Social Visibility and Audience Reach Among UK Journalists

December 1st, 2025

Journalists gone missing: Nearly two-thirds in the UK have no meaningful following on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.

• 64% of UK journalists have not built meaningful followings on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, with a vanishingly small 0.6% of journalists commanding followings of 20,000 or more across all three.

• New analysis of 526 UK journalists shows that most build meaningful audiences on only one platform - with most relying on X, and men more likely to build larger followings than women.

• Sophia Smith Galer, founder at social media consultancy Viralect, says this poses a “visibility crisis” for Britain’s journalists “in an algorithmic landscape where audiences increasingly go to individuals over mainstream media accounts for news”
  

The majority of UK journalists struggle to achieve meaningful visibility on the platforms increasingly responsible for how news is discovered, according to a dataset of 526 journalists gathered by social media consultancy Viralect. Nearly half fail to build an audience above 5,000 followers on any platform, despite most being active on three or four networks.

The findings show that audience scale is heavily concentrated among a small minority of personalities who have succeeded across multiple platforms, while traditional reporters - including those breaking major stories - have struggled to build loyal followings around their work. 

The dataset identifies just 72 journalists who have built sizeable audiences on at least three platforms. These journalists, often broadcast faces, political explainers and creator-style reporters, form what the report terms the multi-platform elite. The top 10% command dramatically larger audiences than the rest, a pattern intensified by the dominance of high-profile presenters and early adopters of visual formats. 

Online video has become one of the fastest-growing ways people discover and consume news. Under-35s now encounter journalism far more through TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts than through traditional text-based platforms, with major audience shifts driven by algorithmic recommendation rather than legacy news brands. TikTok has surged into the top tier of news sources for young people, with Instagram continuing to expand its role as a visual explainer platform. 

Video platforms seem to offer the biggest growth potential in the Viralect dataset despite most journalists still relying on X followings. The report finds that 93% of journalists maintain a public account on X, making it the industry’s primary shared stage for commentary and breaking news. Yet follower counts on X remain heavily clustered among well-known figures, and many journalists report declining engagement on the platform. By contrast, video-led platforms offer disproportionately high visibility for those who adopt them. Only 13.5% of journalists have grown a meaningful audience on TikTok or YouTube, but those who have achieved this are substantially more visible across all platforms and are overrepresented within the multi-platform elite.

On average, male journalists have around 3 times the total following of women. Instagram was the only platform where women appeared to have a platform advantage - suggesting visibility on fast-growing visual platforms reward different content strategies and even demographics.

The findings indicate what Sophia Smith Galer, winner of the 2024 Georgina Henry award with her scriptwriting app Sophiana, calls a “climbing strategic risk” for newsrooms. 

“Public authority is being enjoyed by the journalists who are making themselves most visible, taking advantage of the algorithms that are otherwise making their colleagues invisible. We risk major attention collapse if newsrooms don’t actively build journalist-led visibility on video platforms, empowering all of their staff and not just familiar faces; institutions increasingly rely on the individuals who work for them to confer trust and attract paying online audiences.”

“I would describe this as a visibility crisis for UK journalists given we are working in an algorithmic landscape where audiences increasingly go to individuals over mainstream media accounts for news. If a tiny group soak up most of the attention - many of them TV personalities, early adopters, and men - not only will most journalists’ work vanish, but high quality information that’s inclusive and representative of the public will fail to battle all of the non-journalistic content out there - a great deal of which is misinformation.”

The report recommends targeted investment from newsrooms in vertical video capability, creator-style formats, and support for journalists to develop distinct on-camera identities before time runs out - arguing that the window for opportunity will diminish as more competitive news creators eventually enter these spaces.

Notes to Editors

• This analysis uses publicly visible follower data for 526 UK-based journalists, collected manually across six platforms between August and October 2025. The sample includes journalists with identifiable, public-facing reporting or presenting roles who were easily surfaceable in online searches. This measures audience reach only - not engagement or journalistic quality.

• The dataset is illustrative rather than exhaustive, reflecting journalists with visible public profiles rather than the entire UK journalism workforce.

• The study measures visibility (following) only; it does not assess engagement, influence, trust, or quality of journalism.

• The underlying dataset is available to researchers and journalists on request.

Continue below to read the findings - and fill out the form here to receive a copy of the dataset.