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Think Before You Click: An Analysis of Facebook as Sources of News. Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone. 1. ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to ...
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ADVISOR • Stanley Baran
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with honors in the Bryant University Honors Program May 2018
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone
The purpose of this study is to analyze how millennial college students perceive and interpret the news-related content that is posted on the social networking website Facebook. The news that this study is focused on is related to major events in American politics, especially this past Presidential election. One research question was developed to compete this study: what influence are news stories being shared on Facebook having on millennials? In order to determine the answer to this question, focus groups with college students at Bryant University were held in which the students were asked to evaluate a news article and give their thoughts and opinions on current American events and how they are portrayed on social media.
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone
Social media are a growing force. They act as a form of social interaction and as sources of information. For quite some time, I have been interested in the way that using social media as sources for important information has impacted and influenced our society. I believe the first time this thought crossed my mind was back in high school when the shooting occurred at Sandy Hook elementary school. Due to incorrect information released online by overly-eager media outlets, the wrong person was being accused of this horrible crime. The idea of social media as sources of news came back into my mind this past year when it seemed that every article on Facebook or tweet on Twitter was about the election. It got me wondering how many of these sources were accurate and how many were just considered factual because of the number of hits the article received or who shared it. This also had me wondering how many voters were influenced by inaccurate articles that they deemed reliable. This is where the idea for my capstone project originated. I want to see how many people use social media as their primary source of news, what their criteria are for the sources they get their news from, and the influence that these potentially inaccurate articles are having on people’s opinions. In order to conduct this study, the term “news” needs to be defined. As I learned through my research, there is no clear cut definition of news that is accepted by all. Everyone has their own perceptions of what they believe to be considered news. For the purpose of this study, the definition of news is an event that affects a community on a national, regional, or local basis with a specific focus on American politics. This is the definition I was working with and based my
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone looking at this, my specific study focuses on the impact politically-based news content is having on the college students which is a specific topic that I did not find much literature on.
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone
The First Amendment An issue that is always brought up when it comes to journalism and the news is the First Amendment. Technically, the First Amendment states that Americans have the right to free speech and freedom of the press, but over time we have learned there are necessary limitations when it comes to this freedom. Some of these limitations include hate speech and libel, but libel only covers people not facts. The is a constant debate over journalism ethics and what is protected by the First Amendment, especially when it comes to anonymous sources. (Shepard
The Use of Anonymous Sources in Journalism When a journalist posts an article and uses unnamed sources, it can call the journalist’s credibility into question. Why does the source want to remain anonymous? Is the source reliable? Is there a reason the author good not reveal his or her source? Journalist Perry Bacon Jr. took the time to look into how to determine when an article with unnamed sources can be considered
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone story respond to it. (Bacon 2017) For example, when it was reported that the Trump had disclosed information in a meeting with Russian officials and his administration could not deny it outright, it makes the article reported it seem a bit more accurate. (Bacon 2017) While the information gathered from this study is important, I wonder what the role it has in regards to articles posted on Facebook. Do the millennials reading these articles pay attention to whether the authors name the sources they use or not? Knowing this could give an indication into how much thought college students put into choosing reliable news sources. Journalism in a Digital Age The next logical step in the research process would be to find out where social media fall in the world of journalism, which is exactly what Henry Neil discusses in his book American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media. (Neil 20017) Neil talks about how the rapidly increasing use of technology is impacting the field of journalism. He examines people’s use of traditional forms of news media such as newspapers and he researches all forms of media used to cover contemporary American news stories like the war in Iraq. (Neil 2007) Neil concludes that the decline of traditional media could be troubling as many American institutions are filled with corruption, and journalism is needed to expose those issues. (Neil 2007) This book shows the importance of news outlets, whether they are traditional or not, remaining accurate and reliable. This highlights the argument fueling my research, which is that social media should be posting only articles that are reliable and that doing otherwise will negatively impact society. Continuing with research about social media as a form of journalism brought me to the book Journalism and Media Convergence. (Nienstedt 2013) The authors discuss the pressure
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone journalism is under to adapt to the world around it. It looks at the way media are affecting fields such as advertising and public relations and how these relationships in turn affect journalism. (Nienstedt 2013) It asks the question if the digital age is impacting the quality of journalism and concludes that “excellent and investigative reporting can still be found,” but there are rising factors that are affecting journalistic credibility (Nienstedt 2013). In order to understand the influence unreliable sources are having on their readers, it might help to understand why the sources are not reliable in the first place. Is there a difference in the influence a source that may not have triple checked its facts has versus a source that blatantly did not do enough research? This is something that I want to find out. The authors of “From ‘Information’ to ‘Knowing’” confirm the what many other sources have stated: the internet is changing journalism. Authors Pentina and Tarafdar discuss the idea of information overload. (Pentina and Tarafdar 2014) Yes, the internet is making information more accessible, but is it too much? With the rapidly growing use of the internet, it seems everywhere we turn, information is there waiting for us. Having all that information available can make it hard to distinguish the accurate from the inaccurate. Pentina and Tarafdar conclude with what they believe to be helpful suggestions for news outlets on how to use social media and the internet to their advantage. (Pentina and Tarafdar 2014) I found this article useful in determining the proper way to use social media as a source of news. Social Media as a Form of Journalism Researchers Radim Hladik and Vaclav Stetka took a look at how social media are impacting the world of news in the Czech Republic in “Powers that Tweet.” (Hladik and Stetka 2015) They
