Anatomy of news consumption on Facebook

TLDR

Social media and microblogging platforms have radically changed how we consume information and form opinions. This paper explores the anatomy of Facebook’s information space by characterizing global news‑consumption patterns of 376 million users from 2010 to 2015. The study analyzes these users’ consumption, tracks page inter‑likes and geolocation to show providers are geographically confined, and builds a simple selective‑exposure model that reproduces the observed connectivity patterns. Users focus on a few pages, creating a sharp community structure among outlets, while users and providers differ in preferences and providers are more geographically confined; a selective‑exposure model reproduces these connectivity patterns.

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.