Nearly half of Brazilian internet users distrust news organizations, according to a new survey. News organizations are experimenting with WhatsApp groups and community building to keep up.
News now travels less through the front page than through the family group chat.
A majority of Brazilians get their information through social media and messaging apps, according to a survey released in April by three organizations that help shape internet policy in Latin America’s largest digital market. And when it comes to trust, friends and family seem to have an edge over the traditional press.
The survey, conducted in August and September 2025, interviewed more than 5,000 internet users ages 16 and older about their online habits, including how they access and verify information, use social media and identify misinformation.
It was carried out by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, the Brazilian Network Information Center and the Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society.
The numbers paint a sobering picture for news organizations. Some 72% of users said they access information daily through social media, while 60% get their news through messaging apps—the algorithmic conveyor belt of forwarded videos, voice notes and unsolicited political wisdom.
Nearly half, 48%, said they distrust information produced by professional news outlets. Fewer, 39%, said they distrust content shared by friends and family.
The survey addresses the issue of disinformation by looking beyond individual falsehoods and helping understand how information spreads, Bernardo Ballardin, an analyst at the Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR).
The survey also confirmed something many already suspected: younger and older Brazilians consume information in very different ways—and older users appear more vulnerable to deception online. Younger respondents reported encountering deepfakes more frequently, the survey found.
“Older individuals are less aware of the circulation of deepfakes in their daily lives and may have greater difficulty identifying them,” Ballardin said.
Journalists reacted to the findings with a mix of alarm and grim acceptance. At Correio Sabiá, Brazil’s first direct-to-WhatsApp news outlet, director Maurício Ferro said the survey merely quantified what many in media already sensed: in the age of the group chat, word of mouth reigns supreme.
“You’re much more likely to trust a certain newspaper … when someone very close to you recommends that source of information,” Ferro told LJR.
That logic is at the core of Correio Sabiá’s strategy. The outlet has turned community-building into something closer to a business model, creating WhatsApp groups where readers interact not only with each other, but with reporters.
“This is a way of building very deep relationships,” Ferro said.
At the Sao Paolo-based online news outlet Nexo, editors also place a priority on finding distribution channels that do not rely on social media or search engines, said chief editor Antônio Mammi.
“Nexo is very concerned about this,” Mammi said. “It is something of enormous importance to pay attention to.”
But at CTRL+Z, a nonprofit focused on challenging the dominance of Big Tech platforms over the flow of information, the strategy to cater to audiences comes with a dose of skepticism about the communication channels.
Co-founder Tatiana Dias said news organizations spent years reshaping their newsrooms around the demands of social media. They rewrote headlines for algorithms, redesigned products for engagement metrics and chased audiences across platforms that were never really built to reward journalism in the first place.
“We’re writing for robots,” Dias told LJR. “We’ve become increasingly disconnected from ordinary people.”
And yet, abandoning social media isn’t an option either—especially as surveys like this one show just how deeply those platforms now shape the way people consume information in Brazil.
“We need to be where people are and communicate in the languages and formats they use,” Dias said. The goal, she added: “Hack the system from within.”
