The number of Americans who get news from Twitter and Facebook continues to rise – primarily because more of the users of the social networks are encountering it there rather than user base increases, says a new survey from the Pew Research Center.

Conducted by Pew Research Center in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the study finds that clear majorities of Twitter (63%) and Facebook users (63%) now say each platform serves as a source for news about events and issues outside the realm of friends and family.

That’s a substantial increase from 2013 when 52 percent of Twitter users and 47 percent of Facebook

That share has increased substantially from 2013, when about half of users (52% of Twitter users, 47% of Facebook users) said they got news from the social platforms.

Both social networks have the same portion of users getting news on the sites, but those who say they follow breaking news on Twitter is twice as high as on Facebook (59% vs. 31%).

Both sites have also been increasing their emphasis on news. Twitter is about to unveil its long rumored news feature, Project Lightening, which will allow anyone, even non members, to view a feed of tweets, images and videos of live events. It will be curated by employees with newsroom experience.

In early 2015, Twitter purchased and launched the live video-streaming app Periscope, further highlighting its focus on providing information about live events as they happen.

In May, Facebook launched Instant Articles, a trial project that allows media companies to publish stories directly to the Facebook platform instead of linking to outside sites

In late June, Facebook started introducing its “Trending” sidebar to allow users to filter by topic and see only trending news about politics, science and technology, sports or entertainment.

Other findings in the report:

Twitter news users are more likely than their counterparts on Facebook to report seeing news about four out of 11 topics: national government and politics (72% vs. 61%), international affairs (63% vs. 51%), business (55% vs. 42%) and sports (70% vs. 55%

he rise in the share of social media users getting news on Facebook or Twitter cuts across nearly every demographic group. Use of Twitter for news, for example, grew among both users under 35 (55% to 67%) and those ages 35 and older (47% to 59%). On Facebook, news use grew among both men (44% to 61%) and women (49% to 65%).

When it comes specifically to news and information about government and politics, Facebook users are more likely to post and respond to content, while Twitter users are more likely to follow news organizations. About one-third of Facebook users (32%) say they post about government and politics on Facebook, and 28% comment on these types of posts. That compares to a quarter of Twitter users (25%) who tweet about this news topic and 13% who reply to tweets on this topic posted by others.

Pew’s report, which we quoted from liberally, is By Michael Barthel, Elisa Shearer, Jeffrey Gottfried and Amy Mitchell.

For more information see: http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/