Social Publishing Index:
The Seismic Shift to TikTok
(And What It Means for Newsrooms)
Q1 2025 saw an increase in engagement across almost every platform, with news returning to Facebook in a big way.
This report continues our previous research on a grouping of 50 publishers, analyzing their performance across web, Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok.
The toplines
One big takeaway is clear in this quarterly analysis, and that is TikTok’s dominance in the publisher landscape. Other shifts are at play too, though, particularly in the rankings where more hard news publishers have grown their presence.
While TikTok is the standout in terms of raw engagement, news has returned to the likes of Facebook and X, with both seeing a significant rise in engagement with this subset of news publishers compared to previous quarters.
TikTok Takeover
TikTok has surged ahead as the dominant platform for publisher engagement, moving ahead of Instagram to account for 63% of total engagements from the publisher subset that we looked at.
The two video-focused platforms (TikTok being the obvious) were nearly even in our 2024 report, but with several mainstream publishers seeing growing success on TikTok, its momentum continued through to 2025, with Instagram holding on to 20% this year so far.
Platform performance is different for every publisher, and you can explore more on the chart opposite.
Engagement by platform for select publishers
Publisher contribution to total engagement
Pareto publisher principle continues
Once again, we’re seeing five publishers from these fifty make up over half the total engagement across all platforms, namely ESPN, Bleacher Report, Daily Mail, LADbible, and Fox News.
These publishers have a combined 3.2 billion engagements across their web and social posts, while the 45 other publishers on the list are responsible for the remaining 2.3 billion.
The majority of these publishers have seen success with an ongoing TikTok and Instagram strategy, while Fox News has replaced one of the five leaders from our last report, largely due to its success on Facebook, which we’ll highlight later in the report.
The sports winning streak continues
ESPN held onto the top spot with 1.4 billion engagements. This is quite the achievement considering that number accounts for only Q1 of 2025, which is nearly as much engagement that it earned in our longer 2024 report. Even with a much shorter time frame, ESPN’s content strategy is clearly resonating with audiences.
Bleacher Report and The Daily Mail also held onto their second and third places, with 707 million and 610 million engagements respectively.
A new takeaway this quarter is the rise of hard news publishers in the rankings. Fox and ABC have both climbed to higher spots, and CBS and CNN have edged others out in order to secure their own spots among the mix.
Top publishers across all platforms
Download the report
In the report, you’ll discover more about:
- TikTok’s surging publisher dominance: TikTok now leads all platforms in publisher engagement, accounting for a majority of the total and leaving a once dominant Instagram in its wake.
- The Facebook renaissance: Our group of 50 publishers on Facebook saw a 200% increase in engagement compared to Q1 2024, and Fox News had a 700%+ increase.
- Platform-specific format trends: TikTok owns short video, Instagram thrives on sports and nature visuals, Facebook leaned into photos, and X remains the go-to for breaking news and political takes.
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