The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook
journalism.org
journalism.org
For a start, I doubt the Twitter news feature will inject much-needed editorial quality into the unfiltered blast of rumours, half truths and lies that surround most current news events on Twitter. This is even more so if there is a political nature to the news.
But the deeper question here is 'why are people so addicted to news'?
There is a subset of people - obviously journalists included - who think that if they don't know every breaking event, somehow they are uninformed, ignorant, backward, all the rest of the insults.
But the reality of the situation is that the 24 hour news firehose - which Twitter and Facebook are jostling to be a part of - is really just the same series of flashing lights and distractions used to keep Las Vegas patrons inside the building.
Most news doesn't matter. Most breaking news doesn't matter.
If something is important, you'll find out. Allowing a breaking-news junkie to inform you brightens their day.
More important is that people get into a low information diet. There are a lot of people talking about how much sugar is consumed these days - junk calories best taken in small doses. Most news is like sugar - junk information best take in small doses.
I have mostly switched Twitter off these days. I am ruthless at excluding news (and especially political news) from my Facebook feed - call me old fashioned, but I'm really only interested in what my friends are up to. I am disinclined to consume their heart-rendering stories of cats up trees, jibes at their political hate-figure or tongue-baths of their political love-figure. None of that helps me to be happier or more productive.
News : like sugar for the brain.
It also mixes some current affairs and talking points with industry specific information.
If I could liken it to the difference between a fast-food joint and a quality cafe. Sometimes the menu and the conversation aren't to my liking, but on occasions it is a good place to spend some time.
TLDR: learning can take place here, in fast-news there is no learning, just button pushing of the audience. The news industry has self optimised to push emotional buttons to get a response.
For most significant events that do not directly impact the first-person ( i.e. not hyper-local ) I would suggest that it is strategically better to wait for a week or a month before taking any action based on the event.
In that case there's no immediate benefit to knowing about news as it breaks. In fact it could be a negative influence because it distracts from other, more important, action.
We're working on a platform (inquary.com) that will allow users to rate, research, and assess news and other information items based upon their Information Quality scores, specifically their accuracy, trustworthiness, comprehensiveness, and objectivity.
I'm always looking for feedback. If you have comments about what you'd like to see from such a platform, I'd love to hear from you here or at inquary.com.
For the record, I won't bore people with too much information here but there is a lot of data about how much people want accurate, objective news, as well as how surprisingly capable the public, in the aggregate, is at assessing such things.
Happy to talk more if people are interested.