
team using a creator model. ‘I’m 28 and I feel like, “Oh my
God, I’m so old”,’ says Larissa Eberhardt, Head of Social Media. ‘They are all Gen Z.’ The new
team is charged with creating native content on TikTok and other social platforms to make
the newspaper feel relevant to a new generation: ‘My colleague who is like super young (21)
and has a really charming dialect and a sparkling personality. You can see that people are
really attached to this person.’ Every day the team looks at data from their website to see
which stories appeal to people ages 18–34 and then adapt those for TikTok by narrating it in
a different way. They focus on regional news rather than national or breaking news, which is
already comprehensively covered by the national broadcaster ORF.
‘I think what we realised is that the first senten e (first ew seconds) is definitely the most
important,’ says Eberhardt. ‘If we have images and a person on the first frame then people
are like “OK this is catching my attention”.’ The team is careful to use easily understandable
language, partly drawn from their long experience in publishing a children’s newspaper. ‘I had a
concern that people would be like, “Oh, you talk to us in a paternalistic way, like we are dumb”,
but it does work.’
The team has had success with topics that appeal to younger audiences, such as vaping in
schools, a TikTok post which sparked a big debate. But Eberhardt concedes that it is not
always easy to translate news to a platform where people are mainly looking to have fun: ‘The
attention span is super, super short. We sometimes struggle with the fact that we can hardly
ever enrich the content because the videos need to be so short.’
TNM: By young people for young people
The News Movement is a social start-up founded by former
BBC and Wall Street Journal executives, which launched in
October 2022 after almost a year in beta mode. Its mission
is to deliver unbiased fact-based news, conduct investigations, and explain complex stories via
TikTok and other social platforms.
All of those creating videos are drawn from that younger demographic and they bring an
intrinsic understanding of the platform – and subjects likely to interest a Gen Z audience.
Clodagh Griffin came to The N ws Movement from Yahoo! UK, where she had set up its TikTok
account. She says the nature of the platform means the key challenge is to grab attention:
‘The first three se onds on TikTok is literally the most crucial. I guess it’s like the modern-day
headline. It’s like posing a question or telling them why they should watch my videos.’ The pace
of videos is extremely fast, with jump cuts and no pause for breath: ‘When I started here, they’d
say, “Can you just, like, leave a second in between your sentences?” I was like, “No”.’ Griffin
says her grandmother often needs to watch her videos four or fi e times, but young audiences
can take in information much more quickly. The incorporation of memes, jokes, and sounds is
another key component of the platform, according to another creator and filmma er, Emma
17
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
Bentley: ‘It seeps into the way that I, like, speak with my friends. We’re always quoting sayings
on TikTok and in the offi e we’ll just shout a phrase or sing songs and everybody knows them.’
Like other creator-filled teams The News Movement looks to match the light-hearted tone
of the platform with information-rich, and often difficult stories. There are explainers about
British and US politics and the war in Ukraine and they have recently been trying out longer
investigations: Griffin re ently visited The Loop (below), which is a drug testing facility at the
Parklife festival: ‘I got a tour around their lab – a “take me there” experience. What people come
away with is information about why drug testing is important, the limitations of it, and be more
informed.’ The video received around 1.5 million views. ‘My heart was so happy,’ says Griffin
On-the-ground reportage is part of The News Movement’s mix
The News Movement is still learning what works but says that young people identify more with
personalities than they do with brands: ‘It’s why TikTok allows creators and news organisations
like us that are fresh to the scene to have resonance,’ says Head of Audience, Valentina Park.
‘The way that authenticity comes through is through our journalists, not necessarily through an
opaque brand.’
Ac2ality: Early adopter nds success
Another socially native start-up started by four Spanish
friends in 2020,
10
Ac2ality publishes a simple, fact-based
news service in a TikTok-specific s yle. Its signature format
was a ‘fi e key things you need to know today’ wrapped
up in a minute. Today it publishes around six video stories a day in Spanish to its 3.9 million
followers and runs an English service too.
The team puts its success down to the lack of competition at the time, strong visuals, and the
simplicity of the language. ‘Young people want to understand what’s going on in the world. But
even if the BBC was doing something similar, young people were not able to fully understand
what they were posting,’ says Gabriela Campbell Gomez, one of the founders. ‘On some topics
we added some memes, some jokes, making it really like colloquial and fun to watch.’ Gomez
thinks that a personality-based approach, while helpful, is perhaps not as important for news as
it is in other genres. Ultimately, she says it is the content that matters most. Despite Ac2ality’s
10
The four founders are Gabriela Campbell Gomez, Daniela Álvarez, Maria Murillo, and Paula Muñoz.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
18
audience success, they have not yet generated much revenue, though they have just started
making sponsored posts for big brands and consultancy services are also part of the mix.
Le Monde: Creative and experimental techniques
The French upmarket daily started on TikTok in summer
2020 with a mission to explain the news. For the most part,
posts on TikTok are bespoke to the platform. Content needs
to be adapted, they say, for the much younger audience.
The team itself, which is aged between 24 and 32, deploys
a variety of creative techniques, including metaphors, drawings, fake video games, and acting.
