{"id":14252,"date":"2014-08-25T09:59:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T14:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/where-was-ferguson-in-my-facebook-feed-2\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:22:01","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:22:01","slug":"where-was-ferguson-in-my-facebook-feed-2","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/08\/25\/where-was-ferguson-in-my-facebook-feed-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Where was Ferguson in my Facebook feed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are an avid social media user \u2014 and have been following recent events in Ferguson, Missouri \u2014 you may have noticed a difference in the content of your Facebook and Twitter feeds on the story. The reason goes back to a complex and somewhat mysterious interplay between the platforms\u2019 designs and your own behavior.<\/p>\n\n

\"How<\/a><\/figure>\n\n

A number of journalists and commentators observed\u00a0a jarring disconnect<\/a>\u00a0between the mostly uncontroversial posts on Facebook (like chatter about celebrities taking the\u00a0Ice Bucket Challenge<\/a>\u00a0to raise funds for the fight against Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease), and the stream of visceral reportage from the tense scene in Ferguson, where citizens had gathered to protest the August 9th police killing of an unarmed black teen, Michael Brown.<\/p>\n\n

Some, like sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, noticed a\u00a0delayed reaction<\/a>\u00a0to the breaking news on Facebook. Others, like Gigaom\u2019s Mathew Ingram,\u00a0attributed the lack of news<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook to the way that interactions are structured on the social network. They and others argued that Facebook\u2019s algorithmic filtering heavily influences the content Facebook users see on the site, and why their newsfeeds haven\u2019t been flooded with images and stories about tear gas, demonstrations and arrests.<\/p>\n\n

We know that the algorithms influence what content we are exposed to on Facebook and on other internet platforms. But we don\u2019t have a precise understanding of how different kinds of behavior influence the algorithm.<\/p>\n\n

One aspect of Facebook culture that may minimize news exposure is simply that people prefer to do other things on the site. Yes, around half of Facebook users (47%)\u00a0say<\/a>\u00a0they get news there \u2014 a similar proportion to that of the Twitter population. But most users aren\u2019t going there for news, but to enjoy the social network as a way of\u00a0keeping up<\/a>\u00a0with friends and family. Deeper engagement with this kind of social content reinforces Facebook\u2019s filtering \u2014 but we don\u2019t know exactly how much.<\/p>\n\n

Second, the kind and amount of news that social media users see on these platforms may depend in part on who they choose to connect with there (though the level of engagement with those sources also influences whether they appear in one\u2019s newsfeed, too).<\/p>\n\n

Only a third<\/a>\u00a0(34%) of Facebook users who ever get news on that site \u201clike\u201d or follow journalists or news organizations. But among those who do, fully 48% say that most of the news they get on Facebook comes from those sources. Among the users who \u201clike\u201d news organizations, 31% say that they \u201coften\u201d see news headlines in their feed. That number drops to just 10% among those who do not.<\/p>\n\n

While analogous data for Twitter usage are\u00a0not yet available, a 2012\u00a0Pew Research survey<\/a>\u00a0provides some clues. Among Twitter news followers, 27% said they get most of their news links from news organizations or journalists, compared with 13% among Facebook news followers.<\/p>\n\n

Ultimately, a social network full of journalists will probably result in a different picture of the world than one full of friends and family. But there is still much that the public research community does not know about how these different variables work together. Given the kind of differences that occurred on the Ferguson story, the implications are highest for those who identify a service like Facebook as their primary news source if the measure is the delivery of hard news. The data suggest that this describes a tiny portion of the U.S. population. But that could change as younger generations \u2014 at home on the social web \u2014 engage with the outside world through these kinds of networks.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There were big differences in the content related to Ferguson on Twitter and Facebook. Was the reason what users wanted from each, or the sites’ algorithms?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":null,"sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[]},"categories":[300,204,275,311,326,305,307,352],"bylines":[855],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[527],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-14252","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-algorithms","category-comparison-of-generations","category-digital-news-landscape-2","category-facebook","category-news-media-trends","category-platforms-services","category-social-media","category-social-media-news","bylines-jesse-holcomb","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-journalism"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":590,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/08\/25\/where-was-ferguson-in-my-facebook-feed-2\/","art_direction":{"A1":{"id":26547,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png?w=409&h=317&crop=1","width":409,"height":317,"chartArt":false},"A2":{"id":26547,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png?w=268&h=151&crop=1","width":268,"height":151,"chartArt":false},"A3":{"id":26547,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png?w=194&h=110&crop=1","width":194,"height":110,"chartArt":false},"A4":{"id":26547,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png?w=268&h=151&crop=1","width":268,"height":151,"chartArt":false},"XL":{"id":26547,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png?w=409&h=405&crop=1","width":409,"height":405,"chartArt":false},"social":{"id":26547,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/11-The-involved-facebook-news-consumer.png?w=409&h=469&crop=1","width":409,"height":469,"chartArt":false}},"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Where is Ferguson in my Facebook feed?","description":"There were big differences in the content related to Ferguson on Twitter and Facebook. 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