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Anatomy of news consumption on Facebook.

ABSTRACT: The advent of social media and microblogging platforms has radically changed the way we consume information and form opinions. In this paper, we explore the anatomy of the information space on Facebook by characterizing on a global scale the news consumption patterns of 376 million users over a time span of 6 y (January 2010 to December 2015). We find that users tend to focus on a limited set of pages, producing a sharp community structure among news outlets. We also find that the preferences of users and news providers differ. By tracking how Facebook pages "like" each other and examining their geolocation, we find that news providers are more geographically confined than users. We devise a simple model of selective exposure that reproduces the observed connectivity patterns.

SUBMITTER: Schmidt AL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5373354 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Anatomy of news consumption on Facebook.

Schmidt Ana Lucía AL Zollo Fabiana F Del Vicario Michela M Bessi Alessandro A Scala Antonio A Caldarelli Guido G Stanley H Eugene HE Quattrociocchi Walter W

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20170306 12

The advent of social media and microblogging platforms has radically changed the way we consume information and form opinions. In this paper, we explore the anatomy of the information space on Facebook by characterizing on a global scale the news consumption patterns of 376 million users over a time span of 6 y (January 2010 to December 2015). We find that users tend to focus on a limited set of pages, producing a sharp community structure among news outlets. We also find that the preferences of ...[more]

PMID: 28265082

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