On The Troubles of Social Media Studies

Reading the texts on Facebook for next week's session, I found myself highlighting a fair amount of passages - but truth be told, not that much for CSIV but rather for my minor where we're preparing a study on Facebook's qualities as a source for (political) news.

Facebook and its qualification as a news outlet have really peaked the interest of people in my field - understandably. Last semester, we developed a survey trying to find out whether Facebook is actually seen and consciously used for daily news - turns out, it isn't (which did not come as such a big surprise). Derek Thompson did actually sum it up quite nicely: "It's an entertainment portal for stories that remind us of our lives and offer something like an emotional popper" and not at all intended to be a serious, reputable news source. But despite that fact, it simply cannot be denied that Facebook plays a big role for news - and vice versa. If you want people to see your content, you have to share it where the people are, it's as simple as that. At least in theory.

This semester we're working on a similar topic: after establishing that Facebook is not regarded as a real source for political news, we will take a look at how some of those political news posts are perceived - this time not focusing on how people consciously perceive it but what happens unintentionally with the help of eye tracking and how the posts we'll be showing to the test persons will alter their opinions.

At this point we're still working on what kind of stimulus material we want to use, whether we'll need a preliminary interview or not, etc. So, we're pretty much still stuck in the organisational phase. But even yet, I'm quite skeptic whether all this will actually be of much help to determine real, specific results and correlations. I was already ranting about this in last semester's research paper: while it is logical and important to research Facebook's influence in any way (the digital world has after all become a big part of our real life, like it or not), I think it's pretty much impossible to come to any lasting conclusions. Just take a look at Facebook's ever-changing algorithm - it determines what the user sees. And some pages might literally spam its fans with news articles, if those fans get only shown 10% of it because of that algorithm, they will perceive the news amount to be less than it is in "reality". That filter, that's constantly changing, will always alter the outcome of any given research - which is a real problem for the long-term comparability of such studies.

Of course, every topic of all studies ever done are subject to change, it's just natural. But in most cases there is at least some consistency in those developments and you might be able to link changes to human nature (boredom, fear, you name it). But in the case of Social Media, especially regarding Facebook, it's just so much harder because some changes just aren't due to its users but due to algorithms and decisions made by Facebook's management.

Conversely, when looking into Facebook and its user's behaviour you have to factor in both the human psyche and behaviour but also the algorithms and their thousands of additional factors while having trouble to base your findings on older researches (which are already scarce). Good luck with that, guys.

The Dangers of Anonymous

No, I'm not talking about the real Anonymous, that international network of hackers and activists that emerged from that ever-weird imagboard website 4chan. I'm talking about the German (apparent) representative of them on Facebook: Anonymous Kollektiv. 

I've known both, the Facebook Anonymous (which I'll call Kollektiv to make it easier to differentiate) and the real Anonymous, for some time now. And while Anonymous should always be seen critically (as should everything, to be quite honest), I've come to really detest Kollektiv years ago. Which is really funny, considering how clever they are: they jumped on the Anonymous bandwagon and used their fame to become famous themselves - preying on Anonymous' real strength, their anonymity, and making it their weakness.

Anonymous can try to distance itself from Kollektiv as much as they want, Kollektiv has reached that level of fame where it's become a myth that's come to stay. Even if every person with some intelligence and knowledge should easily recognise just how much Kollektiv deviates from what Anonymous actually wants to achieve, it sadly isn't the case.

So, so many people I know on Facebook have liked Kollektiv's site, often sharing whatever rubbish they've published now. And yes, I'm very consciously saying rubbish here (even if bullshit is what first came to my mind, but oh well) because they are so often contradicting their own messages or are simply preying on what's popular right now. Hello there, all you little tin foil hat wearing conspiracists.

Especially in the face of Anonymous latest move on ISIS the public interest in what they're doing just exploded - and really, searching for something on Facebook is the next best thing we do after looking it up via Google. And tragically, most people blindly believe whatever they read on the Internet. In this case this means that Kollektiv and Anonymous must absolutely be the same thing, amirite? Yeah.

Just take a look at what kind of people comment their posts.

Trying not be judgemental but that doesn't sound like the kind of people that's trying to form their own opinion on important matters without questioning what some website is telling you.

And that's the tragedy of our age. We're being told to take everything with a grain of salt on the web but for most people it's just so tempting to believe that just because it's on the Internet it has to be true. Even with schools trying to teach children what you could call media literacy, it still won't change the fact that simply everybody with some decent IT knowledge can pose as someone else - and spreading lies has thus become easier than ever before.

Being Anonymous has never been so easy and difficult simultaneously.

For further insight, take a look at this Spiegel article that also offers some pretty valid points as to why Kollektiv and Anonymous are certainly not the same.

Newstainment

I thought newspapers wouldn’t survive the Internet but what happened next made me cry…!

(See what I did there?)

Last week, I was talking about how clickbaiting works and I thought that it would be interesting to further continue this line of thought focusing on what this increase of clickbaits across the Internet actually means for other "real" news outlets.

It's clear that it's tough for every paper across the globe to remain successful in times of directly available, free information online any time - but maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most big newspapers have succeeded to build a more or less stable online presence (take a look at Spiegel Online or The Guardian), but the times they are a-changin'. 

Next to heavily emotional!, exciting! clickbait "news" those good old-fashioned news articles seem rather dull and tend to get lost amidst the masses of posts, they just don't stand out unless they are about some very recent big news (like Fukushima some years ago). Who, after all, would claim to be interested in depressing and frustrating news on politics and catastrophes after a long day of work? Yeah, you get the idea.

