Digital News Report 2025 – An Overview of the Canadian Results

More than half of Canadian respondents (54%) consider influencers and online personalities to be among the main threats when it comes to false or misleading information online, a higher share than those obtained by foreign governments and political actors (50%), by Canadian political actors (48%), or by news media and journalists (30%). When asked about distribution channels rather than sources, Facebook, which continues to boycott content from ‘professional’ news media in Canada, is considered one of the main disinformation threats by a majority of respondents (54%), as is TikTok (52%). Only one in five respondents (21%) considers online news sites as such.

These data and more are found in the 2025 edition of the annual summary of the Canadian results of the Digital News Report, an international survey conducted in 48 countries by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The Centre d’études sur les médias is the Canadian partner of this study.

As is the case every year, the survey looks at the evolution of trust and interest in news and payment for online news. Among the many other topics covered, perceptions related to the use of artificial intelligence in news production, which tend to be more favorable for 18-to-34-year-olds than for older adults, the removal of content by social media platforms, and the respondents’ main sources of news. For the first time in this study, we asked about artificial intelligence chatbots as a source of news during the previous week.