A. Guttmann
Research Lead covering media
News consumption Latin America - statistics & facts
Getting informed in Latin America varies depending on the country. For example, the subcontinent is home to markets with the most adults using social media as a news source. Approximately two thirds of people interviewed in Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico in early 2023 included platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp in their media diet. However, there are also consumers in the region willing to spend money on what they consider sources of good quality information. In Brazil and Mexico – the largest Latin American economies – at least one in six internet users surveyed in 2023 said they had paid for digital news. While the accessibility of online news sources is on the rise, traditional media remain popular sources of information in certain markets.
Despite some regional differences, news consumption in Latin America is pivoting to online sources, driven by the growing popularity of social media and accessibility of the internet.
Online news in Brazil
A study conducted annually among Brazilian internet users suggests that, in recent years, more than half of them read news online. As of 2023 the share stood at 55 percent. But they also seem to prefer legacy media titles that entered the web environment, as opposed to enterprises created exclusively for the online mediascape. The five most popular independent news websites in Brazil had between 3.3 million and 17.8 million unique visitors. Meanwhile, the online versions of print diaries like O Globo, Veja, Folha de S. Paulo, and Valor Econômico had between 22.3 million and 40.8 million unique visitors at the same time. That makes them the most visited Brazilian newspaper websites, even though three of the leading sites have paywalls hindering unregistered and unpaying users from viewing multiple stories.Mexico: news stories on TV
Television reigns supreme among the leading offline news brands in Mexico. A 2024 survey showed that over one-fourth of responding internet users checked the news on TV Azteca and/or on Televisa, the country's top free TV channels, at least once a week. While the ratings confirm the preference for Azteca, they also indicate a fondness for Las Estrellas, run by TelevisaUnivision. During a single week in mid-2023, the two channels encompassed all of Mexico's most-viewed TV news programs. Still, online sources are also popular, and here they tend to belong to legacy media. Internet users seek information in platforms derived from print newspapers specifically. The most visited Mexican news websites in early 2022 were Milenio and El Heraldo de México, twoDespite some regional differences, news consumption in Latin America is pivoting to online sources, driven by the growing popularity of social media and accessibility of the internet.
