Social media as a news source  

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"Confirmation bias and social media algorithms like those used on Facebook and Twitter advance the spread of fake news and hamper the use of social media as a news source"--Sholem Stein

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Social media as a news source is the use of online social media platforms to obtain news. Just as television turned a nation of people who listened to media content into watchers of media content in the 1950s to the 1980s, the emergence of social media has created a nation of media content creators. According to 2011 Pew Research data, nearly 80% of American adults are online and nearly 60% of them use social networking sites.

Through the use of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, users can communicate with their peers, strangers and online content. Social media has evolved and has become an essential tool among the people, especially youth. Through social media, youth have become more directly involved in protests, social campaigns and generally, in the sharing of news across multiple platforms. As this transition has expanded to the greater use of social media in everyday life, social media has shifted into platforms that are used in accessing individuals’ news sources, especially for political use. Consequently, this malleable technology holds hopes for both liberating and repressive forces which have constantly been battling for social space.

According to the Pew Research Center, which is an internet research company, 62% of adults in the United States get news from social media., as well as three-fourths who say they get news from e-mail or social media sites updates, according to a report published by CNN. The survey suggests that Facebook and Twitter make news a more participatory experience than before as people share news articles and comment on other people's posts. According to CNN, in 2010 75% of people got their news forwarded through e-mail or social media posts, whereas 37% of people shared a news item via Facebook or Twitter.

In the United States, 81% of people say they look online for news of the weather, first and foremost. National news at 73%, 52% for sports news, and 41% for entertainment or celebrity news. Based on this study, done for the Pew Center, two-thirds of the sample's online news users were younger than 50, and 30% were younger than 30. The survey involved tracking daily the habits of 2,259 adults 18 or older.

Thirty-three percent of young adults get news from social networks. Thirty-four percent watched TV news and 13% read print or digital content. Nineteen percent of Americans got news from Facebook, Google+, or LinkedIn. 36% of those who get news from the social network got it yesterday from survey. More than 36% of Twitter users use accounts to follow news organizations or journalists. Nineteen percent of users say they got information from news organizations of journalists. TV remains the most popular source of news, but the audience is aging (only 34% of young people).




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Social media as a news source" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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