The annual Digital News Report Ireland shows that Irish people continue to trust major news brands, but are losing trust in news more generally. The report was published by Coimisiún na Meán with the research and analysis undertaken by DCU FuJo. The Irish report was written by Dan Lloyd, Dr Callum Craig, Dr Eirini Psychari, Dr Eileen Culloty, and Prof. Jane Suiter.
The report examines how Irish audiences participate with news across five themes: overall news engagement, trust, public service media, news discovery and creators and influencers.
Trust is one of the defining stories of this year’s report. Overall trust in news has fallen sharply, with Ireland recording the second largest drop across all 48 markets, after the Philippines. Yet trust in Irish news brands themselves has held steady, with RTÉ News remaining among the most trusted outlets in the country. The report includes the essay 'Ireland trusts its newsrooms, just not the news' by Prof Jane Suiter.
On public service media, Irish audiences are notably more positive than their counterparts elsewhere, particularly in the UK. Whether that goodwill reflects genuine satisfaction or is a legacy of RTÉ’s long dominance of the broadcast landscape is an open question this report explores. The report includes the essay 'The enduring relevance of public service media' by Dr Eileen Culloty.
News discovery is an increasingly urgent issue. Social media referrals to news publishers continue to decline, and Google’s rollout of AI-powered search adds further uncertainty to how audiences find journalism online. Algorithmic and incidental discovery are now central, and contested, features of the Irish news environment. At the same time, AI chatbots are emerging as a news source in their own right, used by 7% of respondents overall and 14% of 18-24 year-olds, a trend that is only likely to grow. The report features the essay 'Irish news discovery: devices, algorithms, and shifting patterns of engagement' by Dr Callum Craig.
Against that backdrop, creators and influencers face no such discovery problem. Ireland’s influencer and creator economy is growing, but the picture is more complicated for those focused on news. This report looks at how news creators compare with established brands, including how both compare when it comes to video. The essay 'Opportunities for journalism in a creator-saturated online environment' is by Dr Eirini Psychari.
Finally, with avoidance at a record high, overall news engagement has dipped, suggesting audiences may be reaching a saturation point. Even so, most news brands are holding their audiences, and some are even growing them. The essay 'Engagement with news in Ireland' by Dan Lloyd examines this trend.
The International Picture
The international report published by Oxford University is in its fifteenth year. It seeks to capture global trends while reflecting the variation of news habits and attitudes across and within countries. This year’s report is based on almost 100,000 interviews with online news consumers and covers 48 markets
It finds that, for the first time, social media and video networks are, on average across the markets covered, more popular than both TV and owned news websites and apps as sources of news. Growing numbers are also experimenting with AI chatbots as a new means of access. When online, people increasingly like to watch rather than read the news, often drawing on a wider range of sources and voices. The international report explores in detail the rise of creators and other emerging news producers, the role they play in this changing environment, and what audiences value about their content.
Since 2021, the proportion of people saying they are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ interested in the news has fallen by an average of 13pp across the markets. A quarter (25%) of respondents are now casual or passive news users who typically only consume news once a week and say they have little to no interest in it, up from 16% in 2021. Trust in news has fallen in 29 of our 48 markets this year, resulting in a drop overall to the lowest level we have recorded since we started to measure trust in 2015 (37%).
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Type: Reports
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Year: 2026
URL: Resource
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The Reuters Institute Digital News Report is the world’s largest international comparative survey of the major trends in digital news consumption. It is widely used by industry, analysts, and researchers across the world. Since 2015, Coimisiún na Meán (formerly Broadcasting Authority of Ireland) has funded FuJo to undertake the analysis for the Irish report. Annual reports are available for: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 20128, 2017, 2016, and 2015....
