Wales has more ways than ever to access information. But Ofcom’s latest figures suggest that the news reaching Welsh citizens is increasingly fragmented — and that could have profound consequences for Welsh democracy.
For most of the democratic era, the relationship between journalism and elections was relatively straightforward.
Political parties campaigned. Newspapers, radio and television reported what they said, challenged their claims, interviewed their candidates and attempted to explain the choices facing voters.
Citizens were certainly influenced by political advertising, leaflets and personal loyalties, but between politician and voter usually stood some form of journalism.
That relationship is changing.
Ofcom’s Media Nations: Wales 2026 report provides perhaps the clearest evidence yet of how dramatically the information environment in Wales is shifting.
And buried among the viewing figures, platform statistics and audience data is one finding that should concern anyone interested in the health of Welsh democracy.
At the 2026 Senedd election, 74% of people who encountered election information did so through political leaflets and flyers.
Just 4% encountered election coverage through a Welsh newspaper, whether online or in print.
That is an extraordinary imbalance.
It means that political parties were vastly more successful at getting their message directly in front of voters than much of the independent Welsh media was at scrutinising those messages.
That matters because democracy depends on more than citizens simply receiving information.
It depends on who provides that information, whether it is challenged and whether citizens have enough independent knowledge to judge competing political claims.
Wales still watches television
The traditional media system has not disappeared.
In fact, television remains remarkably important in Wales.
According to Ofcom, broadcaster television reached around 74% of adults in Wales each week, higher than in any other UK nation.
During the Senedd election, television was the most commonly encountered form of election journalism.
Around 63% of those aware of the election encountered election information on television.
BBC television remained particularly powerful.
Around 34% encountered election information through the BBC’s main television news, while 31% saw coverage through BBC Wales Today.
ITV Cymru Wales reached around 15%.
For anyone who assumes television is already irrelevant to politics, those numbers provide a useful corrective.
Broadcast journalism continues to perform a major democratic function in Wales.
But there is a problem.
The people most dependent on television for political information are increasingly not the people who will shape Welsh democracy over the next thirty or forty years.
Young audiences are disappearing from traditional television
The change among younger audiences is dramatic.
Ofcom reports that broadcaster television viewing among Welsh 16 to 24-year-olds fell by 37% in a single year, leaving average viewing at just 33 minutes per day.
Linear television viewing among that age group fell even faster.
At the same time, platforms such as YouTube have become normal parts of everyday media consumption.
YouTube now reaches around two-thirds of Welsh 16 to 34-year-olds every week.
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Google and WhatsApp are also embedded in people’s daily information habits.
This does not mean young people are uninterested in the world around them.
It means the route through which they encounter information is changing.
And that distinction is crucial.
A generation can consume enormous quantities of content while encountering remarkably little journalism about the political institutions governing their lives.
Lots of information does not necessarily mean lots of Welsh news
Ofcom’s figures highlight this problem particularly clearly.
When people in Wales are asked about news generally, major digital platforms dominate alongside television.
BBC One remains important, but Google Search, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok all play substantial roles in people’s information diets.
Yet when the question changes from general news to news specifically about Wales, the numbers fall sharply.
Around 37% used BBC One for Welsh news, around 24% ITV1, and just 14% Facebook.
That difference may tell us something important about the structure of the Welsh information environment.
People living in Wales are surrounded by information.
But much of that information is produced for UK-wide, international or algorithmically selected audiences.
A person can spend hours every day consuming news, commentary and political content without learning very much about the Senedd, their local authority, Welsh education policy, NHS Wales, housing policy or decisions being taken by the Welsh Government.
The internet has solved the problem of information scarcity.
It has not necessarily solved the problem of relevant democratic information.
The Senedd election exposes the gap
The 2026 Senedd election offers a particularly revealing example.
Awareness of the election itself was extremely high: around 95% of Welsh adults knew it was happening.
So the problem was not that people were unaware there was an election.
The more interesting question is what information they received about it.
Political leaflets reached 74%.
Online political advertising reached 27%.
BBC television news reached around a third.
Social media election coverage reached 14%.
Welsh newspapers reached just 4%.
Political communication is therefore increasingly capable of bypassing journalism altogether.
