He has a strong focus on BuzzFeed's news stories. He shows that out of the top 20 BuzzFeed stories, only 3 pertain to national news and even those are questionable on whether or not they should even qualify for true news.
Facebook has surpassed google in referral traffic. While google still reigns in many many subjects, Facebook has taken over for link browsing.
Derek analyzes the top 20 searched Twitter stories of 2013 which include stories about the tragic bombings that took place during the Boston Marathon to famous actors passing on. He goes on to say that Twitter has the ability to contain actual news. Which makes it news.
Well, news-ish.
But he does the same search for the top 20 most searched stories on Facebook and compares the results. All of the searches were barely able to be classified as news. He shows how the majority of the stories are from sources such as BuzzFeed.
He also analyzes that while the news on Facebook is anything but hard news, this has been happening long before the creation of Facebook.
He talks about the fact that many of the stories and links that appear on an individual's facebook page appear there based on their friends. The Facebook newsfeed is completely comprised on what is trending and what is being shared by the pages and people that you follow. It is entirely made up of our own likes and dislikes. We can groom the stories that we see.
Most of these stories are simply that.
Stories.
Quizzes.
Videos of dogs catching treats in air.
Just stories of things that hardly qualify as news, but this is what is on the rise.
While this article was not quite hard hitting news either, I found it a good read with good content.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/the-facebook-effect-on-the-news/283746/
So what do you think his ultimate point is? Is he making a judgment about whether this is a good or bad thing? I'd imagine he doesn't like this trend. But like any other "News" source, Facebook can be useful if you use critical thinking to parse the useful materials and throw out the crap. Snopes and Politifact can be helpful for this.
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