Bill C-18 hasn’t caused a flood of Canadians going directly to local media for their news – but things are trending in that direction.

According to Dentsu Media’s latest study on local news media in Canada, about half of Canadians have noticed the lack of news on their social media platforms but are not letting that stop them
from accessing information about local events and news.

Dentsu conducted the consumer survey on behalf of the CMDC in July, after Meta announced its plans to block news for Canadian users as a response to the Online News Act.

The survey found that the majority of Canadians (64%) are aware of Bill C-18, the bill that prompted Meta and Google to block Canadian news from their sites, and 58% are at least somewhat concerned about the missing local news.

The removal is having no significant impact on 54% of respondents, since they access news from a variety of sources, not just social media, as well as the 33% of survey participants who say they actively seek news from other sources.

In July, there was a slight increase in consumers accessing news directly from a publisher’s website: 54%, compared to 50% in April. However, the increases are not the same across the board: one small publisher Denstu observed had a 89% year-over-year traffic surge.

Those looking at Facebook for news has decreased to 5% in July from 15% in April. Reddit is starting to drive more traffic for publishers, increasing to 5% in July, compared to 3% in April. Google search (23%) and news search (8%) stayed the same between April and July.

Canadians are increasingly turning to TV as a news source, growing by 6% to 55% in July. Other media channels, however, are decreasing as news sources. Radio declined by 2% to 44% of survey participants, while mobile decreased by 3% to 43% and print declined by 1% to 42%.

The top three news topics that Canadians are interested in are politics, general community news and weather. Rounding out the top 10 are crime, food and lifestyle, entertainment and culture, community events, climate change, commerce/business and sports.

Trust in local news is growing, with 54% of Canadians considering local news trustworthy, compared to 11% that consider social media trustworthy for news. Local radio is the most trusted (50%) of all media formats in populations of all sizes, with local newspapers second at 49%. CBC, at 63%, is the individual news outlet most trusted by Canadians, compared to 20% who trust Google and 7% who trust Facebook for news.