Social Media– What we want to feel and be
Facebook, Twitter, and similar social media platforms have become the internet’s homepages for all sorts of news, whether that news is about gossip or is about international relations, by tailoring News Feeds to a user’s perceived interests. These platforms will prioritize articles and videos by utilizing complex machine learning algorithms to study the friends, organizations, and pages that users follow. These algorithms evolve feeds to suggest (or rather tell) us what we want to be reading and not necessarily what we *should* be reading. For example, according to a 2013 Pew Study, less than half of Facebook users go to the site to read news of any sort, and about ten percent go to Facebook for news on purpose. The top searched stories on Twitter and Facebook can hardly be considered news– these quizzes on users’ accents, lists of favorite foods, photos, and more are reflections of people we aim to be and moods that we seek to be in.
Facebook and Twitter users’ followed friends and organizations could end up pushing onto them their sense of entertainment and mood, as more frequently followed stories and posts by them will show more frequently on the users’ News Feeds. We can look towards videos on Facebook for example- the number of views and likes of a video on Facebook are seen directly next to the video. Just like how seeing a large percentage of invited people RSVP to actually attend an event influences a person to also go (they would think because so many people are going, that the event must be good), having a large number of views and number of likes causes people to think that the video is worth watching because so many others had done the same. In fact, because of this behavior, the most shared and talked about stories are not necessarily the newest, as is the case with many newspapers’, but the most emotionally evocative (ranging from extreme happiness to intense anger). Social media platforms’ machine learning algorithms will in turn train themselves on these popular, emotional videos and articles; users’ friends and followers will in turn see the same videos and will be similarly affected. Riveting videos make rounds in friend groups and closely connected peoples—after all, outside of the virtual world, friends, family, and close connections end up molding a person the most. Social media makes this molding easier than ever– being one button click away, social media helps solidify our interests and personalities, while providing the emotional outlet to feel we’d like to feel.
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/the-facebook-effect-on-the-news/283746/