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone often reported themselves as uniformed citizens. (Sveningsson 2017) This study is helpful to my research because it looks at the good and bad of journalism on social media and points out the negative effects it is having on readers. Misreported News In Getting It Wrong, Joseph Campbell analyzes the importance of accurately reporting news. He takes a look at myths that the media have led people to believe and the impact misreporting stories has on the public. (Campbell 2010) Some of the top ten misreported stories include the Watergate scandal and the media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina. After using traditional research methods to gather the information, Campbell concludes that misreporting stories feeds stereotypes and helps defend corrupt policymakers. (Campbell 2010) When we as consumers rely on a new source to report the facts accurately, we tend to believe every story which can cause problems when media report a story inaccurately. (Campbell 2010) This book will be extremely helpful to me because it shows there is already a belief that misreported or false stories have a negative impact on those who view them. It just needs to be applied to stories reported on social media. Fake News In Olivia Solon’s article, “The Future of Fake News”, she brings up an interesting point as to why fake news is a more prominent issues than it ever has been before. The advancement of technology is allowing users to make more and more realistic-looking content. (Solon 2017) Certain computer programs are being created that can make it look like prominent figures are saying things that they have never said. (Solon 2017) As this technology is only going to get
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone better and make this false audio and visual content more realistic, it is important that media users have a foundation of media literacy as this concept will need to expand and grow as this technology does. “2016 may have been a good year for news…but it wasn’t a good year for journalism.” (Harding
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone As discussed in the article on clickbait, companies publishing content online will try to use attention-grabbing headlines in order to get users to click on their articles and generate money for their website. The issue then becomes that these headlines are more focused on gaining website traffic than being accurate. The solution journalist Sierra Filucci provides for this issue is that parents should teach their children from a young age to more critically analyze a story before they accept it as truth. (Filucci 2017) While Filucci focuses on a demographic much younger than the young featured in this research it reiterates the point that a background in media literacy and critical thinking can drastically change the way people look at news. (Filucci 2017) Facebook and Fake News After the most recent presidential election, some Facebook users began to question the integrity of the articles that were being shared on the website. Some of the articles shared during that time were either clickbait articles posted just to entice people to go onto their website or sometimes the author just did not check their facts before publishing it. (Kafka 2017) Now we are learning that some of these articles may have even been propaganda posted purchased by other countries in attempt to influence the election. With all these potentially untrue stories floating around on Facebook, the website is trying to find a way to distinguish the true articles from the fake one. (Kafka 2017) The website has decided that instead of removing these fake stories from a user’s newsfeed, they will be tagging some of them with a warning label. (Kafka 2017) The article written by Peter Kafka about this news gives the example of a story about President Trump and how hos phone is the source of information leaked from the White House. While Facebook is hesitant to use the
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone term fake, this story was labeled that other news sources are disputing it. (Kafka 2017) Kafka criticizes that the company uses this term instead of calling the story what it is: fake. He also criticizes the method to how they determine what articles to label as disputed. (Kafka 2017) This article shows that Facebook realizes that fake news is an issue and taking steps to get users to think twice before accepting an article as truth. My research can add to this because if millennials are still accepting false media or questionable sources, it will show websites like Facebook they need to do more against these articles. Groupthink is the idea that people will agree with the ideas of others instead of voicing their own opinions in order to avoid conflict. As it turns out, this concept can be applied to how likely people are to examine the credibility of a news story. Researcher Shankar Vedantam recently presented his findings about this on NPR. (Vendantam 2017) He discovered that when people are in a group there is this mentality that someone else will do the fact check. In fact, when people are in a group they are 30-50% less likely to check the facts presented and this group mentality includes reading an article on social media. (Vendantam 2017) The Social Media Reader The Social Media Reader, by Michael Mandiberg, follows the history of technological advances and analyzes how they have influenced the spread of knowledge. It discusses the idea of user- driven content and how its popularity is increasing. (Mandiberg 2012) This immediately stood out to me and brought me back to the articles shared during the election. Many of these articles came from websites like the Odyssey, where users who are often college-aged are able to post and share their own opinions. This leads me to wonder how these writers do their research and how
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone that as I was in the beginning stages of this research topic, the news came out that Russia took to Facebook to anonymously spread anti-Clinton propaganda. In his article “To Sway Vote, Russia Used Army of Fake Americans,” Scott Shane sheds some light on how Russia was able to attempt to influence so many Americans during the past presidential election. (Shane 2017) At first, the propaganda websites they create attacking Hillary Clinton were not gaining much traffic. It was not until Melvin Redick, family man from Pennsylvania, posted a link to the DCLeaks website on his page encouraging others to check it out that people started to notice it. Soon other Americans were posting links to this website and other pages attacking Clinton. (Shane 2017) Upon a closer look, something seems off about Melvin Redick’s page and it was discovered that there is no one in Pennsylvania by that name. Part of what made Russia’s anti- Clinton propaganda during the election so effective is that they were able to create fake American online profiles to use to spread it. (Shane 2017) The issue is that some of these profiles are so well encrypted it is hard to connect them directly to Russia. Shane stresses the importance of understanding this tactic used by Russia before the next major U.S. election because there is no doubt in the minds of American officials that foreign countries will try to use this to interfere again. (Shane 2017) Digital Media Literacy According to Sora Park in her study “Dimensions of Digital Media Literacy and the Relationship with Social Exclusion,” digital media literacy is defined as “the ability to access, understand, and create content using digital media.” (Park 2012) While Park is looking at the relationship between this concept of digital media literacy and social exclusion, her study is still useful to me.
Senior Capstone Project for Lauren Malone Throughout the introduction she discusses the difference between media literacy and digital media literacy. She emphasizes the importance of user-generated content and that providing people with access to technology is not enough to make someone digital media literate. (Park