Having said that, to satisfy the algorithm’s need for volume, content from other platforms
is now being re-versioned with some success. Le Monde has also experimented with live
broadcasts on topics such as ‘the rise of manga in France’ and ‘why superheroes are
so important’.
5.2. Newsroom-led approaches
An alternative to the creator approach is to put the whole newsroom at the heart of the
operation, where TikTok becomes just one additional channel for distribution. This strategy
is the one followed by many established news providers, especially those with existing video
assets and skills (broadcasters).
Sky News: TikTok is just another screen
The London-based broadcaster sees TikTok as another
platform where it can take its trusted, reliable news. ‘I was
very keen that we didn’t fall down the trap that a lot of
publishers do, which is to try to be something they’re not,’
says Alan Strange, Head of On-Demand Content at Sky.
‘We do journalism. And we put our journalism on multiple screens. TikTok is another of
those screens.’
Strange argues that at its heart TikTok is a relatively simple video platform where strong
pictures play a big role. ‘If you have a correspondent on the ground, it is far better to use them,
rather than a young creator,’ he says. Two of their most watched TikToks came from senior
correspondent Stuart Ramsay – firstly in northern Italy at the start of the ovid-19 pandemic
and then with his on-the-ground reporting from Ukraine.
Sky News’ TikTok content strategy is built on four pillars: 1) eyewitness reporting and access
journalism, e.g., interviews with leading public figures; 2) being the first with breakin news
moments; 3) explainers; and 4) live broadcasts. In the early days of the pandemic, Sky News
gained millions of views for live streams of government press conferences, mostly driven by
TikTok’s own app notifications Another format that has been working increasingly well, around
the Ukraine war in particular, is a map-based explainer driven by an expert in the studio. Most
of these are re-versioned from television and so have a horizontal rather than vertical aspect
ratio but they still work, says Strange. ‘When I first started doing this one of the big problems
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HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
I had was, nobody is going to watch it if it is 16x9, but our audience is now more forgiving. And
that helps when you’ve got a 24-hour news video source in a television.’
Vice World News: A year of growth and learning
The digital-born publisher launched
its TikTok channel at the end of
2021, focusing on short explanatory
videos about international news.
But the account really took off
when Russia invaded Ukraine. ‘We had a correspondent, who was on the
ground,’ says Matthew Champion, Editor-in-Chief for EMEA (Europe,
Middle East and Africa). ‘He’s just kind of walking through Kyiv with the
sound of the sirens in the background. He’s experiencing it, but he’s also
telling you what’s going on.’ The report by Matthew Cassel (right), gained
21.6 million views. ‘It’s not very different from a more traditional news
broadcast, but it’s just a bit more relevant.’ On-the-ground reporting has been a key part of
Vice’s DNA for many years, but adapting this to the shorter attention span of TikTok users did
take some work: ‘What we think about a lot of the time is what is the opening shot and what
is the opening line,’ says Champion. ‘Our explainers always start with a question. That’s the
curiosity gap. You’ve got someone in straightaway.’
Vice’s content strategy mixes news explainers, on-the-ground reporting, and listicle formats.
While the entire team can contribute to TikTok, in practice there is a limited number of staff
who have the right skills and are able capture the right tone. These include Sophia Smith
Galer, a former BBC reporter who is a TikTok personality in her own right. She points out that
this style of video is increasingly being adopted by Instagram, Facebook (Reels) and YouTube
(Shorts). ‘All the other social platforms are turning into a little version of TikTok so if you make
something viral there, it is very likely to do well on the other platforms.’
11
Like other publishers, Vice has benefited from the gr wing interest in serious news on the
platform. ‘You can get news to work on TikTok, and you can do it in a way where you’re not
having to resort to news presenters dancing or having to do bizarre things,’ argues Champion.
‘You don’t have to wear a suit and jacket to do it, but you can just tell them the news. It’s
very encouraging.’
The Economist: Strong personality, no faces
It is perhaps not surprising that this upmarket magazine,
which famously doesn’t use by-lines, takes a story- rather
than creator-based approach. The publication has been
surprisingly early to a number of social platforms and
launched on TikTok in early 2022. ‘We had a hunch that
you might not need faces as long as the content was engaging enough,’ says Liv Moloney, Head
of Social Media: ‘Our brand has its own personality. It is witty and it’s about the way it’s done.’
The Economist strategy has also been to focus on quality rather than quantity, tackling topics
11
Interview from Reuters Institute/BBC event, ‘Young People and Their News Habits’, 27 September 2022. https://www.bbc.co.uk/
academy/events/young-people-news-habits/
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
20
that are ‘TikTok-y’ without compromising the brand. A video on why chickens are so large, for
example, has been seen millions of times.
Chickens, politicians and cartoonists – part of an eclectic Economist strategy
The Economist’s mission is about explaining geopolitics and economics, and this chimes well
with the interests of younger audiences, argues Moloney. One successful explainer was an
interactive web feature on a Russian tank that they turned into a video: ‘That’s got a million
views. And it’s a really nerdy, wonkish take on the war,’ she says. Economist videos with their
high production values are the very antithesis of the quickfire jump cuts used y creators, but
they seem to work just as well: ‘We’ll never be the first to tell ou something’s happened, but we
might be the first to xplain it to you or explain it the best,’ says Moloney.
