Social Media News Updates

Social media news updates

Social media has become a major way for people to get their news (accuracy varies wildly) learn about new trends and stay in touch with friends. It is also a significant source of misinformation. This can include clickbait headlines, inaccurate statistics and out-of-context details designed to grab attention. It can also be the result of political propaganda or personal opinions, often influenced by how they are received and shared.

It is sometimes referred to as “social news” and it has been blamed for everything from skewing election results to triggering revolutions. Some platforms, like Reddit and Instagram, have even taken steps to minimize news dissemination by downranking it in feeds or making users opt in to follow it on their platform.

Despite these challenges, our research shows that social media can be a valuable source of news and information for those who choose to follow it. This is especially true if they also engage in other activities on their platform such as following personalities, influencers and celebrities who are known for producing high quality content or who have a reputation for being trustworthy.

We ran a preregistered field experiment on Instagram and WhatsApp, two popular image and video-based social media platforms with over 2 billion unique active users each. We randomly assigned participants to either follow two news accounts or non-news accounts on each platform for a 2-week period under ecological conditions. The news accounts we used were Hugo Decrypte and France Info, both of which are widely followed in France and enjoy a similar reach and format as other news outlets.