Research Article: “The Reach of Commercially Motivated Junk News on Facebook”
The following research article was published today by PLOS One.
Title
The Reach of Commercially Motivated Junk News on Facebook
Authors
Peter Burger
Leiden University
Soeradj Kanhai
Leiden University
Alexander Pleijter
Leiden University
Suzan Verberne
Leiden University
Source
PLoS ONE 14(8): e0220446
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220446
Abstract
Commercially motivated junk news–i.e. money-driven, highly shareable clickbait with low journalistic production standards–constitutes a vast and largely unexplored news media ecosystem. Using publicly available Facebook data, we compared the reach of junk news on Facebook pages in the Netherlands to the reach of Dutch mainstream news on Facebook. During the period 2013–2017 the total number of user interactions with junk news significantly exceeded that with mainstream news. Over 5 Million of the 10 Million Dutch Facebook users have interacted with a junk news post at least once. Junk news Facebook pages also had a significantly stronger increase in the number of user interactions over time than mainstream news. Since the beginning of 2016 the average number of user interactions per junk news post has consistently exceeded the average number of user interactions per mainstream news post.
Direct to Full Text Article
Filed under: Data Files, News, Patrons and Users, PLOS
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
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