Parties can target voters directly through printed material, social advertising, email databases, messaging platforms and increasingly sophisticated digital campaigning.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that.
Political parties have always tried to persuade voters.
The democratic problem arises when the infrastructure capable of independently testing those claims becomes weaker than the infrastructure distributing them.
If one candidate tells you crime is rising, who checks?
If another claims waiting lists have fallen, who provides context?
If a party promises billions of pounds in new spending, who asks where the money comes from?
If misleading statistics circulate through social media, who reaches the same audience with the correction?
Journalism is imperfect, but this basic function of scrutiny is fundamental to representative democracy.
Wales has an additional problem
This challenge is not unique to Wales.
News organisations across Europe and North America are struggling with declining newspaper circulation, fragmented audiences and competition from technology platforms.
But Wales has an additional structural difficulty.
Much of the media consumed in Wales is not primarily produced about Wales.
A viewer watching UK network news may receive excellent coverage of Westminster but relatively little explanation of decisions being made in Cardiff Bay.
A Facebook feed may contain endless political arguments without clearly distinguishing between policies applying in England and those applying in Wales.
A Google search may produce UK-wide information that is technically accurate but institutionally irrelevant to someone dealing with a devolved Welsh service.
For citizens living within a devolved political system, that matters.
Democratic competence depends partly on understanding who is responsible for what.
If voters cannot identify whether responsibility for health, education, policing, taxation, benefits or transport sits with Westminster, the Senedd or local government, holding politicians accountable becomes much harder.
And accountability is at the heart of democracy.
You cannot effectively reward or punish governments for their performance if you are unsure which government made the decision.
News consumption can shape democratic participation
The consequences go beyond what happens inside the polling booth.
Public-interest journalism can affect whether people feel confident discussing politics, contacting representatives, joining campaigns, responding to consultations or becoming involved in community activity.
Someone who regularly encounters reporting about their local council, the Senedd or their community is more likely to understand the political environment around them.
Knowledge creates familiarity.
Familiarity can create confidence.
And confidence can make participation seem possible.
The opposite may also be true.
If Welsh politics is largely absent from someone’s everyday information environment, the institutions themselves can appear remote, complicated or irrelevant.
This is particularly important for younger citizens encountering devolved democracy for the first time.
A 20-year-old who rarely watches television, never buys a newspaper and receives most information through TikTok, YouTube and Instagram occupies a completely different media world from the one for which much Welsh political journalism was originally designed.
The challenge is therefore not simply producing more journalism.
It is ensuring journalism reaches people where they actually are.
The danger is not ignorance. It is imbalance.
It would be easy to describe this as a problem of young people not following the news.
That would be both unfair and inaccurate.
The bigger issue is an imbalance within the information system.
Political parties have become increasingly effective at delivering information directly to voters.
Technology platforms have become extraordinarily effective at delivering content people find engaging.
What has not developed at the same pace is a sustainable system ensuring independent Welsh public-interest journalism travels through those same networks.
The result could be a democratic environment in which citizens receive plenty of political information but comparatively little independent mediation of it.
That is a very different problem from people simply being uninformed.
And potentially a more serious one.
Wales needs journalism designed for the democracy it now has
The lesson from Ofcom’s figures should not be that television no longer matters.
It clearly does.
Nor should it be that social media is inherently bad for democracy.
Digital platforms offer extraordinary opportunities to reach audiences who traditional Welsh media have struggled to engage.
The lesson is that Wales needs a news system designed around the reality of contemporary media consumption.
That means strong BBC and ITV journalism.
But it also means independent digital publishers, local reporting, newsletters, podcasts, short-form video, explainers and journalism created specifically for platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
Most importantly, it means thinking about Welsh journalism not simply as another part of the media industry but as democratic infrastructure.
Roads allow people to travel.
Broadband allows information to move.
Schools create knowledge.
Public-interest journalism allows citizens to understand the institutions exercising power over them.
The Ofcom figures show that Wales does not suffer from a shortage of information.
Welsh citizens have access to more information than any previous generation.
The real question is whether enough of that information helps them understand Wales.
Because if political parties can reach three-quarters of voters with their own message while independent Welsh newspapers reach only a tiny fraction with election journalism, the balance within our democratic information system has shifted considerably.
The future of Welsh democracy may depend on correcting it.