Claim LD10-HQ-C18 (v1.1)

In the 2026 Digital News Report, weekly use of standalone AI chatbots for news reached 10% across surveyed markets, up from 7% a year earlier, but only 1% named AI their main news source.

Provenance and status

Claim type: ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status: ELIGIBLE (QUALIFIED) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH QUALIFIER”)
Verification state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (as printed: “CONTENT VERIFIED”; verified by: UNKNOWN)
Does not license: Actual exposure to specific persuasive content or actual click behaviour
Source (field 6, as printed): Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026
Source type (field 7): SURVEY (as printed: “Cross-national survey”)
Institutional position: Independent academic research institute
Maturity (claim evidence / publication maturity): RAPIDLY_MATURING (as printed: “RAPIDLY MATURING”)
Recorded date: 2026-10-13
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern relation is recorded on its Sources.

Version

Current version v1.1, resolved through the explicit current pointer CLAIM--LD10-HQ-C18.

Versions:v1.0 v1.1 · current

What changed in this version

This version supersedes LD10-HQ-C18--v1.0, which stays available unchanged.

Changed fields: 2 PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM; 9 SCOPE; 25 RECORDED DATE
What changed: The public-facing claim and scope no longer give a 48-market, about-100,000-respondent base for the 10% figure; they say "across surveyed markets" and add the 7% of a year earlier that HQ verified.
Why: A claim check on 13 October 2026 found that HQ verified the 10% figure only as a global aggregate (up from 7%) and recorded 27 markets for a different question; the 48-market base for this figure was never verified, and one secondary report gives 45 markets for the chatbot questions. An unverified number is removed rather than guessed. The check and this revision were done by AI agents, not by a person.

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026” → SRC-LD10-REUTERS-DNR-2026--v1.0 — Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026; class SURVEY (explicit public provenance pin)

Read the originals

SRC-LD10-REUTERS-DNR-2026: open the original

All 25 canonical Claim fields (raw values and normalized values)

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD10-HQ-C18	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	In the 2026 Digital News Report, weekly use of standalone AI chatbots for news reached 10% across surveyed markets, up from 7% a year earlier, but only 1% named AI their main news source.	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	D/G — Reach & public sphere	—
5	MATURITY	RAPIDLY MATURING	states: RAPIDLY_MATURING
6	SOURCE	Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026	source_ids: SRC-LD10-REUTERS-DNR-2026
7	SOURCE TYPE	Cross-national survey	classes: SURVEY
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	Independent academic research institute	—
9	SCOPE	DNR 2026 online samples; market base of the chatbot-news question not verified by HQ; early 2026	—
10	DESIGN	Survey	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	DNR online samples	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	Standalone AI chatbots	—
13	COMPARATOR	Other news pathways	—
14	MAIN RESULT	Weekly use 10% vs 7% prior year; 1% main source	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	Population reach / adoption	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	Actual exposure to specific persuasive content or actual click behaviour	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Self-report; online samples; standalone bots only	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	Search answer layers create separate default exposure	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	Global / multilingual	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Use higher among younger people and political extremes	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	D7, L-A, L-B, L-C	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	DNR 2027 or default assistant integration	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: QUALIFIED
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-10-13	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: D7 (DOMAIN); L-A (LENS); L-B (LENS); L-C (LENS)

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 35fdc0f9c328b36358a709e1fa077476ad0e9a75227c82b85750358606390329.

Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)

SocioLens claim revision — LD10-HQ-C18 v1.1 (v1.1) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-13; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and docs/PROJECT.md "Research revisions" (a published claim changes only through a new version that states what changed and why). Block “ENTRY 18 — LD10-HQ-C18” SHA-256 21b35f481996ced6c2883f1e2f7e241e0b4410e8065dc5b1700dd4cfa9bc2b76; fixture fixtures/authored/claim-revisions/LD10-HQ-C18--v1.1.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.1 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored revision fixture version (SocioLens claim revision — LD10-HQ-C18 v1.1); a new version of LD10-HQ-C18 v1.0, which stays routable (AGENTS.md research integrity rule 3)
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored revision "SocioLens claim revision — LD10-HQ-C18 v1.1" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-13); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and docs/PROJECT.md "Research revisions" (a published claim changes only through a new version that states what changed and why)
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-LD10-REUTERS-DNR-2026--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 18 — LD10-HQ-C18 cites "Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026"; the first field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block; the same Source record LD10-HQ-C18 v1.0 cites.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-LD10-REUTERS-DNR-2026--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026".