Bluesky Attracts More News Influencers, Though Many Still Use X, Study Finds

Bluesky, an emerging social media platform, has seen an influx of news influencers — particularly those with left-leaning political views — according to a new Pew Research Center study.

In early 2024, Pew found that X was the most popular social media site among the research organization’s sample of 500 news influencers, and 85% had an X account. At the time, Bluesky was not available to the general public, and Pew did not find many news influencers there. Bluesky became available to the general public on Feb. 6, 2024.

In February and March of 2025, Pew took another look at those 500 news influencers and found that the share who had a Bluesky account had roughly doubled in the four months after Election Day 2024, from 21% beforehand to 43% by March 2025. The increase was likely due to X owner Elon Musk’s changes to that site and his high-profile involvement with the second Trump administration.

Some 69% of news influencers who identified as liberals or Democrats — or who supported Joe Biden or Kamala Harris — had a Bluesky account. By comparison, just 15% of news influencers who identified as conservative, Republican or as supporters of Donald Trump had a Bluesky account.

Pew uses the term “news influencers” to describe individuals — journalists and content creators alike — who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.

Most news influencers with Bluesky accounts — including those who lean left politically — are also on X and post there far more frequently.

This analysis follows a previous Pew Research Center report from the Pew-Knight Initiative titled “America’s News Influencers,” released shortly after the election, which revealed just how impactful news influencers are as sources of information about current events.

Luxuan Wang, a research associate at Pew Research Center, and Galen Stocking, a senior computational social scientist at Pew, were the guests on Feb. 20 on Strategies & Tactics Live, PRSA’s monthly livestream series on LinkedIn.

According to Pew’s research, about 20% of Americans regularly get news from so-called “news influencers” on social media. That number rises to 37% for adults under 30.

The report defines news influencers as individuals who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of the five platforms — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.

In this clip from February, Stocking and Wang offer some parting thoughts on the research:

Photo credit: yalcinsonat

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