The Flawed Social Newsfeed
How do we get our news?
In the digital world, news shared through social media may service as an information shortcut, one contributing more harm than good.
T he introduction of social media to our daily lives has had considerably influence beyond mere social interactions
​
Specifically, its ability to shape our perception of the world we live in. The birth of the social "newsfeed," as well as our own contributions to it, have arguably had the biggest collective role in shaping such an influence.
​
Think of the last time you found yourself scrolling through your social newsfeed, whether on Facebook, Twitter, or another social platform. It is safe to assume that the newsfeed is formatted as a scrolling page, lining up post after post. Each post varies in its display of content--perhaps formatted as a text block, a photo set, a headline with an accompanying picture, or even a video file. This content sometimes comes from a page you may like, other times from a friend your personally follow. Maybe your friend shares a post that was originally published by another page.​
​
Now, consider how this newsfeed has changed over time. That is, presuming you have been on the platform long enough to see such changes. Has the content shifted in format or tone? Have you seen less of one kind of post, but more of others? How have those you follow and friend changed their social media habits, if at all? While changes to the newsfeed may seem indistinguishable in the moment, over time they can prove revealing.
And just as platforms shift and evolve over time, so too does the engagement of its users.
​
In today's informational environment, laced with the uncertainty resulting from information overload, social media platforms have been an influential player. If we are to analyze the news media landscape, particularly its unpredictability, we shouldn't we consider the potential impact of social media platforms in fostering this uncertainty?
​
​
​
Today's Digital News Media Landscape​
The relationship between digital news and social media has had a profound impact on the way that Americans consume information. The accessibility and immediacy of digital news, when matched with the personalization and engagement of social media, has created a stream of news that has captivated American users.
​
This captivation, however, has had significant impacts, both hopeful and questionable.
​
Such impacts have been researched by the Pew Research Center, in their research on today's digital news media landscape. Below are some of the key findings included in their reports, release in late 2017. Hover over each box to learn more.
​
​
Two-thirds of Americans (67%) get at least some news on social media.
More Americans are using social media as a news source than ever before. Most significant was the increase in use by older Americans, of whom more than half (55%) get at least some news on social media.
Use of mobile devices for news consumption is growing.
While the percentage of Americans who use a computer to access news has steadied in recent years, there has been an increase in those who use mobile devices. Further, mobile devices are increasingly preferred, with 65% of Americans responding as such.
Navigate the Project.
The Flawed Social Newsfeed
Social media news use increases among older, nonwhite, and less educated Americans.
About three-quarters (74%) of Americans identifying as non-white get news on social media sites. As a result, all racial and ethnic groups are now more likely than whites (64%) to get news on social media.
One-third of Americans (35%) identified social media as their most common pathway to online news.
Just as one-third (35%) of Americans claimed to access news from social media, another third (36%) claimed to use traditional news sites. More notable, however, is that links accessed through social media were noted as less recognizable than those on traditional news sites.
Half of Facebook news users admit to using Facebook as their sole news source.
A little under half (45%) of American adults specifically use Facebook of news. Of that 45%, around half identify Facebook as their only source of news. This is followed by Reddit news users, of whom 26% identify Reddit as their sole news source.
51% of Americans say they often see political news online that is somewhat inaccurate.
Many Americans show concern about fabricated news, with 51% claiming to have seen inaccurate news. In addition, about a third note that they have seen news that is not only inaccurate, but at times completely made up.
Overall, researchers at the Pew Research Center found that, as digital news and social media continue to expand, so too does the ways in which Americans utilize mobile devices--including their use as a consistent source of news. The usage of mobile devices for news, particularly social media, represents a change in our nation's history of information consumption, one that may have significant societal implications.
​
So what are these implications, specifically as they pertain to social media?
​
​
​
The Influence of Social Media
​
All social media platforms foster connection, though they may do so differently. The patterns across platforms, however, are an interesting point of analysis. In considering the ever-changing use of social media platforms and the implications of such use, particularly for information consumption, trends between platforms are crucial for understanding how we interact with social media, and for what reasons.
​
To identify the uses of social media that appear, for the most part, across all platforms, let's look to most dominant social media platform with two million users and counting: Facebook.
​
Facebook is a shining example of the way in which social media platforms can evolve with time. What started as a platform for basic social connection has grown to encompass a number of services, including messaging, money transferring, video calling, and more. And while its purpose and reach have grown, the core structure of its social platform has remained the same, consisting of three key players: the user, the network, and the newsfeed.
​
What is different about this core structure, however, is the content with which its key players are engaging. The newsfeed is not only home to status updates. It is filled to the brim with photo albums, event notifications, video clips, advertisements, and news, news, news.
​
As noted in the Pew data, half of Facebook
users identify Facebook as their sole source
of news. So while Facebook users engage
with the platform for a number of reasons,
it is safe to say that Facebook is a key
player in information consumption.
So what role does the structure of
Facebook--notably the user, network, and
newsfeed--play in how individuals consume,
spread, and make sense of news? How
might such a role reflect that of social media
platforms more generally?
​
Let's take a closer look.
​
​
Trends between
social media
platforms are crucial for understanding how we interact with social media, and for what reasons.