Deutsche Welle: Scaling TikTok across countries
The German international broadcaster has nine accounts on
TikTok for its different language services. But TikTok is being
used in different ways depending on the market: ‘In Nigeria a
funny video about the banning of Twitter did really well, but
hard news about kidnapping less well,’ says Project Manager for Audience Development, Erika
Marzano. ‘Serious news seems to perform more strongly in the Middle East,’ she says. While
Deutsche Welle looks to reuse content across language services, it has also tried to develop the
personalities behind the reporting, as this can help make a connection with the target audience:
‘On TikTok all videos look the same because we’re all editing with the same app,’ says Marzano.
‘What makes us recognisable is faces.’
Aftonbladet: Tabloid approach, strongly branded
The Swedish tabloid launched its TikTok
account in July 2022 and already has
almost 120,000 followers. Those behind the
strategy see value in showcasing faces but
worry that a pure creator strategy would
be too limiting for the range of content they want to cover: ‘A lot of our
competition is working with using the same person, building that rapport.
But we feel that that is a big risk for us as a brand to be too connected to
one single individual that can leave,’ says Future Editor, Nathalie Mark.
Instead, Aftonbladet strongly brands all its TikTok videos with its distinctive
black-on-yellow style, as a way of building the connection with audiences wherever they
consume their news. As well as explainers, they focus on stories of interest to young audiences,
21
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
including entertainment and breaking news. ‘If you’re doing news, being first is critical Our
most successful video [more than 1 million views] was climate protesters glued to the road and
stopping an ambulance getting through by mistake. It hit all the right buttons,’ says Mark. ‘If
our competition has a similar story before us, we won’t get those sorts of numbers.’
5.3 Correspondent accounts
While the accounts of individual journalists such as correspondents are common on platforms
such as Twitter, they are relatively rare on TikTok. This may be because it takes more time to
create and edit video, compared with text. But with some journalists looking for a new home
after the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk, could this provide an alternative way to interact and
engage with audiences?
CNN anchor Max Foster joined TikTok in 2019
when he noticed his own teenage children
using the platform. He was initially impressed
to find so many oung vloggers and
influen ers talking about news, but also
alarmed that much of it was misinformed. Foster’s aim is to provide basic
facts, ‘not assuming any knowledge; simplifying without dumbing down’.
Many of his videos are very short and often aim to answer a simple
question, such as ‘What happens to the Queen’s corgis?’, which attracted
4.1 million views. Other videos are more playful, picking up a sound or a
meme, or are based around a specific location where he is filmin He enjoys the conversation
too, which frequently gives ideas for angles he can use back on television. Foster does not see
himself as competing with other news organisations but rather with dancers and magicians.
‘You have to be in the same sort of headspace as them,’ he says.
The
BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire has been another early adopter, with her
quick news takes attracting almost half a million followers and TV anchor
Jake Tapper of CNN posts regularly on TikTok, often as a way of promoting
TV exclusives or offering behind-the-scenes takes on his work. Max Foster
thinks we may see many more traditional journalists taking to the platform
in the future: ‘One of the reasons people listen to me is I think I’m a bit
older and they can tell I’m experienced and I’ve got the CNN brand and they
can trust what I’m saying.’
5.4 Different approaches summarised
While a variety of strategies are being deployed, we find that broadcasters and some mass
market tabloids are mostly looking at TikTok as another way of distributing their existing
content. This allows them to make the best use of existing assets, such as extensive news video
footage or celebrity scoops. Newspapers and socially native brands, unable to compete on
volume, have tended to create more bespoke content and have taken more risks with
format and tone.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
22
Creator-first approaches ork well for publishers looking to create authentic content that is in
keeping with the vernacular of the platform. The challenge is how to balance the personality of
the creator with the brand they are trying to represent. Humour, music, and even puppets can
make stories more accessible, but the jury is still out on whether this can develop loyalty and
trust in the long term.
A more generic, brand-led approach is good for efficiency but the ontent may sit uneasily on a
platform that has its own distinctive character and is designed for fun.
TikTok strategies for publishers
These are not hard and fast divisions, and publishers are often mixing these approaches in
practice. Either way, there is common agreement that grabbing attention early, using simple
language, having a light touch, and being open to a conversation are key ingredients for a
successful TikTok account.
Different approaches summarised
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Mostly informative
Mostly entertaining
Brand-led
Creator-led
Some trying a
lighter and more
playful tone
Explainers a big
part of the mix
Accessible
political
videos
Some trying a
different
agenda/tone
Experiments with
puppets, acting,
comedy
Some using
creators to
front
coverage
Popular news brands
Natural playground for
celebrity news
and scoops
Socially native and upmarket news brands
Strong creator influence, content mostly
bespoke and distinctive,
Correspondents
Mostly quick takes
on the news
Broadcasters
Looking to reuse existing
video news assets. Tend to
stick to traditional agenda
23
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
6. News Creators and Activists
Just as Twitter to some extent democratised news creation for text, TikTok is doing the same
for short videos. So-called social media influen ers and personalities play a much bigger role on
the platform than mainstream brands and journalists, according to Digital News Report research
from 2021, in stark contrast with more traditional networks like Twitter and Facebook.
