There’s always Monday morning quarterbacking after an election and, in the past two weeks, an incredible number of takes have invoked a podcaster by the name of Joe Rogan. A new Pew Research Center report focuses on news influencers on social media — including Rogan — and the Americans who say they regularly get their news from them.

For the new report, released Monday, Pew conducted a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults, examined a sample of 500 “news influencers” across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube, and analyzed more than 100,000 posts in summer 2024. Each of the news influencers has at least 100,000 followers, regularly posts about news, and is run by an individual (not a news organization). And, yup, Joe Rogan’s Instagram account (19.4 million followers) is among those sampled.

About one in five Americans say they regularly get news from news influencers. Younger Americans, who we know from previous research are more likely to get news from social media in general, are more likely to get news from news influencers. Among U.S. adults under 30 years old, nearly 40% said they regularly get news from news influencers.

Those who often turn to news influencers say they find their content helpful and unique. Roughly 65% of those who regularly get news from news influencers said the influencers help them better understand current events and civic issues and more than 70% say the news they get from news influencers is at least somewhat different from the news they get from other sources.

While Republicans and Democrats were equally likely to say they get news from news influencers, the report found Republicans were more likely to say this news is “extremely or very different” from the news they get anywhere else. Those regularly getting news from news influencers were more likely to be Hispanic (30%), Asian (29%), Black (27%), and have lower incomes (26%). White Americans (17%) and Americans with higher incomes (16%) were less likely to rely on news influencers.

Across all five social media sites, two-thirds of news influencers (63%) are men. The percentage of male news influencers was highest on Facebook (67%) and YouTube (68%) and the gender gap was smallest on TikTok — where 50% of news influencers are men. (News influencers who are nonbinary and whose gender could not be determined by researchers are not shown in the chart below.) TikTok was also the only social media site studied where there was a roughly equal number of news influencers that identify as right-leaning and those that are openly left-leaning. The rest skewed slightly to the right.

Though most news influencers are on more than one social media site, the vast majority (85%) have an account on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Some of the news influencers on X sampled by Pew are journalists — including Punchbowl’s John Bresnahan, Axios business editor Dan Primack, Breitbart News correspondent Kristina Wong, editor of The Free Press Bari Weiss, The Dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg, and Arizona Sun Times reporter Rachel Alexander. But Pew found that 77% of news influencers have no affiliation — past or present — with a news organization. Other news influencers on X were former astronaut Terry Virts; commenter accounts “Black in the Empire” and “Censored Men”; professors Tim Hogan, Yann LeCun, and Jonathan Turley; a Chapo Trap House co-host and a Pod Save America co-host; Palestinian writer and analyst Yara Hawari and a “proud Zionist”; Mary L. Trump and Roger Stone; and plenty who are primarily posting memes.

On Instagram, Pew’s sample included a number of celebrities, curated news accounts like 619 News Media, So Informed, Snowflake News, and Mo News, and a surprising number of news influencers that seem to mostly post screenshots from Twitter. On TikTok, Pew’s sampled accounts include @dontyounoa, @lauren.elise.official, and @expatriarch.

Pew found that news influencers who have not worked in the news industry are more likely to be on YouTube and TikTok. “Half of these news influencers have a YouTube presence, roughly twice the share of their counterparts who have worked for news organizations (23%),” the report notes. “Similarly, three-in-ten news influencers who have not worked for a news organization use TikTok, compared with just 19% of those who have links to a news outlet.”

News influencers with links to the news industry are also less likely to advertise their political orientation or align themselves with political or social causes — such as showing support for Palestinians or Ukrainians or identifying as anti-abortion in their profiles.

“About two-thirds of those who’ve worked for a news organization (64%) do not express a clear political orientation in their social media profile, posts, personal website or media coverage, compared with 44% of those without that background,” the report notes. “Similar shares of news influencers with and without connections to news organizations identify as right- leaning (25% and 27%, respectively). But news influencers from news organizations are less likely to explicitly identify as left-leaning.”

Across all five social media sites, a majority of news influencers (59%) monetize their following in some way — including offering subscriptions, soliciting donations, or selling merch. That number is highest on YouTube, where 80% of news influencers seek financial support from their audience. This includes 68% of YouTube news influencers who offer subscriptions that give users access to paywalled content.

Want to check out the news influencers studied for yourself? The 500 news influencers sampled by Pew Research Center are linked below. You can also read the full report here.