
The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook - jeo1234
http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/
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brc
While I don't argue with the veracity of the information here, I do despair at
what it says.

For a start, I doubt the Twitter news feature will inject much-needed
editorial quality into the unfiltered blast of rumours, half truths and lies
that surround most current news events on Twitter. This is even more so if
there is a political nature to the news.

But the deeper question here is 'why are people so addicted to news'?

There is a subset of people - obviously journalists included - who think that
if they don't know every breaking event, somehow they are uninformed,
ignorant, backward, all the rest of the insults.

But the reality of the situation is that the 24 hour news firehose - which
Twitter and Facebook are jostling to be a part of - is really just the same
series of flashing lights and distractions used to keep Las Vegas patrons
inside the building.

Most news doesn't matter. Most breaking news doesn't matter.

If something is important, you'll find out. Allowing a breaking-news junkie to
inform you brightens their day.

More important is that people get into a low information diet. There are a lot
of people talking about how much sugar is consumed these days - junk calories
best taken in small doses. Most news is like sugar - junk information best
take in small doses.

I have mostly switched Twitter off these days. I am ruthless at excluding news
(and especially political news) from my Facebook feed - call me old fashioned,
but I'm really only interested in what my friends are up to. I am disinclined
to consume their heart-rendering stories of cats up trees, jibes at their
political hate-figure or tongue-baths of their political love-figure. None of
that helps me to be happier or more productive.

News : like sugar for the brain.

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guelo
As a contrast, I consistently get actionable information that influences major
decisions from my curated Twitter feed.

~~~
dingaling
But do you take action on the initial report, or wait for the facts to become
established?

For most significant events that do not directly impact the first-person (
i.e. not hyper-local ) I would suggest that it is strategically better to wait
for a week or a month before taking any action based on the event.

In that case there's no immediate benefit to knowing about news as it breaks.
In fact it could be a negative influence because it distracts from other, more
important, action.

~~~
universe520
I definitely wonder whether there'll be a backlash to the firehose/breaking
news phenomenon at some point, with people turning back to analytical mags and
newspapers once a week or so!

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aunebrian
The algorithms that drive what news we see on Twitter and Facebook (and Google
for that matter) don't take into account the quality of the information we're
confronted with. They're more based on popularity than anything else.

We're working on a platform (inquary.com) that will allow users to rate,
research, and assess news and other information items based upon their
Information Quality scores, specifically their accuracy, trustworthiness,
comprehensiveness, and objectivity.

I'm always looking for feedback. If you have comments about what you'd like to
see from such a platform, I'd love to hear from you here or at inquary.com.

For the record, I won't bore people with too much information here but there
is a lot of data about how much people want accurate, objective news, as well
as how surprisingly capable the public, in the aggregate, is at assessing such
things.

Happy to talk more if people are interested.

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universe520
Weird that the article didn't mention the change to the FB algorithm for the
news feed this year. That had a major impact on news orgs.

