Even though the history of social media can be traced back to the 1970s, it wasn’t until a few decades later that they gained true popularity. Nowadays, social media platforms have reached 4.76 billion (!) users worldwide and account for over one-third of the total time we spend on the Internet.
Interestingly, the whole purpose the social media was created for – keeping in touch with friends and family – is slowly losing ground in favor of something quite different: news consumption.
The time we spend every day reading news stories, watching videos about economic, political, or sports events, and reading other people’s opinions on what’s going on in the world is increasing considerably. Platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter are reshaping how we consume news and raise new questions that should soon be addressed.
The problem of filter bubbles and echo chambers
One day you find a news story on social media that draws your attention. You read it, maybe even give it a thumbs-up or a comment. All of a sudden, you start finding more and more content about:
- Stories with the same topic,
- Things shown from a similar perspective,
- Adaptation to your own way of thinking,
- Ways strengthening the idea that your opinions are correct.
All that is the result of content personalization, which means the adaptation of the news content to the user’s preferences and interests through sophisticated algorithms and AI technology. Social media study your preferences with these tools and make sure to feed you with what you like and what brings you satisfaction.
Although this “filter” seems quite handy at first – it spares you the chore of sweeping through tons of information you are not interested in – it also has its drawbacks. It exposes you only to the content you want to watch and shows you the point of view you agree with.
Sooner or later, you’ll find yourself in a “filter bubble” or an “echo chamber,” missing out on the diversity of opinions and unable to exercise your critical thinking skills. On a social scale, this filtering “little helper” brings about polarization and incapacity to dialogue.
Fake news and not knowing what is true anymore
As serious newspapers and respectable internet sites are being replaced by the news posted on social media, the guarantee of solid journalistic research and data verification is no longer available.
Nowadays, anyone can be a “journalist” and post a made-up story or a photoshopped picture on Facebook. Anyone can upload a video on YouTube claiming whatever they want. A catchy (often misleading) headline is enough for such content to go viral before someone checks how true it actually is. While this democratization of news is highly positive, the room for misinformation should be seen as a big red light.
Those of us who have let ourselves be fooled by fake news shared on social media have learned our lesson. We have become suspicious and tend to double-check everything we read or watch, no matter the source. The ultimate victims seem to be those reliable news sources we first ignored and now don’t trust as much as we don’t trust social media.
Another conclusion that can be drawn from the fact we are so easily deceived is that our society needs training in media literacy as much as we need basic computer skills.
Sensation sells like hotcakes
In social media, it is all about clicks. The more clicks your content gets, the better. Clicks mean followers, and followers mean more advertising revenue. No wonder the news published on social platforms is meant to attract rather than inform.
News stories that are shocking and emotionally charged tend to get more attention on social media than emotionally neutral content, independently of their relevance. In consequence, our feed is more likely to contain information about crime, violence, gore, or celebrity gossip rather than political, economic, or cultural news.
This neglect of certain topics along with the over-exposition of others, is distorting public perception of the current news and forging a false image of what’s important and what’s not. It is also making us ignorant about content that should be part of every individual’s basic knowledge.
Social media as new gatekeepers of public information
A few decades ago, it was the official news channels that used to decide what to inform about and how to do it. News that was prepared by experienced professionals was expected to be well-researched, bias-free, and thorough. Most of the time, it met the audience’s expectations in terms of reliability and editorial oversight.
Nowadays, the gatekeeping power to the news flow is shifting. As we are turning more and more often to social media to keep us up to date with current events, the professional scrutiny of the content we are fed is not that strict anymore. Social media allows opinion-driven content, half-truths, or entirely fake news to reach their users without much filter.
As immediacy is prioritized over correctness, user-created content may reach thousands before anybody can check how true it is. At the end of the day, who’s guilty of spreading lies? Is it exclusively the author’s fault, or is the platform that permits it also at blame?
As social media is becoming an increasingly relevant information-distributing channel, its impact on news consumption patterns cannot be underestimated. As our society spends more and more time scrolling through their Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok feeds, we should ensure better media literacy skills to safely navigate across the sea of misinformation, sensationalism, and excessive content personalization.