As many as 55% of the sampled English-speaking Internet users were concerned that expressing their political views online could get them into trouble with the authorities, an India digital report prepared by the Reuters Institute showed.

“These high levels of concern could be based in part on recent events in India. Since 2012 at least 17 people have been arrested for posting material that was considered offensive or threatening to a politician,” the report said on Monday.

As many as 68% of those surveyed identified smart phones as their main device for online news with 52% stating that they got their news from Facebook. WhatsApp (52%), Instagram (26%), Twitter (18%), and Facebook Messenger (16%) were the other sources of news.

“Online news generally (56%), and social media specifically (28%) have outpaced print (16%) as the main source of news among respondents under 35, whereas respondents over 35 still mix online and offline media to a greater extent,” the Reuters Institute report said.

“The fact that our survey covers only English speakers with Internet access is key here; the number of people accessing news via print and television will be higher fore regional language news consumers…though as mobile web use spreads we expect to see this change in the years ahead,” it argued.

Of the nearly thousand respondents, there was low trust in news overall (36%) but higher levels of trust in news search (45%) and social media (34%). As many as 57% of those surveyed were worried whether the news they consumed was fake or real.

The Reuters Institute said that the report is based on data from a survey of English-speaking, online news users in India. "Our respondents are generally more affluent, have higher levels of formal education, skews male, and are more likely to live in cities than the wider Indian population and our findings only concern our sample, and thus cannot be taken to be more broadly representative."