
US adults who mostly rely on social media for news are less informed - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/30/study-u-s-adults-who-mostly-rely-on-social-media-for-news-are-less-informed-exposed-to-more-conspiracies/
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reaperducer
Hopefully nobody is surprised by this.

Not simply because of the cesspool that most social media has become. But
because of the centuries-old saying, "You get what you pay for."

Don't want to pay for professional journalists to do real reporting? Then you
don't get to find out what's going on. It's common sense.

~~~
ewzimm
It seems you might be the person who prefers to get news from headlines, which
is perfectly fine, but the article says that it's likely that they're less
informed not because of anything to do with social media or the type of
journalism they're exposed to, but because they have less interest in
political news.

~~~
basch
and, the news people get on social media is a direct result of who they
follow, their friends. I am guessing most people arent following a ton of news
organizations on Facebook, so what they are exposed to are the most viral
headlines that spread by shares.

Facebook, is a tool, and your experience is what you make of it. Follow good
sources, get good results. Follow highly tribalistic and fringe people, get
edge results.

But back to your original point, unless the majority people are using Facebook
to seek out news, their passive consumption is going to be them liking
entertainment and not wanting it displaced by serious things.

~~~
ewzimm
It can definitely have a perverse effect on perception, but I think it can
also build skepticism over time. Being exposed to a lot of misinformation and
conspiracy theories can be healthy if the reader is expecting to find it and
learning what kinds of stories compel people to respond by emotion instead of
reason. People in former communist countries learned this.

~~~
klyrs
> People in former communist countries learned this.

One would hope that people could learn from that history, rather than elect
politicians who have bought into the QAnon crap...

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jedberg
I can't find the details in the study as to what counts as "social media". If
I read a New York times article linked from reddit, did I use social media to
get my news? What if I only read links to things from reddit? Are they
basically saying that if social media is your only curation, then you'll be
less informed?

That I can totally get behind. Having worked in and used social media for more
than 15 years, I can definitely say that a lack of curation from trained
journalists is a big problem these days.

Journalists and editors serve a useful purpose. I still listen to terrestrial
radio because of the curation. It's better than Spotify.

I like read the New York times daily newsletter and the APs daily brief
because the curate important stories, some of which I don't see on social
media.

It's all about curation.

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aeturnum
This is a good example of why studies need to be well designed in order to
avoid being useless.

The headline suggests that this will tell us something about social media, but
I really think it just tells us that people who spend time and energy on being
informed are more informed.

People who get their news primarily from social media are, by definition,
people who don't seek out news in other venues. The study does not seek to
ascertain if they are seeking out news on social media (i.e. they think social
media is sufficient) or if they simply encounter it on accident in their non-
news-related use. It seems like, if the goal is to understand how social media
impacts understanding of the news, this study asked very bad questions.

In fact, if you remove nearly everything about social media, I think this
piece gets clearer and the study stronger. People who don't seek out news
coverage and encounter news on accident are less informed and somewhat more
likely to believe in conspiracy theories.

It's interesting that techcrunch talks about demographic weaknesses (which are
also good to note) but doesn't really dive into what feels like a more basic
problem.

~~~
lallysingh
No that prevents counting what people who are in the primarily-social-media
group would do if social media didn't make them feel as informed as they are.

It also doesn't consider the type of news writing people get from each source.
Some sources, like long form news articles, can cultivate interest. Others,
like news clickbait, have no motivation or room on the page to cultivate.
Clickbait often focuses on shallow answers that don't disclose the depth of
the topic.

------
Funes-
>U.S. adults who get their news largely from _social media platforms_ , and
compare their understanding of current events and political knowledge to those
who use _other sources_ , like TV, radio and _news publications_.

Well, I'd bet most of the news they get surely come from media outlets--like
techcrunch--that post on social media. Perhaps a better distinction would be
between not reading past headlines on social media and actually reading--or
even skimming through--articles published in any given website. Even then, the
vast majority of "news publications" are guilty of clickbait, and that's not
something techcrunch is innocent of.

~~~
scohesc
I've also seen scummy tactics like changing the headline to be less
"clickbaity" some timeframe after the article is released.

Then there's also the disgusting tactic from news companies on social media
like Twitter where they post the same article multiple times to spam it across
people's feeds throughout the day.

I think wide adoption of social media is the cancer that destroyed great
journalism the world over.

~~~
Funes-
>I've also seen scummy tactics like changing the headline to be less
"clickbaity" some timeframe after the article is released.

Now that you mention it, just recently I began noticing how some news
publications in my country do this, especially on interviews or opinion
pieces. They'll put a seemingly outrageous, absolutely out of context quote by
the interviewee or the author on the headline, only to modify it a couple of
hours later.

>I think wide adoption of social media is the cancer that destroyed great
journalism the world over.

I agree. I'd even go on to say that social media--with the necessary aid of
smartphones--has amplified _all_ the negative aspects of capitalism and
globalisation, in general.

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bezmenov
> The firm’s research also found that social media news consumers skewed young
> — 48% of those who mostly used social media for news were between 18 and 29,
> for example. They also tended to have lower levels of formal education, as
> only 26% had a college degree, versus 47% of those who read news websites or
> the 49% who turn to print.

So the only actual insight here is that younger people are less informed on
average (big surprise).

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vaer-k
I take these results with a grain of salt, since the quality of news on social
media varies widely from timeline to timeline. If all you follow on your
social media platform of choice is recognized, credible news outlets then
you'd consume the same information as radio or TV, but probably closer to
real-time. This study doesn't control for this variable so it doesn't tell us
much.

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orwin
I was not expecting an article based on a statistical study, with this title,
be this well-crafted. Caveats about self-reporting data, highlights on
confounding factors in the conclusion, it is really good work.

You can't take anything really interesting from this study, but at least i
found a writer i believe i can trust when talking about point i'm less
competent in.

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haltingproblem
The study smacks of elitism, gotcha questions and tailored outcomes. You are
comparing regular NY Times, NPR, Boston Globe readers, which is an extremely
biased sample - above average education, affluent and engaged to people who
read news on SM casually.

Look at two of the questions from the "facts" based survey:

[https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/election-news-
pathways...](https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/election-news-pathways-
project-frequently-asked-questions/#measuring-overall-political-knowledge)

(1) - Whether the unemployment rate in the U.S. has gone up, down or stayed
the same since Donald Trump took office (gone down)

(2) - What determines the number of votes a state has in the Electoral College
(the number of seats the state has in the U.S. House and Senate)

These are extremely technical questions. In (1) are they talking about the
unemployment rate till any point on time, which is a random variable or the
average? A gotcha questions

In (2), I do read an hour of two of news everyday (I know, it is a problem)
and did really well on American History, but that question would still take me
a few moments to ponder.

The causality is backwards - people who read SM to get news are less engaged
and the people who read the establishment media are more engaged. Like the
cigarette industry publishing an ad on the efficacy of cigarettes as an health
aid.

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justanotheranon
Newspapers say anyone who gets the news from their competition is stupider.
Film at 11.

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads
nothing but newspapers." \-- Thomas Jefferson

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qwerty456127
I only rely on HN for news :-) Seriously.

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RickJWagner
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're
misinformed."

\- Denzel Washington

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kilo_bravo_3
This is bullshit. Social media is perfectly fine at informing people.

It's almost as much bullshit as Apple ripping off developers by screwing them
out of money when a customer requests a refund, am I right people?

