Facebook as the Anti-News Platform

June 26, 2015

Facebook as the Anti-News Platform

It’s become trivial to find these examples, I suppose, but here’s some snapshots from today, around 8 a.m. Pacific Time.

Twitter

Facebook (snapshot via @eliparser, I use Facebook maybe once a month myself).

I’m curious why this happens (and maybe I should read Eli’s book?). In this case it’s not a Friendly Web issue — there are plenty of people to “like” the SCOTUS ruling. And while the population of Twitter is surely more socially involved (for good and for ill) it’s hard to see this repeated pattern as merely a demographic difference.

Yet one of these looks like a passable future, and the other looks like Neil Postman’s worst nightmare.

We’ve talked a lot about the fallacy of technodeterminism in the past here, and I’m not going to defend the reductionist version of that. But this looks like two very different futures to me, and it’s worth thinking about how the technology we promote in our classrooms shapes the future we’re launching our students into.

Mike Caulfield

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mikecaulfield

The infolit guy.

3 responses to “Facebook as the Anti-News Platform”

Chris Lott

June 26, 2015 at 9:23 am

FYI, here are mine as of 8:20a AKST: Facebook (http://imgur.com/8YZJRfD) – Twitter (http://imgur.com/pVfcqGm) — it sounds like Twitter Lightning might help fix this problem of having too much actual news in the news section…

Reply
Lisa Chamberlin

June 26, 2015 at 11:09 am

Perhaps this just reflects the demographic shift on Facebook? 78% of Millenials favoring Marriage Equality and they’ve moved to Twitter, so the news of its passing blows of the feed. Only 45% of Boomers favor it and they own Facebook now,and so it’s not the thrilling viral news there, so much, resulting in a much lower place on the trend line.

Perhaps?

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mikecaulfield

June 26, 2015 at 12:36 pm

I think demographics can be a part of it. But they don’t really have an impact without design.

For example, Facebook is “Friendly Web” which means Boomers with a negative opinion of marriage equality won’t post negative comments or share the news story. Twitter is not friendly web, which means demographics aside it will trend, from both positively oriented and negatively oriented users.

Without friendly web, the demographics wouldn’t even come into play — hmmmm, I guess I just upended my “it’s not friendly web” statement in the post — maybe it is a part of it after all.

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About Me

My current work focuses on how students and citizens can use AI for “co-reasoning”, learning to tap into the power of LLMs to both model and critique arguments.

As creator of the SIFT methodology, I have taught thousands of teachers and students how to verify claims and sources through his workshops. My book with Sam Wineburg, Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online, was published by the University of Chicago Press in November 2023.

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