Figure 7: Where audiences pay most attention when it comes to news on social platforms
Source: Digital News Report 2021. Q12_Social_sources. You said that you use [social platform] for news… When it comes to news
on [social platform] which of these do you generally pay most attention to? Base: all markets; Twitter = 6,338, Facebook = 28,766,
TikTok = 1,500.
The lower prominence of journalists on TikTok is partly related to slow adoption by news
organisations (though this research suggests this may be changing), lack of video skills, and the
strong ‘creator culture’ on TikTok.
The platform encourages this with a creator fund, which is set to grow to around one billion
dollars in the US over the next few years and double that globally.
12
It is open to individuals
creating any content, including news, but is not available to news organisations. But what does
news from personalities and influen ers look like on TikTok? While it is difficult to present a
comprehensive picture, we have gathered below a few examples of the work of creators and
activists and the impact they are having.
Matt Welland has 2.6 million followers, which is about four times as
many as BBC News. He posts several videos each week which deal
with offbeat news and threats to the planet such as nuclear war
and asteroid attacks. Each video is around one minute long and
starts with an eye-catching statement such as ‘2022 just got even crazier’ or ‘We’re on the verge
of World War 3’. A recent video about a Russian nuclear submarine going missing with
12
The creator fund is currently only available in the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/
en-us/introducing-the-200-million-tiktok-creator-fund
31%
28%
14%
11%
14%
14%
18%
10%
8%
18%
14%
36%
16%
25%
23%
6%
9%
5%
12
Q12_Social_sources. You said that you use [social platform] for news… When it comes to news on [social platform] which of these do you generally pay most attention to?
Base – all markets Twitter= 6,338, Facebook=28,766, YouTube=15,667, Instagram=6,571, Snapchat=925, TikTok=1,500
Mainstream news
Ordinary people
Personalities
Mainstream news
Ordinary people
Personalities
Mainstream news
Ordinary people
Personalities/Influencers
Mainstream news outlets/mainstream journalists
Smaller or alternative news sources
Politicians/political activists
Personalities (incl. celebrities and influencers)
Ordinary people
Other/none
Twitter Facebook TikTok
Where audiences pay most attention when it comes to news on
s
ocial platforms
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
24
doomsday nuclear weapons on board got 8.2 million views. The submarine has since been
sighted in the Barents Sea with experts suggesting this is not unusual.
13
Eye-catching hooks are part of the formula
Khalil Greene is a self-styled Gen Z
historian with around 580,000
followers on the platform. He aims to
cast light on the contribution of Black
Americans to lesser-known or misunderstood moments in history.
He was the first black student president at ale and is part of a
group of social media influen ers using their platforms to question
what they were taught at school. His first video on Tik ok in early
2021, which talked about the whitewashing of Martin Luther King’s
legacy, went viral with over 1.5 million views. He’s also posted
about current issues, such as the need for young people to vote in
the mid-term elections and racial slurs being used by Los Angeles
councillors. Greene was one of a small number of influen ers asked
to attend a White House briefing a ter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:
‘I’m definitely or more briefings with independent reporters through Tik ok because I think it
democratises information sharing and it makes it so that we don’t have to rely on huge news
corporations,’ he says. Greene has noticed more serious news on the platform and more
discussion of race and social justice since the death of George Floyd: ‘I like the freedom that
TikTok gives me, I can wear many different hats. I don’t have to necessarily box myself in the
way that I would if I was like working at like one large company with a specific mandate ’
Jhosselyn Rejas is a 27-year-old activist and TikTokker
who played a part in youth protests that brought down
the Peruvian interim president in November 2020. Rejas
downloaded the app for fun during Covid-19 lockdowns
but was soon inspired to post about politics and social
justice by a Mexican feminist, among others. She says that the vast majority of young people
were on the app in 2020 because of the pandemic so it became the natural way to organise
pro-democracy protests: ‘It was a tool that not only informed about what was happening in a
simple way, but you also saw your favourite TikTokker encouraging you to go on a march, and
that attracted more young people,’ says Rejas. She posted her own experience of police brutality
after two students were killed, which was widely viewed and shared.
13
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/10/new-images-reveal-russias-missing-submarine-belgorod-in-arctic/
25
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
Activism with a human face
Two years on, she says TikTok is still the most important app for young Peruvians: ‘We no
longer only go to TikTok for dances, we go to find out what is happening in the orld,’ says
Rejas, although her posts do still feature music and dancing along with the politics. ‘Sometimes
the news media makes it very difficult to understand so we go to TikTok to have someone
explain what’s going on. It’s much more fun and innovative than TV,’ she adds. But does Rejas
see herself as an activist or a journalist? ‘I see myself more as an activist,’ she says. ‘Although
I challenge myself to always tell the truth, I have a political position, which goes beyond being
Left or Right. I not only share information, but also give my opinions, and that will always
be subjective.’