Case: The Anatomy of Facebook
​
Facebook provides an insightful example of how a social platform's structure, users, and connections can influence how we consume news and information. The platform not only facilitates the spreading of news, but can have significant influence on the type of news that users consume. It is the latter influence that is deserving of a closer look--in other words, its weaknesses.
Facebook is home to 2 million users, and counting.
Takeaway: A Facebook user's profile represents the user's interests, thoughts, attitudes, and opinions.
A shared article/comment can communicate a more complete, thoughtful understanding of an issue than that held by the user. This, in turn, may result in others perceiving the poster has being more deeply informed, an attitudes that the user itself may begin to hold.
1. The Facebook User​
​
What it is: The Facebook User has significant control over its own social media experience. It chooses who to follow, what pages to like, whether to respond to another's post, or create a post itself.
​
What it does: The Facebook User can act passively or actively. When passive, the Facebook User scrolls through other's posts and content. When active, it can create and publish its own content, sharing it with friends or even posting publicly.
​
Its Superpower: The Facebook User has full control over which information it consumes. If it likes a specific post, the User can learn more by choosing to click on the article. More importantly, the Facebook User can choose to share an article to others in its network, with the potential to add its own opinion or reaction in the shared post.
​
Its Weakness: The Facebook User may let on that it understands more than it actually does. By sharing and commenting on a news article, the Facebook User may be perceived as having a better understanding of the information by those who read their post.
2. The User Network​
What it is: The Facebook User has a number of friends and followers, all of whom are able to view the user's posts, reactions to posts (i.e. likes, comments, etc.), and other personal activity.
​
What it does: The User Network serves as a compilation of the contributions of those in the network. Content can be easily passed between users within the network.
Its Superpower: The Facebook Network fosters a collective identity of those users who contribute. It creates a shared space where valuable and relevant news content can be exchanged, reinforcing social ties and creating a collective understanding through shared information.
​
Its Weakness: The Network rarely interacts with those outside itself, specifically those who hold different thoughts or opinions. Given that the survival of the network depends on reinforcement of its boundaries, Network Users actively separate themselves from the outside "outer", regardless of their intentions.
Takeaway: The very aspects that define the Facebook Network (i.e. the similarity across attitudes, beliefs, and identity) simultaneously work to separate those within the network from those on the outside.
As such, the Network establishes its own collective knowledge of issues, never exposing itself to outside information that may benefit from a more nuanced understanding.
Takeaway: The Newsfeed allows users to seamlessly navigate through content relevant to their own interests and beliefs. It acts as a "one-stop shop" for content published by individuals and organizations in which the User has expressed interest. The danger of the Newsfeed, however, is its appearance as a comprehensive display of information. As such, the User is placed in a position where it is easy to ignore the Newsfeed as inherently subjective, selective, and strategically organized.
3. The Newsfeed
​
What it is: The Newsfeed is the landing point for a variety of relevant content, including text posts, photographs, articles, and videos that are shared by those in the user's network.
​
What it does: The Newsfeed curates all relevant content to the user and displays it linearly, allowing the user to scroll through the content. The content may be organized based on platform algorithm's, some of which prioritize content deemed more "relevant" to the user's interests.​
​
Its Superpower: The Newsfeed is relevant, timely, and personalized. It allows the User to catch up on the most important information pertaining to their own lives, while also communicating information relevant to the lives of those in the User's network.
​
Its Weakness: The Newsfeed appears to be a holistic culmination of important content and information, though it is often far from holistic. That is, the danger of the Newsfeed is not its neglect of information relevant outside the User Network, but rather its appearance of communicating an objective and comprehensive set of information.
​
​
​
To review, the structure of Facebook, and social media in general, has three main components:
​
-
As the user comments on or shares news information, they may convince themselves they have greater understanding than they realistically do.
-
Through affirmation via sharing, the network establishes a collective knowledge, though rarely exposes itself to differing perspectives.
-
As a "one-stop shop," the newsfeed disguises itself as a comprehensive source of information for the network, neglecting to acknowledge that it is inherently subjective, selective, and strategically organized.
​
Such a structure links the user, network, and newsfeed in a way that fosters connection, yet has the potential to create a bubble that is vulnerable to collective misunderstanding. While this misunderstanding can result from a collective ignorance, as illustrated above, what happens when such a misunderstanding is constructed outside of the network?
​
That is, what are the implications of the intentional construction of misinformation by the news media? Further, what role does social media play in spreading such misinformation?
​
​
​
Social Media, Constructed Misinformation, and the Election of 2016
​
Social media platforms pride themselves on their ability to connect the disconnected, and facilitate dialogue among networks of individuals. This connection, as illustrated in the above case example, isn't without its faults, namely the cultivation of network isolation and ignorance to other perspectives.
​
This spread of misinformation and subsequent misunderstanding can be structurally facilitated, by the user, network, and newsfeed. In this way, misunderstanding is cultivated by the participants of social media platforms themselves, though somewhat indirectly.
​
What about a more direct cultivation of misinformation? What about times in which misunderstanding is constructed at the source, namely by the news organization itself?