And while huge numbers of clicks are nice for those few big news sites that are “successful”, they don't help much to bring in money. Most users use adblockers and won't agree to subscriptions, they’d rather search for websites with free content (another way to compete – which is completely toxic to one's own work in the end). And real-life subscriptions of newspapers have been steadily declining these last decades anyway.

Will this eventually be the end for newspapers as we know them? The times they are a-changin' but the media tries its best to keep up.

About five years ago I started to be more interested in real news and in this short time so much has changed about what is considered “news”. It seems that the number of commentaries and “soft” news has not just increased, it almost exploded. Even those news sources that are (still) considered reputable, have long begun to publish articles on kitten that had been rescued (no offense, kitten – I still love you) and oh so tragic stories. Of course, sometimes it can’t be helped to search for “filler news” when nothing else is available that could be interesting in any way, but in times like these with rapid changes all about every single day?

I don’t buy it. Actually, it really feels as if “real” news sites try to mimic what clickbait sites have been doing for years – more or less subtly. But is it really the right strategy to just copy what everyone else is doing – and thus risking the quality of one’s own content. I highly doubt it.

Definition of Newstainment on the Urban Dictionary:

"Newstainment is the product of 24 hour news stations which are a combination of news and entertainment. The news portions fill in the space between the entertainment which is what gets the viewers. Some stations like to also use exaggeration, innuendo and deceptive practices like splicing stock footage of crowds into a story to make it look more newsworthy. They all have a slant to oneideology or another but that is mainly to appeal to their newstainment audiencewho do not like hearing confusing viewpoints that disagree with or are different than their own. Negative news stories about the ideological opposition is a staple of Newstainment."

How to be #heftig

We all know headlines like this:
"This boy will die in a few days. But you can't imagine what happens next..."

German Facebook users might instantly think of heftig but there are more than a hundred other examples across the globe in many different languages and variations. But they all have something in common: their formula for success always remains the same. They try to create suspense, to intrigue the reader, to manipulate emotions. In the end, it's all about the number of views a story generates. But let's take a closer look at how they actually do it.

Normally, there's a sort of classical structure for news stories:

• Headline: The actual core of the news story.
• Subheading: A couple more details on the story.
• Lead: The first sentence of the article. It contains all the necessary bits of information according to the six Ws.
• Source: The following sentences will give more information, especially on whom you rely for information (e.g. "spokesman XY said...").
• More details, offering further insight through a background story and how it might affect future developments.

The latter is not as necessary for good journalism - ideally your story will be constructed in such a way that makes it easy to "cut" your story's last paragraphs. Every article by a good journalist should be constructed like this, making it easier both for his colleagues to shorten the article if necessary and also for his readers - even if they don't read the whole story they will feel well-informed; and if your story is really great, they will feel compelled to read on. (On a side note, this is the reason why many online news sources tend to spread their articles over several pages, tempting the reader to click "Page 2" in order to find out whether the story is of good quality.)

But sites like heftig.co intentionally break this rule that has been tried and tested over decades - and big surprise, they are really successful! 

It's not far-fetched to say that some of their stories might get more clicks than those of big newspapers. By intentionally leaving out answers to the most essential w-questions they arouse curiosity. And in addition to this, they heavily rely on emotions: tragedy or strong positive feelings ("He was about to die, but what happened next will make you cry out of joy!"). The perfect combination to go viral. 

Interestingly enough, many of their stories go viral, even though it's far from being a secret that websites like this are the complete opposite of being reputable. But they have really optimised their "Social Media Game" - every single story is created to be shared in social networks, mostly Facebook. 

But why Facebook? Facebook is the social network to relax, to connect, to be entertained be it stalking your ex or that cute kitten... Most people don't use it for political news (that's Twitter's realm) but for pure entertainment. So yep, Facebook is just perfect for these stories while real news tend to remain noticed but not really clicked on. 

(Another side note: Facebook has a much higher percentage of older users while Twitter's users are remarkably younger. And as a matter of fact, younger generations tend to be more experienced with the Internet's tricksters and traps (digital natives) than the older ones (digital immigrants) who have just learned how to use it instead of growing up with it. So, they are more likely to fall for sites like heftig.co.)

Never telling the whole story is the main strategy for any sort of clickbait - but heftig.co has perfected it far more than any tabloid paper.

News to go

By now it's no big news (pun may or may not be intended) that the way we consume news has drastically changed over the past centuries even years.

While the public still considers traditional media to be more trustworthy, social media are continually increasing their influence in our everyday life. Twitter, Facebook, news apps... they all offer what you could call "news to go": news condensed to bits of information (ideally to the most important facts and figures) going along with a fitting picture. If it's a job well done the number of followers will increase and if it's a job done even better those followers will feel tempted to click the link leading to the longer news story.

Put together these mini-news offer a constantly updated newsfeed, similar to a liveticker.
So, instead of detailed analyses and overviews it is short news articles that are preferred as they enable us to obtain new information faster and thus making them easier to digest.

But what does this tell us about our society? Have people become so lazy that any effort put into thinking on their own is too much? Or is it maybe that it could also be seen as a sign that values have changed over time - as they so often do. After all, short and more condensed news enable us to read faster and thus give us the extra time to read more news from other sources. This, in turn, provides the possiblity to consider different point of views and perspective before forming one's own opinion - or altering it in the process. All this is taken from a rather optimistic point of view but in my opinion we should not condemn every new challenge and try to see the most terrible outcome in everything. Being critical is more than doubt and mistrust, it's also about acknowledging potential.

All the while, however, studies still prove that the original news sources are taken more seriously. But nonetheless it could and should be of interest to observe whether a shift in trustworthiness will take place over time, granting the unofficial but more organic news more popularity.