6.1 Co-opting creators – a case study from Italy
The creativity and passion of young TikTokkers is something that many publishers know they
need to capture if they are going to engage the next generation of news consumers. Many news
creators have large followings but find it hard to build or sustain a business So, could this be an
opportunity for publishers? In Italy, the publisher Ciaopeople has been experimenting with
this idea.
Geopop is a popular science project started as a hobby by
geologist Andrea Moccia in 2018: ‘One of my friends told
me, why don’t you do videos where you can explain scientific
stuff? So, I bought a camera and microphone and I started to
make videos and realised that it was really cool.’ Ciaopeople
noticed Andrea’s passion for the subject and approached
him during lockdown in 2020 with the idea for a joint venture where he could turn this into
a full-time job. Since then, the community (followers) has gone from 400,000 to around 6
million Italians, including around 650,000 followers on TikTok. Being part of a bigger company
has provided the capital needed to grow – there is now a team – and access to specialists
on branding and social distribution. ‘If you look at one of the first videos where I was alone
it’s embarrassing,’ says Moccia. ‘I cannot watch the first one ’ he says. Geopop videos have a
strong graphical style and the team has recently incorporated higher production values and 3D
animations – always packing as big a punch as possible in the first three econds.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
26
Visual storytelling at Geopop helps to explain complex ideas
Initially, Moccia wasn’t convinced about TikTok but has since changed his mind: ‘Of course, we
all like dancing and singing, it’s an entertainment,’ he says. ‘But I think younger people are very
interested in geopolitics. In mechanics, engineering. It’s impressive. It’s unbelievable.’ He notes
that videos are now longer than they used to be, with six- and ten-minute explainers often
some of the biggest hits.
Geopop is part of a verticals strategy for Ciaopeople that includes channels for news (Fanpage),
cooking (Cookist), Green (Ohga), Animals (Kodami), and an artistic collective called The Jackal.
All of these publish on multiple social platforms but TikTok is currently generating much of the
growth. ‘We are succeeding in combining creators and publishers,’ says CFO Fabrizio Barbato,
who is looking to generate advertising revenue across multiple platforms, including a spin-off
magazine. ‘What we saw is that users are engaged more with the person than with the brand. If
we can do both – because the users are engaged with Andrea and the Geopop brand too – that’s
the perfect combination,’ says Barbato, who is looking for more opportunities to team up with
creators in the future.
6.2 The future for news creators on TikTok
In practice, most independent news creators on TikTok are not getting rich. Many say the
creator fund pays such small amounts of money – compared with YouTube – that in most cases
it is not worth their time. Techniques such as product placement and sponsored posts, which
are widely used in fashion and entertainment genres, are much harder to pull off in news and
there is no display advertising option yet.
Instead, news creators tend to use TikTok to build their personal profile so that th y can make
money elsewhere – even in some cases by joining a conventional publisher or broadcaster. But
others will not wish to constrain their creativity and many engage with TikTok for the fun of
creating and sharing their ideas, or because they feel passionately about an issue or cause. But
as this content expands it may become more important to better signal the perspective of a
particular creator and the reliability of their content.
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HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
7. What Next for TikTok and News?
In this final cha ter, we explore how news might develop on the platform and ask publishers
how they think TikTok could better support journalism.
TikTok itself did not set out to be a platform for news and it remains ambivalent about a genre
that is often difficult or ontroversial and tends not to make money. With Facebook and Twitter
losing traction, many publishers are looking to TikTok as a way of replacing that engagement,
but the tone of the platform and the way it works right now is not always a natural fit or
journalism. Outlined below are four ways in which publishers hope this might change.
7.1 Better promotion of high-quality news content
On TikTok, publisher accounts tend to be treated in a similar way to any other news creator.
Some news accounts are marked with a blue tick, but it is not clear what this means and the
process of getting verified is opaque
14
Our research shows that many publishers with a strong
track record for trusted content including debunking and fact-checking do not yet have a blue
tick, especially outside the US and Western Europe. Few of the top news sources in Hungary,
Bulgaria, or Slovakia have blue ticks, for example.
15
A range of trusted sources in Nordic
countries have no blue marks, and verification is xtremely patchy across Latin America, Africa,
and Asia, areas where misinformation is rife.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, TikTok promoted live streams of government
press conferences and rolled out an information hub for official in ormation. TikTok also set up
an election centre for the recent US mid-terms, providing access to authoritative information,
and using additional internal links to election content to drive usage.
16
TikTok also partners
with fact-checking organisations to help identify false information. But managing these
processes on a global scale, in multiple languages, remains an enormous task as the platform
grows. While recognising the challenges, publishers would like TikTok to do much more to flag
the reliability of news creators: ‘They should address the issue of the reputation of users, to
understand if that creator can be reliable in a journalistic way,’ says Fabrizio Barbato from the
group behind Italy’s Fanpage.
Publishers point to YouTube’s ‘breaking news shelf’, where reliable brands are promoted
whenever a big news story happens, and would like to see similar approaches taken by TikTok.
Others would like TikTok to create a dedicated space for news within the app.