​
All information is not created equal. The spreading of misinformation is not inherently incidental. It can be constructed, that is, intentionally crafted to provoke incomprehension of issues or events. This can be seen most notably in the hoaxes, "fake" news sites, and unverified details that have been known to appear on social
media sites, Facebook and Twitter
most notably. The intentions behind
such constructed misinformation are to confuse, divide, and create chaos.
​
And while fake stories have always been known to appear across social media for years, it was the election season of 2016 that kicked such misinformation into high gear, with serious ramifications.
​
It is naive to assume that such construction of misinformation does not exist, particularly in the aftermath of the election of 2016. The months leading up to November 8, 2016 were wrought with political debates and conversations, by both candidates and votes, much like any other election. The discourse surrounding the election of 2016 was unique, however, in that much of the discourse happened online, rather than in-person. All actors in the election, both voters and candidates alike, played a part in the facilitation of such discourse, whether that based in fact or in misinformation.
It was a select group of new organizations, however, that took advantaged of such engagement with an intention to disrupt, rather than facilitate, constructive dialogue with constructed misinformation. How did they do it? Beyond the heightened engagement in discourse surrounding the election, social media played a key role in the effective spread of misinformation in the months leading up to November 2016.
​
​
Misinformation can be constructed, that is, intentionally crafted to provoke incomprehension of issues or events.
Social media played a key role in the effective spread of misinformation in the months leading up to November 2016.
​
​
Social media, together with the divisive political discourse common to election seasons, bred an environment in which constructed misinformation was able to thrive. In addition to the network structure of social media platforms (as described above), the power of identity and political ideologies may provide insight as to why this may have occurred, specifically through the the creation of echo chambers.
​
Specifically, the intersection of social media and political discourse transformed social networks into "echo chambers," based in adherence to one ideology and, more importantly, opposition to the other.
​
What exactly does an echo chamber look like? More importantly, what might the differences between echo chambers highlight about the divisive capacity of social media platforms?
​
The Wall Street Journal, in its publication of "Blue Feed, Red Feed" s​et out to visualize the impacts of the echo chamber. Author Jon Keegan invites readers to see"Liberal Facebook and Conservative Facebook, side by side," specifically how they engage with the same issues. The interactive site was created six months before the 2016 election, and was shared widely across the Internet.
​
While "Blue Feed, Red Feed" was not meant to simulate the exact experience of Facebook news users, it was intended to raise awareness as to the degree of specialization the Facebook newsfeed demonstrates in filtering content. It also illustrated the ease with which fake news organizations can infiltrate such a specialized newsfeed. Such misinformation was able to hide among factual, though politically aligned, information through the employment of familiar buzzwords and tone of voice.
​
It is familiarization of format, not content,
that allows misinformation to hide in plain
sight. It is also one reason as to why echo
chambers, in catering to the "familiar,"
were able to facilitate environments in
which misinformation was able to thrive.
​
Echo chambers, therefore, play to the
vulnerability of both network
structure and individual bias to prefer
information in alignment with one's
political leanings.
​
While the election of 2016 was an important point of tension for society's interaction with social media, particularly in the context of misinformation and incomprehension, it is important to note that partisanship is not the problem. While no previous elections have utilized social media as extensively as that of 2016, the spread of misinformation more generally has never carried such an impact as it did in the months leading up to November.
In other words, it is possible to have conditions under which neutral information consumption occurs. As such, general partisan back-and-forth, or even the political leanings of the general electorate, are not the sole issue.
​
Instead, the problem lies in those intending to act in bad faith within the ecosystem on either side, spreading propaganda and misinformation.
And while such spread of misinformation can be identified as the fault of the information sources themselves, the role of social media is under an equal amount of scrutiny. For it was through the network structure and connectedness of Facebook, for example, that misinformation was not only able to spread like wildfire, but was able to disguise itself as truth.
​
​
Under an Illusion
​
We are falling for the illusion of being informed, consuming more and more headlines, when in reality we are consuming more of the same from a filtered newsfeed. Further, our interpretation of this similarity may lead to the belief that the headlines being shared are representative of a diverse perspectives, thus placing us under an illusion of having understanding.
​
But there is not only bias present in the portal through which we get our news, such as a social media platform. We are also biased in both our choice and response to information, whether objective fact or a more subjective interpretation.
Consider the role of social media in the 2016 election, as described above. The spread of misinformation arguably occurred not along partisan lines, but the lines of social networks turned echo chambers (even if such network lines were politically-aligned). Within these echo chambers, Facebook users were exposed to information that more of less reflected the information around it. Under the disguise of familiar formatting, therefore, misinformation was able to hide in plain sight and take advantage of the user's choice of which information to consume as truth.
As such, the news we choose to read, and our perceptions of that information, can influence what we acknowledge as truth.
​
And truth can prove an important combatant against misinformation, should it be equipped with the knowledge that understanding yields.
The question is, what is keeping us from using truth as a unifying tool, rather than something that causes confusion and disagreement?
​
​
​
​
It is the familiarization
of format,
not content,
that allows misinformation
to hide in
plain sight.
Continue to
"Feeling" the News
​
​
​
