Almost two-thirds of people in Spain don’t trust social media for accurate political news

63.9% of people in Spain believe that political news and information obtained via social media networks is unreliable.

71.6% ‘agree or strongly agree’ that the networks promote extremist opinions, according to a current affairs survey published on Wednesday by the CIS(Centre for Sociological Research).

The study was carried out between March 28 and 30 based on 2,571 interviews.

Despite the distrust of social media, 91% of respondents said that have used the internet over the last three months and 44.3% accessed political news and current affairs daily online.

In addition, 47.9% of those interviewed consider that to be informed, ‘the internet is a fundamental source’ while 30.2% consider it ‘secondary, but important’ with 5.4% never using it as a source of information.

Although a strong majority of 63.9% respondents believe social media channels are not reliable for finding out about current affairs, 61.1% think that the networks are ‘a way of keeping up to date with political affairs’ and 64% ‘agree or strongly agree’ that they can ‘get people interested in politics’.

And almost half of those surveyed believe that social networks are a ‘good way’ to give an opinion on current affairs.

As for more traditional news sources, 46.5% of those interviewed watch political news and current affairs on television every day and 28% use the radio daily to be kept up to date.

On the other hand, the use of printed newspapers to find out about political news continues to decline.

72.5% use papers less than one day a week and only 11% say they are daily readers.