Americans express only moderate trust in most news source types % of U.S. adults who trust the information.from National news worgs Local news forgs and continue to have much lower trust in social media % of web-using U.S. adults who trust the information.
Americans have low trust in information from social media. Just 5% of web-using U.S. adults have a lot of trust in the information they get from social media, nearly identical to the 4% who said so in 2016. This level of trust is much lower than trust in national and local news organizations, and in information coming from friends and family. In fact, in a separate study focusing on science news about twice as many social media users distrust science posts on social media as trust them (52% compared with 26%, 21% of social media users do not see any science posts).
While social media is a common pathway to news, when people follow news links, source recognition is lower for news accessed through these platforms than it is when the link comes from a news organization. When news links came directly from a news organization’s emails, texts or alerts, the individual could name a source for that link 78% of the time. That far outpaced source recall when a link came through social media (52% of such instances) or a friend’s email or text (50%).
Americans express only moderate trust  | in most news source types  | % of U.S. adults who trust the information.from  | National news worgs  | a lot  | Some  | NET  | 2017  | 20%  | 52%  | 72%  | 2016  | 76  | 18  | 59  | Local news forgs  | 2017  | 85  | 25  | 60  | 2016  | 22  | 60  | 82  | Friends and family  | 2017  | 15  | 61  | 76  | 2016  | 14  | 63  | 77  | and continue to have much lower  | trust in social media  | % of web-using U.S. adults who trust the information.  | from  | Social media  | 2017  | 37  | 5  | 33  | 2016  | 30  | 34  | Source Surveys conducted March 13-27 2017, and Jan 12-Feb 8  | 2016.  | "Americans' Attitudes Aboutthe News Media Deeply Divided Along  | Partisan Lines"  | PEW RESEARCH CENTER 