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MB FILE / AFP /
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / 2013 – Giant logo created with pictures of Facebook
worldwide users featured in company’s Lulea, Sweden Data Center
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A study showed that
Facebook has become an important news source for close to half of American
adult, amid increased scrutiny over the social network’s gateway role.
The Pew Research
Center survey showed 62 percent of US adults get news on social media, and 18
percent do so often.
That only shows that
there is a growing role for Facebook and other social networks as a news
source. In 2012, based on a slightly different question, 49 percent of American
adults reported seeing news on social media, Pew said.
According to the
survey, 66 percent of Facebook users get news on the site, as did 59 percent of
Twitter users and seven of 10 users of Reddit.
Since Facebook researches
some two-thirds of US adults, the survey indicates that 44 percent of the
overall population gets at least some news through the leading social network.
The survey comes with
Facebook defending itself against allegations that it suppressed some
conservative new content in its “trending” topics.
Last week, Facebook
announced it was updating guidelines to be clearer that content decisions may
not be based on politics or ideology.
The news team will be
subject to more oversight and controls, and Facebook will no longer rely on
list of external websites and news outlets to assess the importance of topics
in stories.
Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg met with a group of conservative political leaders and told them
that the network was “a platform of all ideas.”
Still, the row over
the Facebook allegations has highlighted concerns that social media is
increasingly becoming a gateway to news for many readers.
According to the new
Pew study, users of Facebook, YouTube and Instagram are more likely to get
their news by chance, and when they are doing other things. Meanwhile, those
who use Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn often seek out news online as often as
they stumble upon it.
Source: Manila Bulletin
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