Study: US adults who mostly rely on social media for news are less informed, exposed to more conspiracies

A new report from Pew Research makes an attempt to better understand U.S. adults who get their news largely from social media platforms, and compare their understanding of current events and political knowledge to those who use other sources, like TV, radio and news publications. The top-level finding, according to Pew, is that social media news consumers tend to follow the news less closely and end up less informed on several key subjects.
That seems to reinforce a belief that many people already hold, of course — that people who get their news primarily from Facebook, for example, aren’t as informed.
But it’s important to understand how Pew Research came to this conclusion and debate to what extent it means the platforms are at fault, which is unclear from this data.