14
TikTok says that it considers a number of factors before granting a verified badge such as whether the notable account is
authentic, unique, and active. https://support.tiktok.com/en/using-tiktok/growing-your-audience/how-to-tell-if-an-account-is-
verified-on-tikto
15
These include Bulgarian National Television, the most trusted news brand in the country according to the Digital News Report
2022. The Czech brands missing include Czech TV, the second most trusted news source. Top Finnish brands such as the highly
read Iltalehti are without a tick. In Peru, the news brand Trome is unverified despite posting several times a day and having
486,000 followers and 18 million likes.
16
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/our-commitment-to-election-integrity. TikTok has also created in-app guides for the 2022
Kenyan general election, the 2022 Brazilian general election, and the 2022 Australian federal election.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
28
7.2 More transparency about the removal or blocking of news content
Many news organisations were initially wary of TikTok’s Chinese ownership and the potential
for censorship, and these worries have not gone away. A recent report from ARD’s Tagesschau
found that TikTok had been preventing comments from being displayed under videos if they
contained certain keywords:
17
‘We found that TikTok was blocking comments that included
words such as “gay”, such as “queer”, which is something that is very unusual on other
platforms,’ says Patrick Weinhold, Head of Social Media for Tagesschau. TikTok has since revised
its approach to these word filters but worries persist on a range of other issues. TikTok adds
black ‘warning screens’, for example, to posts that might contain images of violence, such as
political protests, which means they are much less likely to be watched by users. While news
organisations recognise that it is important to protect younger TikTok audience from shocking
images, they feel that these rules are overly restrictive and in practice stop them covering
legitimate topics of public interest.
18
Many publishers would like the platform to treat their content differently, recognising their
expertise and sensitivity in covering stories like war and protests, so that important news is
not blocked by these algorithms. They also want more openness about why content is removed
or downgraded. ‘With Facebook, it is much more transparent,’ says Larissa Eberhardt at Kleine
Zeitung in Austria. ‘We get to meet them and work with them, but with TikTok they often don’t
answer any questions.’ TikTok itself recognises that moderation decisions can be contentious,
but says that creators are notified when ontent is removed, and there is an opportunity
to appeal.
19
7.3 Better monetisation of content
Commercial publishers would like to find ways to be ompensated for the value they provide
to the platform. This could be direct payments or access to the creator fund that allocates
money for popular posts. Short videos do not lend themselves to interruptive advertising, but
publishers would like the ability to put onward links to websites or apps, which is currently
very limited,
20
where traffic can be monetised via ad ertising or subscription. These links
would also make sponsored posts more viable as it would provide a way for advertisers to track
further interest. ‘To monetise this kind of content is a big opportunity for the media industry,’
says Maurice Jalfon, Head of Social Media for Infobae in Argentina. The Washington Post has
started to experiment with sponsored posts for brands, though these are not produced by the
newsroom TikTok team but by a separate creative group. Others are considering developing
genres or series that are ‘brought to you by a particular advertiser’: ‘We’ve been trying to find a
partner to support a video series of the World Cup on TikTok,’ says Paula Miraglia, CEO of Nexo
Jornal in Brazil. ‘I think this could be more interesting and more aligned with what our audience
would expect.’
17
https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/tik-tok-begriffe-blockade-101.html
18
TikTok says it does permit some public-interest content that would normally be removed, under limited circumstances, such as
educational, documentary, scientific artistic, satirical content, or counterspeech.
19
https://support.tiktok.com/en/safety-hc/account-and-user-safety/content-violations-and-bans
20
Accounts with more than 1,000 followers can add an external website to their bio.
29
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
It is still relatively early days and platform features are constantly changing. TikTok has raised
the maximum length of videos to ten minutes and is pushing longer live streams. It is also
trialling a subscription model, similar to Amazon’s live-streaming platform, Twitch, in which
fans pay to gain better access to a creator’s channel. These approaches may open up more
monetisation options in the future but are mainly aimed at incentivising creators. Until there is
a clearer monetisation path for publishers, investments are likely to be constrained.
7.4 Improved audience data and tools
Publishers would like more detailed and more timely demographic information about who
has viewed posts, with more data about how particular posts have performed. This will make
it easier to demonstrate value internally as well as to optimise content for the platform: ‘I
think having more audience and demographic data would be huge,’ says Angie Jaime at the Los
Angeles Times. ‘Our biggest quandary right now is figuring out onsistency of performance, how
we can reach more niche or wider audiences.’
Publishers would also like better functionality for being able to edit and manage workfl ws
across accounts (suitable for a business user), rather than being tied to a single user or phone.
Some publishers are unhappy with the moderation tools and options around live events.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
30
8. Conclusion
The nature of social media is being reshaped, with TikTok riding a wave of growth, driven by
the creativity and energy of young people. As this research has shown, publishers across the
world are flocking to the plat orm, partly to engage and build relationships with this younger
demographic, but also to experiment with vertical video storytelling formats, which are
becoming ubiquitous across social media platforms.
Publisher adoption is unevenly distributed, however, with the most enthusiasm in parts of
Western Europe, South-East Asia, Latin America, and the US, and less interest elsewhere. Some
publishers remain worried about Chinese ownership of the platform and its potential risks;
others fear that the very short video format risks trivialising important news stories. The lack of
opportunities to monetise content is further limiting investment by publishers.
