Week 5 Responses...

The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook

"Although both social networks have the same portion of users getting news on these sites, there are significant differences in their potential news distribution strengths. The proportion of users who say they follow breaking news on Twitter, for example, is nearly twice as high as those who say they do so on Facebook (59% vs. 31%) – lending support, perhaps, to the view that Twitter’s great strength is providing as-it-happens coverage and commentary on live events."

I definitely think this is true - prolific Tweeters (I am not one), often describe to me that they've sort of used Twitter as their own personally hacked AP news wire. I can asbolutely see the appeal in that, but for many reasons (and some I've read compelling arguments about that make sense), I'm by far more a Facebooker.

I think the last Presidential election is where I started to see politics get really...nasty on Facebook, and that's partially because 1) we'd reached a point where it was no longer just early adopters using it, we were seeing a good chunk of average-user on the sites, and 2) because it became a platform where one could share "news" and have a soundboard on which to discuss it, at far more depth than 140 characters allows.

While this could be seen as absolutely liberating to the American people...the downside is the trust-factor of where you're gathering your news, how it's framed, and how *emotional* some of that news is to the person aggregating it.

While Twitter's famous for #hashtag revolutions of sorts, FB's equivalent is the viral post that may or may not be true.

And you know, sometimes I don't even think truth matters so much as whether or not the person aggregating it WANTS it to be true or not.

I could go on at length about this because the PP debaucle is still fresh in my mind but I think I've done enough of that in class LOL. I still contend that my FB is broken, because I ain't seen a damn viral campaign of ANY sort about PP being cleared OR about the filmmakers being indicted. Nowhere. At all.

This might be a part of the friends paradox another article talked about, but I swear I saw the "harvesting baby parts" post with an emotional plea from a friend about twice a day - different friends - asking to please stop these heinous acts from occuring, etc. etc. without really checking into the story, much less the source. Politicians ate it up too really not CARING whether or not it was true — and I think a lot of that has to do with getting people on a political bandwagon that might not care to at another point in time.

And as for Carly Fiorina's absolute statement of conviction in seeing footage that didn't exist, well, I'd LIKE to give her the benefit of the doubt on this but it's really REALLY hard to. I think politicians for whom PP being seen in a more-horrific-than-usual light didn't care all too much about the truth or facts in this story, but banked on the very predictable emotional nature of the viral FB post.

And at the end of the day, people really just remember what they want to. And it's usually the juice. It's something juicy and gritty that they just couldn't put into words quite as eloquently as the viral post did.

If you use Facebook to get your news, please — for the love of democracy — read this first


I feel like this can all go back to my first post — I think people know in some small facet that what they're seeing in their feeds isn't the end-all be-all of truth, but I DON'T think they know exactly how the algorithm works, and might think that everything they're seeing is, well, everything they're seeing.

In my case, perhaps somehow the algorithm has picked up that I'm into political news based on what I read, what I click on, what I post, and what I hashtag, but, uh...there was a WHOLE lotta PP up in my face last month. Perhaps this wasn't the experience of other users, but I have to say that even I, as a social media professional who keeps up with the algorithm and its changes for purposes of businesses, can easily be tricked by the social illusion if I'm not thinking critically enough that day.

This becomes so particularly tricky in something as vital to democracy as election years, and I quite honestly don't really know if there's an exciting way to entertain or educate users about how the algorithm and their feed works. You are NOT seeing everything you think you're seeing, hell, in my case you might be seeing a bunch of junk you'd rather NOT be seeing — but even if this educational resource were to exist and be readily available to the masses, I think I know exactly what would happen. I'd see this the next morning:

"FB has released an educational guide to how to read your newsfeed, and this is TAKING AWAY OUR RIGHTS. PLZ FORWARD THIS IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR FREEDOM."

And, I'd see it in spades.

I don't think people want to be educated about their social networking. They want to have their cake and eat it too, and have FB be the fun place for cat photos but also the place where they get their relevant news information from because they trust their friends, who are other users, and whatever they decide to aggregate. It's almost a safety in numbers thing.