News organisations are also concerned that TikTok is becoming a new home for fake news
stories, manipulated media, and other types of misinformation.
21
Fact-checking, debunking,
and news literacy have become an increasing focus for many publishers as these threats become
more real. But some worry that these efforts are not being sufficiently prioritised y TikTok
itself. More generally, publishers would like much more engagement with the specific issues of
publishing as well as content that is ‘good for society’.
These issues closely match the dilemmas publishers have faced with other social platforms in
the past – namely how to balance short-term opportunities with longer-term risks. The extra
costs that come with creating bespoke content on the platform, together with very limited
attribution and onward-linking options, makes the cost/benefit analysis ven tougher in
this case.
For those who are experimenting on the platform, there is no single recipe for success. Many
publishers use a strategy based on hiring young creators who are native to the platform and its
vernacular. This approach has connected strongly with audiences and brought critical acclaim
but can make it harder to re-version content for other social platforms. Others have focused on
showcasing the assets of the entire newsroom, including more experienced correspondents and
anchors, delivering greater scale and fl xibility but often without the same personal touch.
Either way, interviewees agree that content needs to be short, accessible, and engage audiences
in the first ew seconds. But that does not necessarily mean dumbing down. ‘Need-to-know’
stories about Covid-19 and Ukraine have gained very large audiences on TikTok, and publishers
say there is widespread appetite for learning new things and understanding complex stories.
Looking to the future, we can expect videos to get longer than the current 30–60 second
average, offering more opportunity for deeper engagement. TikTok’s audience is getting older
so there is a chance to address a wider range of needs. But there are also signs that avoidance
may be kicking in as the amount of news on the platform increases. Early adopters say it is
much harder to grow followers than it was even a year ago, and some say that the average view
21
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/technology/tiktok-deepfakes-disinformation.html
31
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
count has been falling too. This may be a function of greater competition for attention, with
more creators and publishers jostling to gain prominence in feeds.
This research is a snapshot of a moment in time, exploring how some publishers are adapting to
one vibrant and dynamic social network. But it is also part of a wider trend; namely, that more
journalism in the future will be consumed in new formats, using new technology, and within
contexts that may seem unthinkable today. In that sense, the processes of experimentation and
discovery illustrated in this report will be critical.
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
32
APPENDIX A – List of Interviewees
Position held at the time of the interviews
United Kingdom and the United States
Emma Bentley
Filmmaker and creator, The News Movement
Carmella Boykin
Washington Post TikTok team
Matthew Champion
Editor-in-Chief, Vice News (EMEA)
Nikhita Chulani
Social Platforms Editor, the Guardian
Max Foster
Anchor, CNN, London
Khalil Greene
Gen Z historian and TikTok creator, the US
Clodagh Griffi
Journalist and creator, The News Movement
Angie Jaime
Head of Creator Content, Los Angeles Times
Dave Jorgenson
Senior Video Reporter leading the Washington Post TikTok team
Liv Moloney
Head of Social Media, The Economist
Valentina Park
Head of Audience, The News Movement
Alan Strange
Editor, On-Demand, Sky News
Chris Vazquez
Washington Post TikTok team
Europe
Fabrizio Barbato
CFO, Ciaopeople Media Group, Italy
Gabriela Campbell Gomez
Co-founder, Ac2ality, Spain
Alexis Delcambre
(and the TikTok team)
Le Monde, France
Larissa Eberhardt
Head of Social Media, Kleine Zeitung, Austria
Nathalie Mark
Future Editor, Aftonbladet, Sweden
Erika Marzano
Project Manager Audience Development, Deutsche Welle
Andrea Moccia
Editorial Director and Founder, Geopop, Italy
Patrick Weinhold
Head of Social Media, Tagesschau (ARD), Germany
Jan Žabka
Journalist, HlídacíPes.org, Czech Republic
Latin America
Maurice Jalfon
Head of Social Media, Infobae, Argentina
Paula Miraglia
CEO and Co-Founder, Nexo Jornal, Brazil
Jhosselyn Rejas
Activist and TikTok creator, Peru
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
34
RISJ PUBLICATIONS
SELECTED BOOKS
Hearts and Minds: Harnessing Leadership, Culture,
and Talent to Really Go Digital
Lucy Kueng
Worlds of Journalism: Journalistic Cultures Around
the Globe
Thomas Hanitzsch, Folker Hanusch, Jyotika
Ramaprasad, and Arnold S. de Beer (eds)
(published with Columbia University Press)
NGOs as Newsmakers: The Changing Landscape of
International News
Matthew Powers (published with Columbia
University Press)
Global Teamwork: The Rise of Collaboration in
Investigative Journalism
Richard Sambrook (ed)
Journalism and the NSA Revelations: Privacy,
Security and the Press
Risto Kunelius, Heikki Heikkilä, Adrienne Russell
and Dmitry Yagodin (eds) (published with
I.B.Tauris)
Something Old, Something New: Digital Media and
the Coverage of Climate Change
James Painter et al.
Journalism in an Age of Terror
John Lloyd (published with I.B.Tauris)
The Right to Be Forgotten: Privacy and the Media in
the Digital Age
George Brock (published with I.B.Tauris)
The Kidnapping of Journalists: Reporting from
High-Risk Conict Zones
Robert G. Picard and Hannah Storm (published
with I.B.Tauris)
Innovators in Digital News
Lucy Kueng (published with I.B.Tauris)
Local Journalism: The Decline of Newspapers and
the Rise of Digital Media
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (ed) (published with
I.B.Tauris)
Journalism and PR: News Media and Public
Relations in the Digital Age
John Lloyd and Laura Toogood (published with
I.B.Tauris)
Reporting the EU: News, Media and the European
Institutions
John Lloyd and Cristina Marconi (published with
I.B.Tauris)
SELECTED RISJ REPORTS AND FACTSHEETS
How We Follow Climate Change: Climate News Use
and Attitudes in Eight Countries
Waqas Ejaz, Mitali Mukherjee, Richard Fletcher,
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Changing Newsrooms 2022: Media Leaders Embrace
Hybrid Work Despite Challenges
Federica Cherubini
Born in the Fire: What We Can Learn from How
Digital Publishers in the Global South Approach
Platforms
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Federica Cherubini
The Trust Gap: How and Why News on Digital
Platforms Is Viewed More Sceptically Versus News
in General
Camila Mont’Alverne, Sumitra Badrinathan, Amy
Ross Arguedas, Benjamin Toff, Richard Fletcher,
and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022
Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Craig T. Robertson,
Kirsten Eddy, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Race and Leadership in the News Media 2022:
Evidence from Five Markets
Kirsten Eddy, Meera Selva, and Rasmus Kleis
Nielsen (Factsheet)
Women and Leadership in the News Media 2022:
Evidence from Twelve Markets
Kirsten Eddy, Meera Selva, and Rasmus Kleis
Nielsen (Factsheet)
Snap Judgements: How Audiences Who Lack Trust in
News Navigate Information on Digital Platforms
Amy Ross Arguedas, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila
Mont’Alverne, Benjamin Toff, Richard Fletcher,
and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
35
HOW PUBLISHERS ARE LEARNING TO CREATE AND DISTRIBUTE NEWS ON TIKTOK
Echo Chambers, Filter Bubbles, and Polarisation: A
Literature Review
Amy Ross Arguedas, Craig T. Robertson, Richard
Fletcher, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and
Predictions 2022
Nic Newman
Depth and Breadth: How News Organisations
Navigate Trade-Offs Around Building Trust in News
Benjamin Toff, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila
Mont’Alverne, Amy Ross Arguedas, Richard
Fletcher, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Overcoming Indifference: What Attitudes Towards
News Across the Global North and South Tell Us
About Building Trust
Benjamin Toff, Sumitra Badrinathan,
Camila Mont’Alverne, Amy Ross Arguedas,
Richard Fletcher, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
An Ongoing Infodemic: How People in Eight
Countries Access and Rate News and Information
About Coronavirus a Year into the Pandemic
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Anne Schulz, and
Richard Fletcher
Listening to What Trust in News Means to Users:
Qualitative Evidence from Four Countries
Benjamin Toff, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila
Mont’Alverne, Amy Ross Arguedas, Richard
Fletcher, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Women and News: An Overview of Audience
Behaviour in 11 Countries
Meera Selva and Simge Andı
What We Think We Know and What We Want
to Know: Perspectives on Trust in News in a
Changing World
Benjamin Toff, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila
Mont’Alverne, Amy Ross Arguedas, Richard
Fletcher, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Daily News Podcasts: Building New Habits in
the Shadow of Coronavirus
Nic Newman and Nathan Gallo
Few Winners, Many Losers: The COVID-19
Pandemic’s Dramatic and Unequal Impact on
Independent News Media
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Federica Cherubini,
and Simge Andı
Changing Newsrooms 2020: Addressing
Diversity and Nurturing Talent at a Time
of Unprecedented Change
Federica Cherubini, Nic Newman, and
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Communications in the Coronavirus Crisis:
Lessons for the Second Wave
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Richard Fletcher,
Antonis Kalogeropoulos, and Felix M. Simon
Information Inequality in the UK Coronavirus
Communications Crisis
Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos,
Felix M. Simon, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Publish Less, but Publish Better: Pivoting to
Paid in Local News
Joy Jenkins
Volume and Patterns of Toxicity in Social Media
Conversations during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Sílvia Majó-Vázquez, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen,
Joan Verdú, Nandan Rao, Manlio de Domenico,
and Omiros Papaspiliopoulos (Factsheet)
Are News Outlets Viewed in the Same Way by
Experts and the Public? A Comparison across 23
European Countries
Anne Schulz, Richard Fletcher, and Marina
Popescu (Factsheet)
Types, Sources, and Claims of COVID-19
Misinformation
J. Scott Brennen, Felix M. Simon, Philip N. Howard,
and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (Factsheet)
Industry, Expert, or Industry Experts? Academic
Sourcing in News Coverage of AI
J. Scott Brennen, Anne Schulz, Philip N. Howard,
and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (Factsheet)
Old, Educated, and Politically Diverse: The
Audience of Public Service News
Anne Schulz, David A. L. Levy, and
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
